Are you a member of Facebook? If so, you may be interested in joining two new Facebook communities to expand your genealogy networking online.
1) The Wake County Genealogical Society now has a Facebook page – you can find it here.
2) FamilySearch, the genealogy organization of the Church of Latter Day Saints, has established a Facebook community for genealogy research across the state. You can find that community here, and an icon has now been placed on this site’s sidebar for quick access.
Newly added to the Internet Archive are at least a couple editions of “Annual report of the Raleigh township graded schools, Raleigh, North Carolina.” At the time of this writing, there are two editions – one from the 1915-1916 school year, and the other from the 1916-1917 school year.
These books are helpful for understanding the educational environment in the county back then. Some of the information provided includes:
the names of administrators and teachers for each school (both White and African-American schools)
budget data for each school
list of graduates for that year
reports from the superintendent, and other system officials
pictures of some of the schools
teacher requirements
course curriculum of the students by grade
textbooks used for each grade
Richard H. Lewis High School
Want to get a picture of what school was like back then? These are great resources for doing so! Links have been added to the Education page.
The NC State Library’s Family Record Collection now includes a new type of record – cemetery photos!
Ellen Mordecai (1790-1884)
The above photo is included in their collection of photos from Historic Oakwood Cemetery. Links to their photos have been added to the Cemeteries page on this site.
I don’t live anywhere near Wake County, but I try and do what I can to help provide access to information about the area. Last weekend while shopping at a local used bookstore, I found a copy of James Vickers’ Raleigh, City of Oaks: an Illustrated History, originally published in 1982 by the Wake County Historical Society. Since I can always stand to learn more history of the area, I snapped it up for only $5!
The book is slightly under 200 pages and as the title indicates has many pictures. The history of the county is covered from the area’s beginnings to 1982. It is organized as follows:
Chapter I – An Eventful Birth: to 1792
Chapter II – A Planned City: 1792-1820
Chapter III – The City of Oaks Grows: 1829-1850
Chapter IV – Yankees Come and Go: 1850-1880
Chapter V – Capital Improvements: 1880-1905
Chapter VI – From Prosperity to Depression: 1905-1940
New on the Military page is a list of Wake County men who died during the Korean Conflict in the 1950s. The list comes from an online database of the National Archives & Record Administration. The link is at http://www.ncgenweb.us/wake/military/korean-conflict.
Many researchers are familiar with the seminal work by Carrie Broughton to collect deaths reported in Raleigh newspapers. A former State Librarian of North Carolina, she compiled a massive set of marriage and deaths from the papers that span 1799-1893. Ms. Broughton was a Raleigh native, so no doubt these records were near and dear to her heart.
Currently, the full-text PDF files are available in the Digital Collections website of the NC State Library at http://goo.gl/FsJlh. These are a fabulous resource! The files are also searchable online with a paid subscription to Ancestry.com.
However, as I started working with them I realized I wanted to be able to do more. As PDF files, there is not a way to obtain an organized list of people associated with any one particular county. In genealogy and family history research, locality is paramount. So.. I began to enter material into a database to create a free, searchable resource. This database is now part of the NCGenWeb and is called NC People in the Papers. While the site is designed to accommodate news articles in general, the bulk of it are records from Broughton’s work. Currently, I’m working on adding the DEATHS from her books, not the marriages. Other records come from a few misc. resources.
With that said – follow this link to find A LIST OF DEATHS OF PEOPLE FROM WAKE COUNTY. Deaths from 1799-1815 had been added so far. A link to it has also been added to the Deaths/Obits page on this site.
The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center continues to be busy adding yearbooks to their online collections. Recently, they’ve started adding old yearbooks for Peace College, formerly, Peace Institute – an all girls school that opened in 1872.
front panel from the 1910 Peace Institute yearbook, The Lotus
Available yearbooks online currently include 1902-1912. More may be added in the future so keep an eye out.
Senior students from these years are also included in the NC Yearbook Index (with the exception of 1905 due to a technical problem). To see the list, click here.
In reviewing these yearbooks, I was particularly struck by the 1909 yearbook where the yearbook editors added pictures of themselves when they were babies & toddlers – what a great find for potential descendants!
Recently, while browsing a photo collection from the Library of Congress, I came across the following photo two photos of Raeford Bryant Whitley, a businessman of Wendell; and one of the founders of the town.
What was funny about this was that this same day I’d been looking at the yearbook photo of his son Phillip Ray Whitley. Phillip graduated from the University of North Carolina @ Chapel Hill in 1929.
Yearbook photos are a great way to capture details of your ancestors. I’ve been going through a number of the North Carolina yearbooks that have been added to the Internet Archive and sometimes I am particularly struck by a photo.
This weekend, while going through the yearbooks for Meredith College , I noticed that there were three girls, all from Halifax County, by the name of Kitchin. I was struck by the photo of one in particular before I even looked at the name – that of Musette Kitchin. Then, in the next couple of volumes for the college I found two more Kitchin girls. I wondered who they were?
In the process of researching them to reconstruct the tree and see how they were related, I learned that Hesta & Pauline’s mother is related to one of my family’s slaveowners – Kemp Plummer Battle (former president of UNC-Chapel Hill). Their mother Kate Mills Kitchin is a great- granddaughter of Catherine Ann Battle Wesley who was a sister to Kemp’s father, William Horn Battle. These types of connections are interesting to come across.
Yearbooks can help add great detail to your family tree. I wonder if Pauline’s family knows about her garnering the superlative for “Most Poised” ? You’ll find these yearbooks linked from the Education page.
The State Library recently added this 1888 map of Raleigh to one of their Crossroads to Capital online collection. I’ve added a link to it from the Maps page on this site.
In this excerpt of the map you can see the Governor’s Mansion on Burke Square.
excerpt from 1888 map or Raleigh
The mansion, built in 1814, still stands there. Learn more about the Executive Mansion by visiting their website.
