Category: DigitalNC

It’s time for another round of “Can You Identify This Notable North Carolinian from their Yearbook Photo?” I’ve got just one photo this time. If you think you know who it is, post your answer in the comments. Also, if you know where I could get a pair of glasses like those, put that in as well. I’ll post the answer this afternoon on the DigitalNC Blog.

It’s time for another round of “Can you guess this notable figure from their yearbook photo?” featuring images from the North Carolina Yearbooks collection on DigitalNC. Here you go:

These two folks have a couple of things in common: both attended, but did not graduate from colleges in North Carolina, but their lack of a degree did not stop them from rising to positions of national significance in the second half of the 20th century. The similarities end there, to say the least.

You can post your guesses in the comments field here. If you can’t stand the suspense any longer, head over to our Yearbook Photos of Notable North Carolinians set on Flickr to find the answers.

Yesterday’s @ncnewspapers headline, from the Charlotte News in 1911, read “Alleged Blind Tiger Seized.” For those of you unfamiliar with Prohibition-era jargon, the story was not about a sightless jungle animal: a “blind tiger” was another name for a speakeasy, or any place where untaxed liquor (often homemade) was sold.

I first ran across the term in the title of a fascinating pamphlet in the North Carolina Collection, “The Life of George L. Smith, North Carolina’s Ex-convict: Boldest and Bravest Blind Tiger Man, Who Has Run Blind Tigers in Nearly Every Town in North Carolina.” Smith was a compulsive bootlegger who was rarely able to evade the law, but despite frequent arrests he nearly always ended up back at the still.

I was curious about the use of the term “blind tiger” and looked through the North Carolina Newspapers collection for examples. The phrase was definitely in use well before Prohibition. The earliest example I could find was in the Elm City Elevator from April 4, 1902, which referred to a “blind tiger wagon” selling “liquor for sale by the keg, often very cheap.” The term appeared frequently in the Charlotte News from 1911 (North Carolina enacted statewide prohibition in 1908), as well is other papers from around the state during the same period. The latest use of it I found was 1945, in an issue of the Raeford News-Journal.

UPDATED: Kevin is right! Pictured below are the three men vying for the Democratic nomination for Governor: Walter Dalton, Bob Etheridge, and Bill Faison. See the post on the DigitalNC blog for more information and links to the digitized yearbooks.

Can anyone tell me what these three young men have in common? I’ll post the answers and a little more information later today.

There was an interesting story on WFAE in Charlotte last week about the new survey of the border between North and South Carolina. In an effort to correctly establish the historical border between the Carolinas, surveyors are making adjustments that may change a few addresses from one state to the other, leaving surprised residents faced with new school districts and different tax rates, among other hassles.

The story reminded me of a headline we recently posted on the @ncnewspapers Twitter feed, from the Charlotte News in 1911, about the bust of a large cockfighting ring in the woods outside of Charlotte. Thirty-one people were arrested for fighting or “aiding and abetting in fighting chickens” and fined $10 apiece. The defense attorney suggested that the men were not in deliberate defiance of the law because, due to the location of the fight so close to the border, they believed they were in South Carolina, where apparently “chicken fighting” was not a crime.

From the Southern Pines Pilot, March 19, 1937. I especially like the reference to “Sunday-Go-To-Meetin’ Shoes.”

I found this ad for UNC in a 1907 issue of the Sylvan Valley News, published in Brevard, N.C. We’ve recently added over 400 issues of the paper, ranging from 1900-1911, to the North Carolina Newspapers digital collection.

The University has grown just a bit since this ad was posted. There are definitely more than six departments (over 200 degree programs now) and the library has quite a few more than 45,000 volumes (six million and counting). We do still have electric lights.

As an aside — and I’m not sure whether the University or the newspaper staff were to blame for this — it’s difficult to maintain a claim as “Head of the State’s Educational System” when you misspell the word “educational.”

I found this very interesting “Chapel Hill Letter” in an issue of The Mebane Leader from May 18, 1915. The letter describes a project led by Kemp Plummer Battle to preserve a collection of “articles used in industries in avocations” in 1915 and seal them up in a “hermetically sealed box” to be opened again in 1965 and 2015. At each opening, one of Battle’s descendants would offer a prize of $50 to a student to “write a thesis on the change of the preceding semi-centennial period.”

The North Carolina Historical Society, led at the time by J. G. deRoulhac “Ransack” Hamilton, was charged with keeping the box.

So what happened to it? Does anybody know whether it was opened in 1965? And if we can succeed in tracking it down sometime in the next couple of years, are there any Battle descendants out there who would be willing to offer the $50 prize for an essay?

Here’s the full letter: