THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 29, 1996 TAG: 9601290094
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
Pack rats take notice: some of those yellowing newspapers in the attic are historic treasures for the state Department of Cultural Resources.
Old newspapers offer a snapshot of pop culture. Give Jeannie Kunttz an old newspaper and she can tell you what people were arguing about when the paper was published. What they were wearing. What they were eating. Even what they were naming their children.
``In history books, you get the bare bones of what life was like,'' said Kunttz, an amateur genealogist and history teacher from Stanly County. ``In newspapers, you get flesh and blood.''
But newspapers age quickly, yellowing and wrinkling until the print begins to fade or the pages fall apart. A splash of coffee and it's gone.
For the past three years, researchers with the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources have been trying to preserve old newspapers before age - and coffee-spilling readers - can get to them.
Once the N.C. Newspaper Project is completed, probably by 1997, copies of 2,114 newspapers published in the Tar Heel State will be available on microfilm at the state archives.
Some of the papers - The Charlotte Observer, the old Charlotte News and smaller papers like The Salisbury Post and The Concord Tribune - already are available on microfilm. But many others, including The Gaston Progress and The Blue Ridge Blade, have never been microfilmed.
``Our main purpose is to preserve a piece of North Carolina history by finding older and smaller papers and microfilming them,'' researcher Chris Mulder told The Charlotte Observer. ``But this is also creating a public resource, a tool for researchers, historians, genealogists, maybe would-be novelists, and people who are just simply interested in the past.''
Researchers began the project by compiling a list of newspapers they knew about that have never been microfilmed, publications like the Highlander and News, a Kings Mountain paper from the 1920s; The Hypodermic, a Lenoir paper from the mid-20th century; and the Temperance Herald and Prohibition Banner, two Concord papers from the 1880s.
Now they're searching for the papers themselves, borrowing wrinkled copies of long-lost publications and searching for hidden historical gems in libraries, newspaper offices and historical societies. They're also asking collectors and ordinary, everyday pack rats to check their attics for old papers.
``Every paper they find adds something to the collected history of the state,'' said Robert Anthony, curator of the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill's Louis Round Wilson Library. ``Without a community's newspapers, you can't really understand its complete history.''
Researchers will be in Gaston and Lincoln counties next week. In February, they'll visit Cleveland County and Stanly County, and in April they'll stop in Iredell County.
``We've had people bring in copies that had marriage announcements, obituaries, birth notices, big news stories they were saving,'' Mulder said. ``But there have been people who just keep huge collections.''
People also have brought publications that scholars didn't know about, papers such as The Locomotive, which was published a few times in the 1850s to publicize New Bern's new railroad. ``You never know what you're going to find,'' Mulder said. ``It's a constant education.''
Researchers fear many newspapers from the late 1700s and early 1800s are gone for good because of deterioration.
The best place to keep old papers is somewhere cool and dry - like the broken-down freezer one Yadkin County woman uses to hold her collection. Damp, hot rooms are the worst place for newspapers. Well, almost the worst.
An editor at one small newspaper office in eastern North Carolina led researchers into an attic where the paper stored its collection of past editions. The researchers were excited about their find - until they reached the bundle of old papers.
Rats had been there first.
``They'd just shredded a whole bundle to make nests,'' Mulder said. ``Besides the ink stains, the animals and insects are definitely the toughest part of this job. MEMO: If you have old newspapers you'd like to lend (they will be microfilmed
and returned to you), call the N.C. Newspaper Project at 919-733-4488.
by CNB