Editor Looking for Information on Local Residents Who Have Moved Away, July 20, 1923

Where Are All Who Went Away From Home. . . This Newspaper Will Undertake to Get the Facts For a While of a Story

Wouldn’t it be mighty interesting to recall all of the native men and women of this city and section who have gone away and made places for themselves in other parts of the world: to know the many parts that former Northeastern North Carolina boys and girls are playing in the outside world? It would be a big story, probably the biggest story ever undertaken by a weekly newspaper.

The Independent is going to undertake just that sort of a story. It make take weeks or months to get the facts, but the first step is to get the facts. In the getting of these facts every reader of this newspaper is invited to cooperate, because only thru such cooperation can the facts be obtained.

Elsewhere in this newspaper to-day is a blank. Cut out this blank and fill it in with such information as you have concerning any one of your own kin or friends plainly and, if possible, tell what they are doing now. This newspaper will get the rest.

Don’t depend upon the editor already knowing this one or that. If the editor cold make up a list of all the home folks abroad from his own knowledge, he wouldn’t be bothering you with a blank to fill out.

Other newspapers may have attempted something like this, but the editor of this newspaper never heard of anything like it. Hundreds of boys and girls have left the towns, villages and farms of this and adjoining counties and some of them have never been back. Some of them have made a name and fame for themselves in other parts of the world. Some went away with only the clothes on their backs and have made fortunes. Numbered among them to-day are great manufacturers, great merchants, great business executives, great doctors, great musicians, great preachers, great lawyers, great educators. No one has ever attempted to get them all together and tell the story of their achievements. In many cases their friends of former years have almost lost track of them.

If you think it’s a good scheme to hunt up these Northeastern North Carolinians abroad and tell who they are and what they’re doing, help out by filling in a blank. If you want more blanks, a post card request will bring them.

From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, July 20, 1923