Historical NC Newspapers Selected for Digitization
Back in August I shared news that NC would be contributing papers to the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America digitized newspaper portal. The final title selections have now been made and announced on the North Carolina Miscellany blog of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Newspapers selected will cover Buncombe, Cherokee, Chowan, Craven, Cumberland, Durham, Guilford, Henderson, Edgecombe, Mecklenburg, New Hanover, Pasquotank, Sampson, Vance, Wake, and Watauga counties.
The full list of 21 titles is on the NC Miscellany blog post. These are going to span 1836-1922 and there are sure to be many gems among their pages. All 100,000 pages planned for this phase should be online by Summer 2014. Stay tuned for more info as they start to get digitized!
Image credit: Vinmag by Flickr user Oliver Joe.
250th Anniversary of Pitt County
This week, there are celebrations ongoing in Pitt County to celebrate the county’s 250th-year anniversary. As part of the festivities, the local paper, Greenville’s Daily Reflector, is featuring their new online collection of images from the newspaper — the Daily Reflector Image Collection.
This site is a spectacular resource for anyone with historical/ancestral roots to the county. It features more than 7,500 images from the paper’s photo negatives (of which there are more than 85,000). The Joyner Library at East Carolina University has for years now been building a strong digital library collection, but this just tops the cake in my book. You can download high-quality files of the image, share them via a variety of social websites, and add your own comments to the pictures if you know something about them. Some of the images here are also on Flickr and have received a great response there. The pictures cover events and people not only in Pitt county, but in surrounding counties as well.
To learn more about the project, see their About page, where you can view a SlideShare presentation about the project’s implementation. Kudos to the Joyner Library for another great resource!
A Slave No More
On a recent trip to San Francisco for a conference I attended, I was in a bookstore in Oakland, CA and picked up this book by David W. Blight, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation.
I bought the book because one of the men profiled in the book is named Wallace Turnage. Wallace was born August 24, 1846 in Greene County, North Carolina. His parents were a slave named Courtney and a white man named Sylvester Brown Turnage. Sylvester was the stepson of Courtney’s slaveholder, Levin Turnage. I was interested in the book because Blight used historical and genealogical research to add context to Wallace’s narrative.
Wallace was sold away to Richmond, Virginia by 1860, so his time in NC was brief, but I still had to get the book. His mother Courtney married Louis Hart and had four more children. In fact, I was able to quickly locate the Freedman’s Bank Record for his brother Nelson Hart. In the bank record, Nelson indicates he was born in Pitt County and that his father Louis was deceased by now (1874) though his mother Courtney, is still alive. He lists as his siblings Wallace Turnage, along with siblings Daniel, Annie & Peggy.
U.S. Freedmen Bank Records, 1865-1874. FamilySearch-Record Search
Wallace also had several entries in the database for his own bank account. On his from 1871 in Maryland, he lists his mom and siblings Nelson, Daniel & Siah.
U.S. Freedmen Bank Records, 1865-1874. FamilySearch-Record Search.
Though Wallace would spend his adult life outside the state, I’m sure he must still have relatives in state. I look forward to learning more!
Pitt County NCGenWeb Redesign
For those with research roots relevant to Pitt county, Ron, the site coordinator, has just finished an update to the look of the site. Visit the site to see the changes!
