The new head of the county library had where it librarian jennifer has put up some pieces to help tell the story of North Carolinas history. Were kind of unique as a special collections because special collections are usually kind of hard to access if u had gone to university or a Historical Society but because we are in a Public Library we are open to everyone. If anyone wants to use our materials, they just come in and we asked them to read over our rules and fill out a registration card and they can use the materials. The North Carolina room is a room in the new hanover Public Library where we focus on materials that have to do with alina. There are books about biology, rivers, geography of North Carolina and our special collections and archives room in North Carolina room is only at the main branch here. We do has small North Carolina and collections at some of the other collections. Some of the ghost stories of wilmington in hanover we do have because people like to read those and they check out a lot. The special materials the more oneofakind thing are only here at this main branch. This question is one that i find interesting. It is part of the zero when barry collection and was donated to us from someone dissented from the family. The particular thing thats interesting as there is a little bit about everything, civil war letters, information about the owen family, governor john o was the governor of North Carolina this is part of his family. This is all really the same thing but there was a gentleman that was enslaved by the family and his name was omar. He was born in africa, around the area where the senegal river is in an area called utah. He was raised in a family that was welloff and he was a scholar, islamic scholar. He taught people in his village . Something happened on what happened but he was sold into slavery. He was brought into the port of charleston and had his slave holder there who treated him quite kindly, this was in his words that he described in his autobiography. After that slaveholder died, he was purchased by another gentleman who did not treat him kindly and he ended up running away and made his way to fayetteville North Carolina where he was caught as a runaway slave and put in jail. There the sheriff realized that he was a literate man because omar wrote on the walls of the jail and arabic. He contacted john on and let him know that they had a gentleman who was an escaped slave and would you be interested in talking to him. Don owen came and decided to take omar home with them. Hes going with the owen family and quickly realized how intelligent of a man he is. They invite other scholars to come and speak with him and arabic and he has conversations with them and they say hes one of the most well spoken gentleman that weve talked to from that area. When we receive the collection we saw that there was actual some of his original writing. This is the journal of the daughter of eliza and wrote in her journal and arabic. There is still some of his writing that exists. This is particularly interesting because he was born around 1770 and so this is probably around 1830 and and the family kept these and pass them along. There are a lot of legends that spread about him. A lot of people thought he was a prince, some people called him prince. He didnt dissuade them from believing in these legends. A lot of people dont realize that wilmington does have a claim to fame with a president. Woodrow wilsons father was a presbyterian minister and he served at the First Presbyterian church here when Woodrow Wilson or tommy, as he was known locally, came here. It was in and around november of 1874 he was at Davidson College and became ill. He was said to have been in ill health. They sent him here to rest and take a little time off. He was here in 1875. Five. While here he had quite a few adventures. From this local newspaper there is a great story here about how its believed that he had the first bicycle in wilmington and that he wrote it into the river. I dont know if thats true or not but that is supposedly what was said. This was the kind of bicycle he would have own. We also have a page where this is from a biography of him and he actually signed it and donated it to the library. We do have his signature. Now for something that is not so happy to talk about in wilmingtons history. In fact, that part of our history the coup detat of 1898 when the newly ected government was overthrown. Our library has had a collection of materials about 1898 for quite a while. They did preserve these photographs so that they would be available and kept safe. What we have here is just a few images that ive pulled from the collection that sort of the images speak for themselves. This image here is a photograph that was taken during the burning of the charity hall. Theres firemen in the crowd burning the building. This is the building the daily record which was the newspaper, the African Newspaper that alex manley edited. This is a photograph of the actual press of the daily record after it was burned. You can see how the burning spurned around it. These are little more chilling. The ones that mark where people were killed. This portrait or photograph is where a white gentleman was killed and theres an x right here if you see an a little description at the bottom that says this is where a white man killed during the coup detat. This photograph here says this is where two africanamerican gentlemen were murdered and there are two axes in this photo as well. I think a North Carolina room like this is very important to the community becae gives easy access to the material and i think that people feel and more and more so assume that you can find everything online. Really, you cant. Especially when youre looking at archival materials, genealogy material, oneofakind materials oneofakind materials. You cannot find those things online. Having this room here all the hours that we are people can drive in and asks a question and we can answer. We get all kinds of different questions and we do our best to find the answers for people
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