Above is a postcard published by the Asheville Postcard Co., which was likely made from a photograph taken by George Masa.

The writers of NC Miscellany recently got a tip that Buncombe County Public Libraries has an online display of several of George Masa’s photographs paired with the postcards that were printed from them.  You can view the collection here.

One neat thing about the way they’ve displayed the postcard with the photograph is that you can see how postcard publishers often manipulated small details in the photograph.

Masa was born in Japan, and moved to the United States sometime around 1906 after his father died suddenly.  He traveled to several US cities before coming to Asheville in 1915 on a student tour group.  He remained in Asheville for the next 18 years of his life, employed in various capacities.  He photographed guests at the Grove Park Inn in the beginning, and later opened the Photo-Graft Shop (which would be come the Asheville Photo Service).  He loved being in the Smoky Mountains, and frequently photographed scenic views of the area.  He was an early advocate of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Appalachian Trail.  (adapted from Powell, William S.  Dictionary of North Carolina Biography.  University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1991.)

Unfortunately, we have not been able to identify any of the postcards in our collection as the work of George Masa (except for possibly the one above). You can browse for items published by the Asheville Post Card Company, which published postcards from the photos of Masa and other photographers from the 1920s and on.

Above is a postcard showing an Odd Fellows’ Lodge in Beaufort, NC.  It turns out we’ve got a lot of materials relating to various secret societies and fraternal orders in North Carolina, including the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.  Interestingly, the card mentions that the lodge is over a hundred years old, which places the construction of the lodge to  ca. 1805-1815.

Below is an excerpt from the inside of the front cover of the “Ritual of a Subordinate Lodge under the Jurisdiction of the Sovereign Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows,” published by the I.O.O.F. in 1908 (VC097 O22r).  While it was used in the Centennial Lodge of Elm City, it dates to roughly the same time the postcard was created.

Postmarked in 1932, here’s a lovely postcard featuring the one and only Davie Hall (which apparently used to house the botany department!), the arboretum’s “pergola,” and a hysterical statement that any UNC student—of all generations—can relate to: “I don’t have any special plans for today except to try to catch up with my reading.”

With midterms just over (and coffee demand at the Daily Grind, Alpine, Student Stores, and Starbucks slowing down), I think all undergraduates know exactly what Lee C. meant.

Attention NCC, NC Miscellany, NC History, and NC Postcard lovers (and those of you stumble-upon-this-website-web-friends!): while postcard transcriptions are readily available at the wonderful NC Postcards website (http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/nc_post/), we thought we’d take their quite Droll and Merry content and attempt to fit it in, you guessed it, 140 characters! As we continue to transcribe and edit past transcriptions, us folks here at the p-card factory will tweet NC past and hope to bring a few smiles to your face in the process. Additionally, we’ll be tweeting NCC updates, interesting finds, unsolved North Carolina historical mysteries, links to innovative projects, and maybe, just maybe our staff’s states of mind.

Request to follow us here: http://twitter.com/NCCollection

And tweet we go!

The winter resort village of Pinehurst, N.C. began in 1895, and  the Carolina hotel opened there in 1901.  It was the largest hotel in the community, and at the time of its construction, the largest hotel in the state.  Pinehurst featured several other hotels, boarding houses, and cottages for rent, but none offered the same services, amenities, and recreational opportunities as The Carolina.

One recreational activity offered by the hotel was the gun club, which enabled guests to take lessons from instructors and also featured exhibition demonstrations by the instructors.  The image above is an excerpt from a postcard depicting an event at the Gun Club,  and shows a woman in a white dress shooting a rifle.  To see the entire postcard, click on the image.

While we’re not certain, it’s possible that the woman depicted here is Annie Oakley …

After a long stint in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West traveling show, Annie Oakley and her husband, Frank Butler, came to live at The Carolina in 1915.  They had positions on the hotel’s staff, and Annie would give exhibitions and shooting lessons at the gun club, and Frank was in charge of the skeet range.  Her lessons and biweekly demonstrations were extraordinarily popular.  In the six years she worked at The Carolina, she gave lessons to hundreds of people each winter season.

This postcard dates to when she would have been employed by the hotel, and the large crowd gathered to watch (don’t miss the two boys on the roof of the club house!) suggests that this was not an event to miss.

This is the only postcard we have of the Gun Club, but you can view other postcards of The Carolina (and some of its other recreational activities) here.

Reference
Flory, Claude R.  1966.  “Annie Oakley in the South,” in North Carolina Historical Review, 43(3), 333-343.

In 1851, Raleigh Rutherford (R.R.) Haynes was born in Ferry, Rutherford County.  When he was 20 years old, he moved to Union County, South Carolina, with his younger brother to work in the cotton fields.  Two years later, around 1870, he returned to Rutherford County and invested the money he made in a general store and a sawmill.   By reinvesting his money, Haynes was able to become a wealthy landowner and successful industrialist.

In 1885, Haynes opened the first successful textile industry in Rutherford County in Henrietta.  Over time, he built several more very successful textile mills along the Second Broad River.

One of these was Cliffside, which Haynes began work on in 1900.  It was to be a mill and company town located on the Second Broad River, like Haynes’ other mills.  In North Carolina Architecture, Catherine Bishir writes that when it was built, Cliffside was one of the last (and largest) water-powered textile mills (p. 432).

Cliffside was likely named for the extremely steep and rocky hills all over the area.  The company town was home to around 900 employees, who all lived white cottages.  The company town featured a downtown with a main street that featured many services and entertainment opportunities.

Before he died in 1917, R. R. Haynes had planned to build a community center for the mill town of Cliffside.  It was designed to have a wide variety of services and leisure activities including  a library, movie theater, gymnasium, beauty shops, banquet hall, barbershops, baths, and a cafe.  The community center was completed in 1922 and named the “R. R. Haynes Memorial Building,” in his honor.

Below are two postcards depicting the R.R. Haynes Memorial Building and two postcards of other aspects of town life in Cliffside.

Exterior of the R. R. Haynes Memorial Building in Cliffside.  The entrance at the right is also the entrance for the movie theater.  Movie posters are visible near the entrance.

Interior view of the lobby in the Haynes Memorial Building.  Although it’s difficult to tell from the postcard, the table tops were inlaid with checker boards!

View of the Cliffside United Methodist Church, built in 1912.  A typical Cliffside house can be seen behind and to the right of the church.  Haynes built several schools and churches for the towns’ residents.

Interior view of the Lakeview Dairy farm, which provided milk for the town until the 1950s.  The dairy farm was located across from the mill.

The R. R. Haynes Memorial Building and many millworkers’ houses were torn down in the 1960s and 1970s, but the building’s  clock tower was turned into a monument and placed on Cliffside’s Main Street, where it still stands today.

The postcard above shows the Knights of Pythias Orphanage in Clayton, NC.  It was built by North Carolina architect Henry Bonitz in 1909.

In 1893, Bonitz was part of the first graduating class from the recently opened College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (which would later become North Carolina State University).  As such, Bonitz was one of the first trained-in-state professional architects. Bonitz was originally from Goldsboro, NC, but his family later moved to Wilmington.  His office was located in Wilmington, and many of his projects were done in and around New Hanover County, but not exclusively.

You can read more about Bonitz’s life and work in his entry in NC Architects and Builders, an online biographical dictionary presented by NC State’s Libraries.  Make sure to catch the anecdote about what became of his architectural drawings that were done on linen!

We recently added cards from these towns:

Cheoah, Graham County
Clemmons, Forsyth County
Hildebran, Burke County
Kitty Hawk, Dare County
Kure Beach, New Hanover County
Lake Junaluska, Haywood County
Niagara,  Moore County
Norlina, Warren County
Norwood,  Stanly County

We’ve got a postcard featuring an exhibit about African Americans in North Carolina at the 1907 Jamestown Exhibition. The NC State Legislature granted $5,000 to develop the exhibit.

You can see other NC postcards from the Jamestown Ter-centennial Exposition here.

An advertisement postcard from the Durwood Barbour Collection.