Author: Matthew M. Peek, Military Collection Archivist
With the centennial of the United States’ and North Carolina’s official entrance into World War I beginning in April 2017, the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR) World War Centennial Committee will be kicking-off a wide-scale digital program to commemorate the centennial of North Carolina’s role in World War I. The state’s official four-year-long Centennial Commemoration of World War I began on August 2, 2014. Now, DNCR is expanding its commemorations in keeping with similar efforts across the country, with a focus on highlighting North Carolina’s contributions to the war effort.
DNCR and its various divisions will be supporting the state’s commemoration efforts through public programs, free museum exhibits, a traveling exhibit, a WWI blog, the publication of a new book on North Carolina during the war, increased online access to historic war records, and other special events and programs.
From now through 2018, DNCR’S WWI centennial website will host a calendar of North Carolina WWI events at various DNCR sites, announce special publications and programs, and provide free educational resources for the public. We encourage you to check back to the webpage for new content or updates, or sign up for our World War I email list to get the latest information on our WWI centennial plans and subscribe to our WWI blog. The state of North Carolina has created a new hashtag, #NCWW1, through which the public can follow all WWI-related posts on all DNCR social media platforms—such as the North Carolina Museum of History’s Facebook page and the State Archives of North Carolina’s Twitter account.
DNCR historians, curators, and archivists will be sharing unique stories, artifacts, and historic records every week on the DNCR “North Carolina in WWI” blog. Profiles of North Carolina service members, Army nurses, home front supporters, and state officials involved in the war will be featured. Original WWI artifacts from the North Carolina Museum of History’s new exhibit North Carolina and World War I and the museum’s holdings will be discussed in feature posts by DNCR historians. The blog will also feature historical commentaries and explanations of original documents, letters, photographs, posters, and other archival materials held in the WWI Papers of the Military Collection at the State Archives of North Carolina, to go along with scans of these materials.
The North Carolina Museum of History will be presenting the WWI-themed video series 585 Days if You're Lucky. The Museum of History has produced 29 short films that portray the experiences of Tar Heel doughboys, nurses, and family members during the Great World. Available free of charge to educators, students, and the general public, this compilation of videos, 585 Days if You're Lucky can be viewed sequentially or individually (online registration is required). Film lengths vary from 2 to 11 minutes; cumulative run time for all films is 100 minutes.
The videos share firsthand stories of life, death, suffering and hope in the trenches, hospitals, and homes of those troubled times. Scripts are based on the book, Memories of World War I: North Carolina Doughboys on the Western Front by R. Jackson Marshall III (deputy director of the North Carolina Museum of History), as well as a selection of other letters, diaries, and oral histories. The films are generally organized in chronological order, from before U.S. involvement in 1915 to postscripts in 1919 and 1945. Each contains actual war footage from the U.S. Signal Corps.
The State Library of North Carolina is adding new entries to its state online encyclopedia NCPedia on World War I-related topics, including biographies of U.S. service individuals, women on the home front, businesses involved in wartime production, and other similar topics. The entries will feature original archival materials--including letters, photographs, and other materials--and links and citations to North Carolina WWI content in state and federal institutions. With a mission to highlight North Carolina's unique resources, people, and culture in order to enrich, educate and inform, the State Library will be working throughout the WWI centennial to provide interesting content on North Carolina's multi-faceted role in the war effort.
The State Archives of North Carolina is involved in a number of projects to increase online access to its WWI holdings, particularly those in its WWI Papers. Beginning February 2017, the State Archives began a two-year-long World War I Social Media Project, an effort to bring original WWI archival materials to the public through DNCR’s various social media platforms, in order to increase access to the items during the WWI centennial celebration. Through June 2019, the State Archives will be posting blog articles, Facebook posts and Twitter posts featuring WWI archival materials, which will be posted on the exact 100th anniversary of their creation during the war. Read quotes from a soldier’s diary 100 years after it was written, or see a WWI photograph of the home front taken on the exact day a century later. These social media posts can be followed on the State Archives Facebook and Twitter with the state’s hashtag #NCWW1. The posts will also be featured through the NC WWI Centennial Commemoration Facebook page, which includes North Carolina's commemoration of the centennial of World War I with special publications, programs and educational resources listed on the Facebook page.
The State Archives is also operating a WWI digitization project from March 2017 through 2019 of unique, interesting, or information sets of archival materials in its holdings. Items collected during and after WWI will be featured, including many that the public has not seen or that have been difficult for those spread around North Carolina to locate. Items include letters from soldiers and nurses, rosters of North Carolina units, local American Red Cross chapter histories, photographs, local draft board records and draft registration posters, and other items. All of these materials can be explored online in the digital WWI collection of the North Carolina Digital Collections, a joint effort of the State Archives of North Carolina and the State Library of North Carolina.
The North Carolina WWI Service Cards are now available online for free through the joint efforts of FamilySearch and the State Archives of North Carolina. These cards were originally prepared after World War I by the U.S. War Department for use by the North Carolina Adjutant General’s office. The WWI Service Cards report on men and women who claimed residency in North Carolina and who served in official military capacities—including nurses, medics, and chaplains—during World War I. The cards include such information as name, military service number, home town, age or birth date, place and date of induction, units in which served, ranks held, dates of overseas service, and date of discharge from active military service. Name and town or county of residency can be searched in the FamilySearch database for the cards.
However, the WWI service cards can be difficult to interpret, as numerous individuals were involved in creating the cards, and several different formats of both cards and information were used by the War Department. Also, the cards were created as two separate sets based on division of military branches. The State Archives has created an interpretation guide for the cards, along with a 13-page list of abbreviations used on the cards with their meanings.
We hope you enjoy and will benefit from DNCR’s WWI centennial efforts, and will come to a new understanding of North Carolina’s role in the “war to end all wars.”