From These Roots

The first yearbook ever produced by North Greenville came during the 1912-1913 school year. North Greenville was “North Greenville Baptist Academy” at the time and no college courses had been added yet. The students named their yearbook “The Enlighteneer” and planned to publish it annually. Unfortunately, “The Enlighteneer” ended with only one volume published. We are not sure why there was not another yearbook for seven years, but school finances may have been the issue. The one and only “Enlighteneer” was dedicated to The North Greenville Baptist Association and the editor-in-chief was Mays M. Barnett.

There would not be another yearbook published by the school until 1920 when the first “Moonshiner” was printed. Most of “The Moonshiner” covers included an image of a moonshine still. It is possible “The Moonshiner” ran every year from 1920 until 1937, but we are missing copies of several years. The missing years include 1923, 1928, 1929, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, and 1937. 1931 is the last copy of “The Moonshiner” in our archive. It is likely that the school did not have a yearbook for many of these years due to The Great Depression.

With the addition of college courses came a new name for the yearbook. “The Aurora” first appeared in 1938. When the school became a college, Dr. Lawton, the first academic dean, wanted to name the college “Aurora” after the Aurora Borealis (The Northern Lights) because the school was the northernmost college in the state and its purpose was to shine a light. The school’s name did not change, but Dr. Lawton seems to have influenced the new name of the yearbook. The only missing copies of “The Aurora” are 1942 and 1943. It is possible the school did not produce yearbooks during those years due to World War II.

“The Aurora” stayed the name of the North Greenville yearbook until the school stopped producing yearbooks after the 2013 edition. At that time, students seemed to lose interest in getting a physical yearbook. It was hard to get people to come in to take yearbook pictures and it was even harder to get students to take a copy of the yearbook once it was printed. The NGU Archive saves as much information as possible that was once recorded in yearbooks, but the loss of a school annual is a hit to the historical record.

If you would like to look through decades of North Greenville yearbooks, stop by the circulation desk in the library. We have many of the yearbooks in a locked case just outside of The Miller Bible Museum and our circulation staff would be happy to open it for you.

Do you have any of the yearbooks we are missing from our collection? We would love to fill in our missing gaps by adding them to our collection. If you are not willing to part with one, we would greatly appreciate you letting us scan the pages. You can contact us through Facebook, by e-mailing Joanna Beasley at jbeasley@ngu.edu, or by calling us at 864-977-7093. We will take a North Greenville yearbook from any year. If we do not need it for our collection, we will make it available to alumni who may have lost their copy. If you want a copy of a particular yearbook, contact us to see if we have extras. Yearbooks are available for many years and we accept a donation of any amount for them. The money donated goes to our acquisitions fund so we can purchase new North Greenville memorabilia and documents for our archive.