5 collections related to 4-H clubs -- North Carolina -- History

The North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, County Operations Records contain administrative records of the County Operations office, as well as records from individual county offices. The county offices represented are Alamance, Dare, Hertford, McDowell, Pamlico, Rutherford, and Person. The Alamance County Records contain photographs, publications, and yearbooks from the North Carolina Home Demonstration Club and the Alamance Extension Homemakers Club. The Dare County records contain photos, yearbooks, meeting minutes, publications, files, newsletters, slides, and negatives. The amjority of the materials are related to summer camps and the extension homemakers association. The Pamlico County records comprises reports filed by county extension agents, including a record of county agent work from 1922-1935. The McDowell County records contain scrapbooks, photographs, publications, slides, and meeting minutes. The Hertford County records include a history of extension work in the county, reports, photographs, publications, and scrapbooks. The Rutherford County records include photographs of extension events, slides, and a narrative history. The Person County records contain slides featuring presentations and photographs. The materials in the Other Counties series represent all one hundred counties in North Carolina, and include farm census summaries, histories of extension work, agents lists, and publications. In November of 1907 North Carolina appointed its first white county agent, James A. Butler, for the purpose of educating farmers on productive farming techniques. The North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station, located at A & M College, hired Neil Alexander Bailey as its first African American agricultural extension agent on November 1, 1910. As a result of the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, land-grant universities were authorized to begin cooperative extension work with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Smith-Lever Act made provisions for the use of County Extension agents to educate farmers, provide help in farming, and help with 4-H Clubs and Home Demonstration agents to provide help in running a farm household and provide health information. County and Home Demonstration agents work in cooperation with North Carolina State University and North Carolina A and T. Less

These records detail the programs and activities of the 4-H Youth Development program in North Carolina from 1912 to 2012. The files contain correspondence and memoranda, programs and brochures, reports, member lists, financial information, clippings, news releases, photographs, and writings and speeches. The records have been arranged to provide easily accessible information relating to 4-H camps, county club organizations, the 4-H Honor Club, and the state and national 4-H meetings. In 1909, North Carolina State College signed a memorandum of agreement with the United States Department of Agriculture to cooperatively develop Farmers' Boys' Clubs, or Corn Clubs. The first such club was formed in 1909, and the first for girls in 1911. In 1926, these now-extensive clubs were merged under a single banner, to become the state 4-H program. By the 1950s, North Carolina 4-H was one of the largest such programs in the nation. Less

These records contain historical overviews and administrative papers belonging to the Office of the Assistant Director of the North Carolina State Cooperative Extension Service. Included in the collection are correspondence, workplans, annual statements of objectives, and other material related to home demonstration work, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), rural development, farm education programs, 4-H, and the North Carolina State Fair. Although extension and demonstration work in North Carolina had been active since the early years of the twentieth century, the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service was only officially created in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act. In 1991 the name was changed to the current one, the Cooperative Extension Service. Less

News clippings, radio talks, articles, correspondence, field reports, and photographs relating to Robert Walter Graeber's thirty-two years spent in service of the North Carolina Agricultural Extension program. As head of the Forestry Extension, he influenced the founding of the North Carolina State College (later North Carolina State University) Forestry Department in 1929. Of major interest in this collection are Graeber's weekly field reports on several counties in North Carolina. These reports reflect Graeber's daily activities from 1926 to 1939. Other reports meticulously document plots of timber within several counties over the same period. Age, growth, volume, number, and price of standing trees represent the data gathered. R. W. (Robert Walter) Graeber was a pioneer of North Carolina’s forestry extension service and a leader of the North Carolina Forestry Association for several decades. A graduate of North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (which later became North Carolina State University), Graeber was appointed farm forestry specialist (or state extension forester) in 1925, specializing in the thinning and management of timberlands. He served in this role until his retirement in 1950. As the state extension forester he led hundreds of forestry demonstrations across North Carolina for farmers and sawmill operators. Graeber instructed them in the harvesting, timber scaling, planting and marketing of trees and lumber products. For those that Graber could not teach in person, he wrote extension circulars and numerous newspaper articles that were circulated nationwide. Graeber also was instrumental in establishing the Department of Forestry at North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering (later North Carolina State University) in 1929. Less