The Eastern North Carolina Digital History Exhibits grew from the efforts of the North Carolina Collection in 1999 to develop web pages displaying primary and secondary source material documenting the rise of the tobacco industry in Pitt County, North Carolina (around 1900). To help capture the socio-economic impact of tobacco on local society, work was begun in January 2000 to transcribe all data from the 1900 Pitt County census into an on-line searchable format.
As the tobacco project work began, interest grew at Joyner Library for expanding this project into digital history exhibits on other aspects of eastern North Carolina history. In the fall of 2000, the library hired a digital project manager to oversee this expanded endeavor. Three exhibits focusing on the 1900 era were identified to begin this work: the ECU Centennial Exhibit, the Steamers Exhibit, and the Pitt County Digital Tobacco History Exhibit. Graduate student assistants and work-study students began the work of digitizing and assembling the digital materials you see today.
ECU will celebrate its Centennial year in 2007. The current ECU Centennial Exhibit includes documentation concerning the controversy on where the school should be located as well as material about the first graduating class. The Steamers Exhibit pertains to steamboat lines serving the Cashie and Roanoke rivers and the Albemarle Sound during the late nineteenth century. The Exhibit's letters, written by the Askew brothers to their father, document the family’s steamer endeavors, including construction of the Bertie, which was based in Windsor, North Carolina.
The September 2001 public launch of the first three exhibits reflects Phase 1 of the work on these three topics. In October 2001, Phase 1 of a fourth exhibit, on John Lawson, was added to the this collection of digital exhibits. The first three exhibits focus on the turn of the twentieth century, while the John Lawson exhibit highlights the beginning of the eighteenth century. John Lawson's legacy in eastern North Carolina is examined via such documents as court records, an account of his dramatic death, and images of hundreds of actual plant specimens collected by Lawson and preserved in England.
More material has been identified for digitization in each of these four initial exhibits. Joyner Library at East Carolina University also looks forward to addressing more topics in new eastern North Carolina digital history exhibits in the coming years.
Digital Editorial BoardVolunteers
Adrienne Boniface
Laszlo Szabo
Mark Pike
Students
Graduate Research Assistants
Heather Cain
Elizabeth Hodges
Bakhodir Ismatov
Matthew Lawrence
Matthew Miller
Noel Mitchell
Rob Thompson
Undergraduate Students
Alexis Davis
Teshanna Dickens
Thomas Doyle
Rachael Durkee
Sarah Fox
Noah Folsom
Kenny Gray
Carletta Hill
Crystal Kuegel
LeAnn McKoy
Moses Mitchener
Kinsey Moore
Phil Shutt
Justin Vaughan
Chi Yiu
Graphics/Collage
Laurie Godwin
North Carolina Collection
Susan Butler
Bryna Coonin
Valerie Garner
Fred Harrison
Barry Munson
Nancy Shires
Maury York
Manuscripts and Rare Books
Jonathan Dembo
Martha Elmore
Susan Midgette
Suellyn Lathrop
Lynette Lundin
Systems
Kim Blanton
Dawn Beckwith
Brian Hall
Rita Khazanie
Michael O'Connor
Ralph Scott
Bob Smith
William Thiesen
Melissa Williams
Barbara Worthington
Digitization Center
Vikram Ahmed
Michael Reece
Diana Williams
Sources for Digitized Material
The staff of the Eastern North Carolina Digital
History Exhibits gratefully
acknowledges the following providers of materials for digitization:
Government Offices
Office of Register of Deeds, Pitt County Courthouse, Greenville,
NC
Provided photocopy of map of Greenville Tobacco Warehouse District, 1913, Map Book 1, p. 35, used in
the Tobacco digital history exhibit.
North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Office of Archives and History
Provided permission to use excerpts from The
Colonial Records of North Carolina in the John Lawson digital
history exhibit.
Individuals
Mr. Stephen E. Bradley, Jr.
Provided permission to use excerpts from his
abstracts of Early Records of North Carolina in the John Lawson digital
history exhibit.
Ms. Betsy Gohdes-Baten
Provided copies of photographs submitted with
the National Register nomination for the Tobacco Warehouse District in
Greenville, NC. These are used in the Tobacco digital history exhibit.
Levis Allen Churchill
Provided 1900 Pitt County transcription creating a census database
that included name, race & family number for each head of household that
we used to start our full census effort.
Marjorie Hudson
Provided permission to use her article "Among the Tuscarora: The Strange and Mysterious Death of John Lawson, Gentleman, Explorer, and Writer," from the North
Carolina Literary Review, in the John Lawson digital history exhibit. In April 2002, she published Searching for Virginia Dare: A Fool’s Errand.
Roger Kammerer
Provided permission to use the rendering of the cupola used in the Eastern North Carolina Digital History Exhibits collage.
E.Thompson Shields
Provided
permission to use his article Paradise Regained Again: The Literary Context of John Lawson’s A New Voyage to Carolina,from the North Carolina Literary Review, in the John
Lawson digital history exhibit.
Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Tucker, Greenville, NC
Provided original photo, used in the ECU Centennial digital history exhibit,of five young students from the opening years at the Eastern Normal.
Libraries and Museums
Joyner Library, Greenville, NC
The bulk of the items were digitized from
holdings in Joyner Library's Manuscripts and Rare Books (including the University
Archives, the East Carolina Manuscript Collection, and the Rare Book
Collection), the North Carolina Collection, and the General Stacks.
http://www.lib.ecu.edu
New York Public Library, New York, NY
Provided permission to use tobacco drawing by
Ms. Nicholas Jose Rapun in the Eastern North Carolina Digital History
Exhibits collage, for which they hold copyright.
http://www.nypl.org/
The Natural History Museum, London, UK
At the request of Joyner Library in 2001, the
Picture Library of The Natural History Museum in London digitized the herbarium
specimens collected by John Lawson to be used in the John Lawson digital
history exhibit. The museum has provided permission for Joyner Library to use
these images for educational purposes including in our Eastern North
Carolina Digital History Exhibits. East Carolina University's College of
Arts and Sciences funded the cost of the initial imaging by the Picture
Library.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/
Newspapers and Periodicals
The Daily Reflector, Greenville, NC
Provided original bound volumes of the 1894 and
1895 Eastern Reflector used in the Tobacco digital history exhibit.
http://www.reflector.com/
North Carolina Literary
Review
Provided permission to use two articles from the 1992 issue of the North Carolina Literary Review in the John Lawson digital history exhibit. More articles on Lawson appear in the September 2002 issue of the North Carolina Literary Review
http://www.ecu.edu/nclr/