Longrifles of the Wachovia Tract

C. Michael Briggs is a native and resident of Greensboro, N.C. He is a longtime student of local history and a collector of Piedmont North Carolina decorative arts including North Carolina longrifles and banded powder horns. He has done programs on these subjects for the National Park Service, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts,…

Thursday, April 7 at 6:30 p.m.

"Famous and Infamous Women of North Carolina" Join us for an engaging talk with author, historian, and storyteller Randell Jones. Learn about the fascinating lives of women in North Carolina who dared to live life on their terms. The talk will include special remarks about the subject of our current Women's History Month exhibit, "Lucy…

America 250 Celebration

People have been asking why we have a Christmas Tree in our research room. It is not in fact, a Christmas Tree. It is a Patriot Tree 🇺🇸! Colonel Joseph Winston Chapter of the NSDAR America 250 Patriot Tree The Colonel Joseph Winston Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution…

National Women’s History Month Exhibit

During National Women’s History Month, we celebrate Lucy Bramlette Patterson, whose life of service a century ago to Winston-Salem and North Carolina remains an inspiration for those nonprofit organizations working today to continue making our community a better place for all citizens to live. A graduate of Salem Academy in 1882, she engaged our community…

Sanborn Insurance Maps Now Available Digitally

Our collection of Sanborn Insurance Maps have been digitized and are now accessible on the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center's website. These maps are helpful for researching historic properties and businesses, past street names, and historic neighborhoods, including ones that no longer exist. The maps are digitally available in high resolution with zoom capability. A…

Migration Patterns in African American Genealogy online workshop

Old Salem is offering a new webinar (totally free! but donations are appreciated) about using migration patterns in genealogy research, specifically in African American genealogy research and family history. The online workshop will be led by  Lamar E. DeLoatch, President of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogy Society, Piedmont-Triad Chapter. He is an experienced genealogist with…

Shining Stars

It is the holiday season and I have been busy making Moravian stars for the North Carolina Collection. They are all around us here in Winston-Salem, with one of the largest shining each night from the top of Wake Forest Baptist Hospital. Since I know very little about them, I decided to do a little…

Call for Yearbooks

We know that people have been cleaning out and sorting through lots of memories over the past year. We are looking for yearbooks, more specifically high school yearbooks from Forsyth County and Winston-Salem in particular. If you happen to come across a yearbook from any of the schools listed below - please think about donating…

Hanes Hosiery Basketball Exhibit

Visit the Central Library in June to view our expanded exhibit on the Hanes Hosiery Basketball Team. We have items on display from two Hanes Hosiery basketball and softball players; Maxine "Jimmie" Vaughn Williams and Hazel Starrette Phillips. Included in the exhibit are newspaper articles, photographs, awards, and scrapbooks of the players. The North Carolina…

The S.S. Winston-Salem goes to war…

Winston-Salem Journal, December 28, 1919 On December 27, 1919, Dewitt Chatham, a twenty year old resident of Fourth Street in downtown Winston-Salem raised her arm and said “I dub thee ’The City of Winston-Salem’ and broke a bottle over the bow of a 400 foot, 10,000 ton ship, which then slid down the way into…