{"id":7367,"date":"2014-02-19T16:39:05","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T21:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=7367"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:36:00","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:36:00","slug":"lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=7367","title":{"rendered":"Lives discovered"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"New<\/a>
This tiny mention of a train trip to school was unseen for 131 years until UNC student Thomas Haire found it through Newspapers.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Details from the lives of black artisans in North Carolina, unseen for more than 100 years, are being discovered by UNC students using digital resources recently made available through Ancestry.com subsidiary Newspapers.com and the University library.<\/p>\n

The students are in an American Studies first-year seminar, “The Family and Social Change in America.” On a recent afternoon, the 17 students sat around a rectangular arrangement of tables in the Digital Innovation Lab<\/a>, with a large screen in one corner for everyone to see. Professor Robert Allen in the College of Arts and Sciences quickly turns their attention to the day\u2019s main attraction.<\/p>\n

Historian Catherine W. Bishir is ready to engage the students. Bishir is the author of Crafting Lives (UNC Press, 2013)<\/a> and curator of Architectural Records Special Collections at North Carolina State University Libraries.<\/p>\n

The students have read Bishir\u2019s book, in which she looks at the lives of free and enslaved black artisans in New Bern, N.C., from 1770-1900. Each student was assigned an artisan from Bishir\u2019s book and told to look for more details about that person \u2013 dressmaker, cobbler, cooper, brickmason and others \u2013 who lived in the port city on the Neuse River off Pamilico Sound.<\/p>\n

Students among the first to use new digital tool<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"Annie<\/a>
Annie Proctor and her fellow students in a first-year seminar searched for information about black artisans, using a variety of sources, including 171 years of New Bern, N.C., newspapers that were recently digitized.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In researching the artisans, the students are among the first to use millions of newly digitized and searchable North Carolina newspaper pages. Partnering with the UNC library<\/a>, Newspapers.com is digitizing some 3,000 microfilm reels of pre-1923 newspapers in UNC\u2019s North Carolina Collection<\/a> and publishing them immediately. All UNC faculty, staff and students have access to the digital records on Newspapers.com.<\/p>\n

The process will capture more than two million pages, and is proceeding city by city. New Bern, with 171 years of pre-1923 newspapers, was the first to be finished. When Allen heard about Bishir\u2019s book, he rushed to get it and set up the opportunity for his students to do primary research.<\/p>\n

As class begins, the students introduce themselves and tell a bit about the artisan whom they researched. Allen, the James Logan Godfrey Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Director of the Digital Innovation Lab, opens a Google docs site in which the class has stored and shared their findings, showing an image of each clip on the large screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s going on here and why might we think this is important?\u201d<\/h3>\n
\"Professor<\/a>
Professor Robert Allen (photo by Dan Sears)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During the discussion, Allen posts the snippet about the \u201csix young colored ladies\u201d from an 1882 issue of the New Bern Daily Journal that student Thomas Haire uncovered. Allen asks, \u201cWhat\u2019s going on here and why might we think this is important?\u201d<\/p>\n

The students pose several ideas:<\/p>\n