Migrant workers to Barrien, Michigan made the best of their lives under difficult living conditions in 1940. These photographs taken by photo/journalists John Vachon reveal what their lives were like. Photographs show migrant agricultural workers, and families from Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas harvesting cherries and strawberries. They lived in miserable housing in company […]
The Great Depression hit Idaho hard. From 1929 to 1932, the income of the average Idahoan dropped nearly fifty percent. Photographer Dorothea Lange visited Gem County’s Squaw Creek Valley, Ola, Idaho in October and November 1939 and took many pictures of the residents. These photographs reveal Idaho’s social history during the Depression and early war years. […]
The picturesque town of Ola, Idaho was an isolated community due to impassable roads much of the winter and this created significant problems for them during the Great Depression. Ola is an unincorporated community in Gem County, Idaho, United States. It is located approximately 30 miles north of Emmett. Carroll Baird homesteaded along Squaw Creek, less than […]
The garment industry is one of the oldest and largest export industries. We often hear of sweatshops and under age workers in other countries, but there was a time in America when sweatshops were common as well as those who worked at home and required their children to assist in the work. The photographs below […]
The Coffren Store in Maryland is a rare example of a well-preserved, mid 19th-century general merchandise store. Small local stores of this type one-room utilitarian structures including a Post Office once commonly dotted the rural landscape of the county. Most have long since disappeared, and the few others remaining have been altered. The Coffren Store […]
Erosion of land was a major problem in Georgia during the 1930’s along with the depression. Marion Post Walcott visited Georgia and documented the economic difficulties residents had with photographs Her photographs provide a glimpse of life in rural Georgia in 1939. The descriptions included with the photographs are hers. Farmer in overalls pointing toward eroded […]
A Night I Can’t Remember by Joyce Ray Wheeler A cyclone is a low pressure area in the atmosphere in which winds spiral inward. All cyclones have two characteristics. The atmosphere pressure is lowest at the center. The winds spiral inward at the center. (Why in the world am I defining cyclones?) There are very few of my Ray family left. My dad was born into a family […]
Christmas on Iwo Jima by Ben White It was early on Saturday AM and a group of people, a Coast Guard Captain and his wife and two children, an Air Force Chaplain and his wife and I and my wife were “Standing by” for a space available flight on an Air Force flight to Iwo […]
Do you know the location? Photographer Jack Allison from the Farm Security Administration took these great photographs on the streets of New York in 1938 VINEGAR OF THE FOUR THIEVES: Recipes & curious tips from the past See best-selling books by Donna R Causey WHERE DO I START? Hints and Tips for Beginning […]
Anecdotes for Connecticut Clockmaker by Francis Donovan This life history was compiled and transcribed by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers’ Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940 Pseudonyms are often substituted for individuals and places named in the narrative texts. December 12, 1938 […]
