Posted in From the Stacks, History on August 24, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
In 1916, Mount Mitchell became North Carolina’s first state park. This year, the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources celebrates the centennial of the state park system, which now encompasses dozens of parks and recreation areas. Centennial events have been happening at parks across the state throughout the year. The signature centennial event […]
Posted in Events & exhibits, From the Stacks, Tar Talk, tagged hugh morton, North Carolina Museum of History, photography on August 15, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
Photographs by Hugh Morton: An Uncommon Retrospective opened this past Saturday at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. The Museum of History is the sixth venue for the exhibition since its debut in August 2013 at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University in Boone. The Morton photographs will […]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, NC Historic Newspapers, Tar Heelia, Tar Talk on July 7, 2016 | 5 Comments »
On January 30, 1919 the French Broad Hustler reported the shipment of “six head of buffalo –three males and three females –to Hominy, Buncombe County” by the American Bison Society. Their arrival in North Carolina marked the reintroduction of America’s largest big game animal to the state. The experiment was short-lived. Despite the birth of […]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, Tar Heelia, Tar Talk on June 13, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
They are tall and lean, with short waists and long limbs, sallow complexions and languid eyes, when not inflamed by spirits. Their feet are flat, their joints loose and their walk uneven. These I speak of are only peasantry of this country, as hitherto I have seen nothing else, but I make no doubt when […]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, Tar Heelia on June 13, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
The tall but narrow little pamphlets inevitably catch one’s eye on the shelf: each is only about 6 pages in length, and they are printed in bright colors and intriguing fonts on good paper. With almost four decades’ worth of issues, there is a lot to peruse. The series, Tips, is filled with sayings, words of […]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, Just A Bite, Postcards, Tar Heelia, Tar Talk, UNC History on March 7, 2016 | 1 Comment »
Among the jewels of the North Carolina Collection are more than 15,000 postcards. And we have one man to thank for about 8,000 of those items—Durwood Barbour. For 25 years, Barbour combed through boxes at coin and postcard shows looking for images that told stories of bygone people, places and doings in his native state. […]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, NC Historic Newspapers, Tar Heelia, Tar Talk on March 4, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
Nineteenth century newspapers advertised a host of treatments for illnesses, including one called catarrh. The term is one rarely used today, but in the 19th century catarrh referred to an excess of phlegm or mucous. Although nasal or sinus congestion is frequently caused by fever or allergies, it also accompanies pneumonia or other afflictions of […]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, NC Historic Newspapers, Tar Heelia on January 29, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
From time to time, North Carolina Miscellany features short histories of North Carolina newspapers included on Chronicling America, a website produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). By August 2016, the North Carolina Collection and its partner, the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, will have provided 200,000 pages of historic N.C. newspapers […]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, NC Historic Newspapers, Tar Heelia, Tar Talk on January 19, 2016 | 2 Comments »
In 1912, the Asheville Gazette-News reprinted a letter (A portion of which is above. Click on the image to sell the full letter), originally from 1858, from Bedent Baird of Watauga County to Zebulon Baird Vance, who at the time was a very young Congressman. Bedent Baird describes what he knows about his family lineage […]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, NC Historic Newspapers, Tar Heelia on October 6, 2015 | Leave a Comment »
On May 7, 1915 off the coast of Ireland at 2:10 in the afternoon, on the final days of its trans-Atlantic journey to Liverpool, a torpedo fired by a German submarine slammed into the side of the RMS Lusitania. A mysterious second explosion ripped the passenger ship apart. In the chaos, many jumped into the […]
