FDR attends The Lost Colony – Caught by Albertype

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Seen this one before? Probably not. I suspect this photo never made its way to print. The image of FDR on Roanoke Island is among prints and negatives in the Albertype Company Collection of the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archive (NCCPA). We recently added a host of scans from the collection to our Digital NCCPA.

Albertype was a Brooklyn-based postcard and viewbook publishing company that operated from 1892 to 1950. During its six decades of operation, the company produced more than 25,000 prints. Albertype sent photographers throughout the country to capture people and places on film. In the early days the company relied on a relatively new technological innovation, the collotype or albertype, to photomechanically reproduce images.

Our Albertype Collection includes another image that was likely shot the same day.

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The motorcade appears to include Roosevelt, Governor Clyde R. Hoey (backseat, middle) and, perhaps, Paul Green (backseat, right). Roosevelt’s visit to Roanoke Island included a viewing of The Lost Colony. Green’s outdoor drama included actors from the Federal Actors Project performing in a theater built by the Civilian Conservation Corps—two agencies created as a part of FDR’s New Deal. Roosevelt visited Roanoke Island on August 18, 1937— the 350th anniversary of Virginia Dare’s birth and a little more than a month after the July 4 premiere of Green’s drama. In addition to catching a performance of The Lost Colony, the President delivered an address.

The photographer of these images is unidentified. The quality of the photographs suggest that his/her work with the Albertype Company may have been short-lived.

Of course, Albertype didn’t have the only photographer on the scene. This lensman (or lenswoman) was better positioned (FYI: we’re doing some web cleanup and this link may eventually die).

Who wants bacon?

Every year on the Saturday before Labor Day, bacon lovers across America celebrate International Bacon Day.  There are bacon festivals from Virginia to San Diego with music, cook-offs, and most importantly BACON.  Create a new bacon concoction and have your own bacon cook-off or get inspired by one of these recipes from NC cookbooks.

USED 8-30-13 Peanut Butter and Bacon Squares - A Taste of the Old and the New

Peanut Butter and Bacon Squares from A Taste of the old and the new.

USED 8-30-13 Hot Bacon Pecan Cheese Dip -Supper's at Six

Hot Bacon Pecan Cheese Dip from Supper’s at six and we’re not waiting!

USED 8-30-13 Bacon Chive Muffins-North Carolina Bed&Breakfast Cookbook

Bacon Chive Muffins from North Carolina bed & breakfast cookbook.

USED 8-30-13 Oven Fried Bacon Wrapped Chicken - Mountain Country Cooking

Oven-Fried Bacon-Wrapped Chicken from Mountain country cooking : a gathering of the best recipes from the Smokies to the Blue Ridge.

USED 8-30-13 Fried Apples and Bacon - Just Like Grandma Used to Make

Fried Apples and Bacon from Just like Grandma used to make.

USED 8-30-13 Bacon Cheese Fingers - Company's Coming

Bacon-Cheese Fingers from Company’s coming : a recipe collection from North Carolinians who enjoy company coming.

USED 8-30-13 Bacon Cornbread with Fresh Corn - Supper's at Six

Bacon Cornbread with Fresh Corn from Supper’s at six and we’re not waiting!

National Sandwich Month…recipes from the collection.

August is National Sandwich Month and we are ending the month with some sandwich recipes that will leave you asking “Is it lunch time yet?”

Sandwiches poem - Favorite Recipes of Women's Fellowship of the United Church

From Favorite recipes.

Sicily Sandwich - Mountain Elegance

Sicily Sandwich from Mountain elegance : a collection of favorite recipes.

Curried Lamb Pockets-Love Yourself Cookbook

Curried Lamb Pockets from Love yourself cookbook : easy recipes for one or two.

Garden Sandwich - Vegetarian Delights

Garden Sandwich from Vegetarian delights : a hearty collection of natural food recipes.

Open faced turkey sandwich - Classic Cookbook of Duke Hospital

Open Faced Turkey Supper Sandwich from Classic cookbook.

Creamy Shrimp Sandwiches - Pass the Plate

Creamy Shrimp Sandwiches from Pass the plate : the collection from Christ Church.

The Gondola-Rush Hour Superchef!

The Gondola from Rush hour superchef! : with step-by-step menus.

chicken reuben - What's Cook'n at Biltmore

Chicken Reuben from What’s cook’n at Biltmore.

Sloppy Joes - Supper's at Six

Sloppy Joes from Supper’s at six and we’re not waiting!

UNC 14 vs. USC 7– Wait, that was 63 years ago

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With the much-hyped Jadeveon Clowney expected to doom UNC’s chances of beginning its football season with a win, we thought it important to remind readers that the overall record in the intrastate match-up puts UNC ahead with twice the number of wins as the other Carolina to the South. The series record is 34-17 with four ties.

Photographer Hugh Morton was on hand to record one of the occasions when the Tar Heels claimed a W. On November 18, 1950 UNC walked away from Carolina Stadium in Columbia with 14 points. The hometown team scored only 7. Morton’s photo features four Tar Heels taking down a Gamecock. Number 25 for the Tar Heels is Irv Holdash, who was a first team All-Southern Conference center in 1949 and 1950.

Despite the Tar Heel’s win in Columbia, the team finished with a 4-6 record for the season. Holdash, a senior in 1950, was drafted in the seventh round of the NFL draft by the Cleveland Browns.

Here’s hoping Mr. Morton’s photo works some good mojo on the Heels tonight.

And, lest you think we’re being too hard on the Palmetto State. One of their wags thinks we Tar Heels need a little educating.

Textile unionism peaked in Roanoke Rapids

On this day in 1974: In a landmark union election, J.P. Stevens employees in seven Roanoke Rapids mills vote to be represented by the Textile Workers Union of America: 1,685 for the union, 1,448 against.

North Carolina’s AFL-CIO President Wilbur Hobby proclaims “a new day in Dixie. J.P. first, the textile industry second and then the whole South.” But it will take the union six discouraging years to negotiate a contract with J.P. Stevens, and union membership both nationally and in North Carolina will drop over the next four decades.

 

Rescued from chicken droppings, a photographic treasure

“Inside or outside his [Durham] photo studio, Hugh Mangum created an atmosphere — respectful and often playful — in which hundreds of men, women and children opened themselves. Though the late-19th-century American South in which he worked was marked by disenfranchisement, segregation and inequality — between black and white, men and women, rich and poor — Mr. Mangum, who was white, portrayed all of them with candor, humor, confidence and dignity….

“The images that remain — about 700 glass plate negatives preserved in Duke University’s Rubenstein Library — were salvaged from the tobacco pack house on the Mangum family property where the photographer built his first darkroom. For decades, the negatives caught the droppings of chickens and other creatures living in the pack house. Today they are in various states of deterioration. Some are broken and the emulsion is peeling on others, but the hundreds of vibrant personalities in the photographs prevail, engaging our emotions, intellect and imagination.”

— From “A Penny Picture Photographer in the American South” by Sarah Stackein the New York Times (Aug. 27, 2013)

 

‘No more Sam Ervin, no more Sam Ervin over me….’

“At some points, marchers moved silently…. At other points, the march was a parade, with rhythmic singing and chanting….

“A group of 82 people from Wilmington, North Carolina, dressed in black jackets and hoods, strolled down Constitution Avenue, mocking the segregationist senator from South Carolina [sic] with a variation of ‘Oh Freedom’:

No more Sam Ervin

No more Sam Ervin over me

And before I’ll be a slave

I’ll be buried in my grave

And go home to my Lord and be free

— From “Nobody Turn Me Around: A People’s History of the 1963 March on Washington” by Charles Euchner (2010)

 

‘Principle of bee-building’ applied to house design

On this day in 1869: Harriet Morrison Irwin, a frail and bookish Charlotte homemaker, becomes the first woman granted a patent for an architectural design — a hexagonal house.

One advertisement touts Mrs. Irwin’s hexagon as applying “the principle of bee-building to human architecture,” but it wins few converts.

Her model home in Charlotte’s Fourth Ward — two stories with central tower, mansard roof and arched porch — will be torn down without fanfare in the 1960s.

 

Jim Crow’s reach extended to courtroom Bibles

” ‘Confusion with Jim Crow Bible’ [a story in the Raleigh Evening Times] March 29, 1906, describes an incident during the trial of a black schoolteacher accused of disposing of a mule on which there was a mortgage. A defense witness, who was colored but looked white, took the stand and was being sworn in when the judge told the sheriff the man had been given the wrong Bible.

” ‘That one… is for the use of the white people,’ Judge Amistead [Armistead?] Jones said. ‘Not that I am a stickler about such matters, but if there are to be different Bibles kept for the races, then you must not get them mixed that way. Have a different place for them, and keep them there. Then such mistakes as this will not be made.’ ”

— From “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson (2010)

 

O. Henry’s complaint: ‘too much scenery and fresh air’

“I’m back in New York after a six months’ stay in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. I was all played out — nerves, etc. I didn’t pick up down there as well as I should have done. There was too much scenery and fresh air. What I need is a steam-heated flat with no ventilation or exercise.”

— From a letter from William Sydney Porter to a friend in Chicago (April 15, 1910)

Returning to New York proved no cure for the Greensboro-born writer known as O. Henry. Less than two months later, at age 47, Porter was dead from cirrhosis of the liver, complications of diabetes and an enlarged heart. After funeral services in New York City, he was buried in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville.