We started the Rocky Mount Mills Digital Archive as a way to gather together some of the thousands of archived items from the mill’s two hundred year history. We started with digitized items from three main repositories: the Rocky Mount Mills Photo Archive and the Rocky Mount Mills Awards, 1970s-1990s, both hosted by the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Charles S. Killebrew Photographic Collection, 1948-2001, hosted by the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Since these first items went up, we’ve continued to add more items to our online collections. There are photographs, newspaper articles, letters, posters, and other items housed in collections throughout North Carolina. Some are in formal archives–like the Rocky Mount Mills Records and the Charles Killebrew Photographic Collection at UNC, or the many collections at Braswell Memorial Library in Rocky Mount. Other collections are in family homes and attics and haven’t been seen by the public in many years.
Working with both institutions and individuals, we will continue to bring many of these collections together online, where they are easily accessible. Our recent history harvest was the first step in helping build a collection from the community of Rocky Mount. Once complete, the digital archive will resemble one we created relating to the Loray Mill in Gastonia, North Carolina. You can see that c at our Digital Loray project site. As with Loray, the Rocky Mount Mills Archive will be the basis for other online exhibits and visualizations. How would you like to interact with these items? What kinds of exhibits would you like to see? Comment and let us know!
If you have items related to Rocky Mount Mills that you would like to see as part of our digital collection, contact us.
