I am happy to announce that the North Carolina Collection’s new blog–Read North Carolina Novels–has officially gone live! This blog replaces the old Read North Carolina Novels website; it is updated, expanded, and provides more ways to search for the kinds of North Carolina-set books that might interest you. You can search for books by keyword or author, or browse based on genre, county, region, or year of publication. We’ve also categorized books for kids, series books, and novels that have fictional N.C. settings. I’m especially excited that the new site also offers you the opportunity to make comments and suggestions. We will be adding to the blog regularly as the North Carolina Collection acquires new titles, and we welcome suggestions of books to add to our list.

So, whether you are already a fan of fiction set in North Carolina or just looking for your next summer read, you should check it out. To visit, click here, or on the “Read North Carolina Novels” link in the right-hand column.

The North Carolina Collection has a wide variety of ephemeral materials related to the history of UNC, including announcements, programs, bulletins, and posters. While sorting through new items, I found this undated brochure from the old University Placement Service entitled “After Graduation, What?” The imagery of the graduate standing alone and looking back at the Old Well struck me as an accurate portrayal of the bittersweet feelings of many recent-graduates. And then I opened the brochure, saw the scary job-search font on the next page, and knew that I had to share it with others.

The advertised Placement Service—for which students registered at the beginning of their final year—gave various types of career advice, notified students of job vacancies and examinations for which they were qualified, nominated registrants for open positions, arranged interviews, and answered inquiries about specific people from prospective employers. Some of the advice is timeless, but perhaps my favorite tidbit from the Service is the dated reminder, “And, girls, married or not, most of you will work sometime!”

A recent comment on our blog mentioned the “Ballad of Otto Wood.” Well, we don’t have the sound clip up yet (though the Southern Folklife Collection does have several versions of the ballad in their collection), but the NC Collection does have the Life History of Otto Wood: Inmate, North Carolina State Prison, 1926.

Wood, who had been in and out of jails since he was seven years old and was infamous for his numerous (successful) escape attempts, wrote his life history while serving a thirty-year sentence for killing a man in a pawnshop robbery in 1923. He thought that the book would help “some fallen mortal to a higher life.” Well, it may have helped others to a higher life, but it sure didn’t help him. Over the next four years he escaped from Central Prison, was wounded and arrested again during an attempted burglary in Indiana, returned to Central Prison, escaped again, and was finally killed on December 31, 1930, in a shootout with police in Salisbury.

I can’t wait to hear the ballad.

The year 2008 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Andrew Johnson, one of three U.S. presidents whom North Carolina claims as a native son. Born in Raleigh on December 29, 1808, Johnson was bound for several years as an apprentice to a local tailor. He left Raleigh while still a teenager and relocated to Greeneville, Tennessee, where he soon established his own clothing shop.

Many references pertaining to Johnson are preserved in the North Carolina Collection.

Our earliest book about him is the scarce 1865 edition Speeches of Andrew Johnson. Compiled by New York journalist Frank Moore and released in the months after Lincoln’s assassination, this volume contains a selection of Johnson’s speeches spanning the period between August 1848 and the end of April 1865. The book’s introductory section also provides a forty-eight-page biography on the seventeenth president.

I thought I knew something about North Carolina history and geography, and felt pretty confident that I’d already spotted many of the oddities and mysteries lurking in old maps, but then somebody pointed out the Big Desert in Robeson County. It shows up on Samuel Pearce’s 1872 map of the state:

I know that sandy soil is common in eastern North Carolina, but the existence of an actual desert was news to me. I decided to look at later maps, to see if this was just a mistake or misunderstanding on the Pearce map, but sure enough, the desert showed up on one after the other. It was there on a 1884 map of the county, and then again on a 1908 soil survey, labeled simply as “The Desert”:

Soil survey maps are usually very reliable, so I decided to look at a recent satellite image to see if I could find anything roughly that shape near the town of Rennert. Here’s what I turned up using Google Maps:

The shape of that area looks exactly the same as that shown on the 1908 map. But the question remains, what in the world is it? Are there, among the many readers of this blog, any Robeson County residents who can tell us what exactly somebody would find if they went to the “Big Desert” today?

Part of my job with the North Carolina Postcards project is to describe the postcards, including the messages written on them. Today I came across this Durham postcard, and you’ll notice that the message is written in German. Suffering a severe unfamiliarity with the language, I am having trouble transcribing it, and am wondering if any of you folks out there can help!

While a translation would be quite interesting, what we need most is an actual transcription of the message in German.

Any help?

Among the large body of historic material preserved in the North Carolina Collection are thousands of coins and specimens of old paper money, along with hundreds of tokens, medals, and medallions.

This high-relief bronze medallion was produced in 1993 during celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone for “Old East,” the first building constructed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The medallion’s obverse is decorated with two campus landmarks: the Old Well and the Davie Poplar, which is positioned to the left in the background. Both the well and this tree have been popular gathering spots for students and many important events in the school’s history. The old poplar, now heavily patched with cement and supported by wire cables, continues to bloom and shade a portion of McCorkle Place. Standing not far from it is “Davie Poplar, Jr.,” a tree planted in 1918 by students, who grafted a shoot from the senior tree onto a poplar sapling. Concerns for the Davie Poplar’s health prompted that planting. Lightning had seriously damaged the tree in 1873, and a windstorm in 1902 had inflicted additional injuries.

This thick, three-inch-wide medallion is exactly like another one preserved in the North Carolina Collection. That piece traveled over 4,500,000 miles aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in September 1994. Dr. Jerry Linenger, a UNC alumnus and Discovery crew member, took the medallion with him on the ten-day orbital mission (STS-64). In compliance with NASA policy regarding astronauts taking personal belongings aboard the shuttle, the university keepsake had to be vacuum-sealed in plastic to prevent any possible contamination to the space vehicle. The medallion remains preserved today in NASA’s original protective packaging.

We recently found this gem hiding in the stacks, on the back of a 1923 state highway system map of North Carolina:

We had to look up the meaning of “flivvering”, and some of the rhyming is a bit strained, but overall this is a wonderful view into what life was like in the 1920’s, when motoring was new and people were out exploring their country.

Isn’t it nice to know that “Ol’ No’th Ca’lina” was such a great place to visit?

I found this interesting detail of Piedmont North Carolina on a 1778 map of the eastern United States published in Paris:

The French phrase at the center translates to something like “New Garden where the non-conformists meet.” New Garden was a town at the time — the name was later changed to Guilford College and it is now part of greater Greensboro. But the question remains: who were the non-conformists? It’s probably not the Moravians — the area where they settled was farther to the west. So that leaves the Quakers, but, as you can see from the detail shown here, Quaker assemblies were clearly labeled as such. Did the French also refer to the Quakers as non-conformists? Or was there another group there at the time?

April 4, 2008 marks the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of the Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. These images were taken in Burlington, North Carolina at a tribute to Dr. King’s life held just days after Dr. King was killed. They come from the Edward J. McCauley (b.1926–d.2003) Photographic Collection, in the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives. McCauley was a photographer at the Burlington Times–News (newspaper) from 1949 to 1974. The image at the top of this entry appeared in the April 8, 1968 edition of the Times–News accompanying a story about the tribute/march held on April 7, 1968.

According to the article, over 300 people participated in the mile long march from First Baptist Church (on Apple Street) to City Hall, which was led by First Baptist’s Pastor, Dr. Harold J. Cobb. When he spoke to the group assembled at City Hall after the march, he began by saying “This is not a march on City Hall but a march to City Hall to awaken both colored and white and to say there will be no disorder here.” He went on to praise King’s message of equality and non–violence; closing his remarks by stating “We will and shall overcome.”

The Burlington Police monitored the march and blocked traffic to accommodate the large number of people involved. Due to the violence and rioting that erupted in many cities across the country as a result of Dr. King’s assassination, the Burlington Police prepared for the worst, and were relieved by the “orderly and reverent” manner of those involved in the tribute.