Yearbook Photos of North Carolina Gubernatorial Candidates

Having a hard time deciding who to vote for for Governor? If the various campaign ads and claims have you confused, here’s a much less contentious way of looking at the candidates.

Both Walter Dalton and Pat McCrory show up in the North Carolina College and University Yearbooks collection available on DigitalNC.org. Dalton was a 1971 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, while McCrory graduated from Catawba College in 1978.

The Dalton photo is from the 1971 Yackety Yack, the McCrory from the 1975 edition of the Sayakini.

Searching for Early Uses of “Tar Heels”

The origin of the nickname “Tar Heel” is one that comes up often whenever North Carolinians are talking with visitors from out of state. Like many colloquialisms, a precise origin is hard to pin down as the nickname was probably used in informal conversation long before it ever appeared in print. But that doesn’t stop us from trying.

The best history of the Tar Heel nickname is William S. Powell’s “Why We’re All Called Tar Heels,” available on the North Carolina Collection website. While it’s unclear how early the term was used, we can say authoritatively that it came into regular use during the Civil War when it was applied to soldiers from North Carolina. Whether or not Robert E. Lee actually said “God bless the Tar Heel boys,” the name stuck. Powell and others cite a piece of sheet music published in Baltimore in 1866 as being likely the first printed use of the term “Tar Heel.”

Now that we have digitized versions of many early North Carolina newspapers available online, we have the opportunity to easily search thousands of pages of text — far easier than scrolling through that many pages on microfilm. Even though the optical character recognition software doesn’t do a great job of transcribing early newspapers accurately, I was able to find a couple of uses of “Tar Heel” prior to 1866.

The earliest one I came across was an ad in the Fayetteville Observer published on March 27, 1864 asking for recruits of “brave ‘Tar Heels’.”

In a later issue of the same paper, published on July 21, 1864, we see that the term was in use among the soldiers themselves. One of the Cumberland Plough Boys wrote to the readers back home about conditions in camp and assured friends back home ” that ‘Tar Heels’ do not intend to be subjugated.”

One of the most frustrating things about this kind of research using digitized newspapers is that we have no easy way of knowing what we’re missing. Because we rely on computers to do the transcription there are many mistakes, especially for older papers where there might be irregular printing or smudges or torn pages. But it is a start, and goes a long way toward making these invaluable resources more accessible and easier to use than ever.

Now if only we can figure out the origin of the term Cackalacky.

Thomas Wolfe at 112


Happy Birthday Thomas Wolfe! The novelist was born in Asheville on this day in 1900. Though he left his native state after graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1920, his work was forever rooted in North Carolina and he remains one of our state’s most celebrated authors.

Wolfe was a proud alumnus of UNC and wrote fondly of his time there in a letter to his classmate Benjamin Cone. The letter was written in July 1929, just before the publication of Wolfe’s first novel, Look Homeward, Angel. In an often-quoted passage, Wolfe writes,

“And after all, Ben, back in the days when you and I were beardless striplings — ‘forty or fifty years ago,’ as Eddie Greenlaw used to say — the Hill was (praise God!) ‘a small southern college.’ I think we had almost 1000 students our Freshman year, and were beginning to groan about our size. So far from forgetting the blessed place, I think my picture of it grows clearer every year: it was as close to magic as I’ve ever been, and now I’m afraid to go back and see how it is changed. I haven’t been back since our class graduated. Great God! how time has flown, but I am going back within a year (if they’ll let me).”

It’s a great letter, worth reading in its entirety on the North Carolina Collection website. One of my favorite parts is where Wolfe acknowledges that even after substantial editing his is going to be a very long book and that he hopes Cone will “manage to stick it to the end.”

In closing, Wolfe writes again of his fond memories of the University and his classmates, though with a touch of apprehension as he understands the potential for misunderstanding that lay ahead when so many people from Asheville and Chapel Hill would find thinly-disguised versions of themselves in the novel.

“But this is perhaps the longest letter I shall write to anyone concerning my book, and I do it for this reason: you stand as a symbol of that happy and wonderful life I knew during 1916-1920 (don’t think from this that my present life is wretched — on the contrary, now that I am really beginning to do the work I love, it is fuller and richer than it’s ever been) But I shall never forget the great days at Chapel Hill, and my friends there. Such a time will come no more. I have kept silence for years. I have lived apart from most of those friends, probably most of them have forgotten me. But I think you will believe me when I tell you most earnestly that I value the respect and friendship of some of those people as much as I value anything — with two exceptions, one of which is my work. So, no matter what you think of my book, continue to remember the person who wrote it as you always have.”

A Voyage Down the Yadkin – Great Peedee River

At the suggestion of the Davie County Public Library, the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center has just published online one of my favorite little books from the North Carolina Collection: Douglas Rights’s A Voyage Down the Yadkin – Great Peedee River.

The book describes a journey taken by the author in a rowboat down the Yadkin and Pee Dee Rivers from North Wilkesboro to Georgetown, S.C. The trip began in September 1925 and was completed in 1928 (in several stages — he wasn’t on the river the whole time). The sketches included in the book were originally published in newspapers in Winston-Salem. The lively, conversational tone of the writing combined with the glimpses it gives into a very different North Carolina make for a fascinating read.

As an example of fine prose to be found in these pages, here’s a memorable description of a man in a now long-forgotten profession: ferryman. J.C. Corum manned the ferry near Shoals, N.C., located in Surry County between Mt. Airy and Winston-Salem:

“Mr. Corum is a ferryman to be remembered. He reminded us of that famous boatman Charon who transports troubled souls over the river Styx. It is a delight to see him pole a small wooden boat across the river. It is with him a ceremony stately and solemn. Over six feet in height he stands upright in the board, using a sapling pole twice his length. Without bending the knee or winking an eyelash he sweeps one end of the pole into the water. This impulse shoots the boat ahead on a straight line as if it were driven by motor power. Between sweeps he stands poised as a Grecian statue. A dozen powerful strokes bring him safe to the opposite shore where with countenance still unmoved he casts the stay chain over the moorings.”

The ferry described here is probably quite similar to the Cooleemee Plantation Ferry pictured in the Digital Davie online exhibit.

Douglas Rights was a Moravian bishop with a lifelong interest in natural history and Native Americans in North Carolina. His book The American Indian in North Carolina (1947) was an important work on the topic and his collection of Native American artifacts, part of which is housed at UNC-Chapel Hill, is a valuable resource for researchers.

Davie Popular Damaged by 1902 Storm

There are a lot of things wrong with this article, which I found in the August 15, 1902 edition of the Elm City Elevator, from the small town of Elm City, located in Wilson County. To begin with, the tree revered by UNC-Chapel Hill students and alumni alike is referred to as the “David Poplar” and its namesake demoted to a mere colonel. And a lazy one at that, as the article perpetuates the myth that the site for the campus was chosen when “Col. David” stopped to swill a little corn whiskey and said that the location in southern Orange County was “good enough for me.”

But it’s an interesting article nonetheless, showing that in the early twentieth century the Davie Poplar was already a legendary landmark and that, despite the damage done by this and other storms, it was able to endure.

N&O: Zebulon on the Rise

The News and Observer reported yesterday that the name Zebulon is increasingly popular among parents today, and was listed on a website as one of the “14 hottest” names of the year.

If Zebulon is indeed on the rise again in North Carolina, it would only mark a return to popularity of a name that was frequently found in families across the state. Zebulon Baird Vance, the closest thing North Carolina has to a Civil War hero, inspired many to adopt not just the first but the first and last names of the former soldier and politician.

My go-to source for popular Tar Heel names is the NCC Bio Index, an index of biographical information found in reference books, local histories, and newspaper clippings. The database allows for a first-name search, so I typed in “Zebulon Vance” and found entries listed for 24 different men with “Zebulon Vance” for a first and middle name, from Zebulon Vance Babbitt to Zebulon Vance Watson. That’s a lot of Zebs.

1985 Yackety Yack Does UNC A to Z

Of the more than 4,000 yearbooks we’ve digitized for the North Carolina College and University Yearbooks collection, one of the most creative that I’ve seen is the 1985 Yackety Yack from UNC-Chapel Hill. The book is arranged like an encyclopedia of the campus and community, with pretty clever entries throughout and some great photographs. It’s also a great look into student life and culture, with entries about cultural figures such as Eddie Murphy and Lou Reed, and many references to the 1984 political campaigns which featured the heated race between Jesse Helms and Jim Hunt for U.S. Senate.

NC Miscellany on WFAE

This morning, the “Charlotte Talks” program on radio station WFAE in Charlotte featured a discussion about the North Carolina Miscellany blog. NCC staff member John Blythe and contributor-extraordinaire Lew Powell talked with host Mike Collins about the origins of the blog, the appeal of North Carolina history and culture, and some of their favorite posts. An archived version of the story is now available on the WFAE website.