Rural Life In 1870s Oregon

The postcard above shows a man and wife with part of their herd in southern Oregon in the 1870s.

During the Great Depression, the Federal government started the Federal Writers' Project. It was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was part of President Roosevelt's New Deal program. The Federal Writers' Project was a government project to fund written works and to support writers during the Great Depression. It was one of a group of New Deal programs that funded the arts. The Federal Writers' Project fell under Federal Project Number One. That program was set-up to help employ artists, musicians, actors, writers.

The Federal Writers' Project was authorized to employ writers, but was not limited to writers, editors, historians, researchers, and art critics. They also employed archaeologists, geologists, and cartographers. In total, more than 6,000 American writers of some capacity were employed by the Federal Writers' Project. One notable writer who was employed by that government program was John Steinbeck who later wrote The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row.

In each state, The Federal Writers' Project organized a staff of editors and researchers. The editors were usually more educated than the researchers. The larger part of the staff was the researchers. All of the researchers, the field-workers, were unemployed locals. Many of them had not even completed high school. It should be noted that most of those working for the Federal Writers' Project were fairly young and from working-class backgrounds.

The goal of the Federal Writers' Project, as was all of the WPA/New Deal programs, was to get Americans working. In the case of the Federal Writers' Project, they were very successful at chronicling the lives of Americans. 

One American whose live was chronicled is Miss Nettie Spencer. She grew up in rural Oregon in the 1870s. Resolved herself to never marry and became a grade school teacher. She enjoyed traveling, which included a trip to India. 

The excerpt below is part of her interview that was conducted by a Federal researcher in 1938. It is published in American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940, Subject: Rural Life in the 1870s. It is what she recalled of growing up as a young women in rural America in the 1870s.

Please note that I have printed the excerpt without editing it at all. Her interview took place in her kitchen which the interviewer said she used as a living room. It started during the afternoon of December 14th, 1938. It resumed the next morning, and ended hours later that same day. 

The interviewer noted that her house was a "large old, somewhat shabby building of the last century." He went on to describe her kitchen as " the kitchen, which serves as her living room most of the time, is stacked with clippings that have interested her, as well as books, pictures, and documents, and all of the twine, wrapping paper, etc, that a single women of her years can collect." 

During her interview, she said that her parents got married in 1859 and that she was born soon after that. But, not surprising, she refused to give the exact date of her birth or who old she was. Imagine that. 

Here is what she told the interviewer in 1938:   

". . . All of our shoes were made by a man who came around every so often and took our foot measurements with broomstraws, which he broke off and tagged for the foot length of each member of the family. The width didn't make any difference and you could wear either shoe on either foot; for a long time, too, for the shoes wore well. Mother carded her own wool and washed it with soap she made herself. She even made her own lye from wood ashes, and when she got the cloth finished she made her own dye. Black was made from burnt logs and brown from the bulls of black walnuts. I think she got her green from copper, and peach leaves made the yellow. The red dye was made from leaves she bought. The dresses were very full and lasted entirely too long. . . . One of the things I remember most as a little girl were the bundle peddlers who came around. They had bundles made up and you bought them as they were for a set price. I remember that some sold for as high as $150. In these bundles more all sorts of wonderful things that you didn't get in the country very often; fancy shawls and printed goods; silks and such other luxuries. It was a great day when the family bought a bundle.

Our food was pretty plain most of the time and we didn't have any salads like they do now. The menu for a fine dinner would be: Chicken stew with dumplings, mashed potatoes, peach preserves, biscuits, and hominy. We raised carrots for the stock but we never thought of eating them. . . . We didn't have any jars to put up preserves in, like they do now, but we used earthen crooks instead. The fruit to be preserved was boiled with brown sugar -- we never saw white sugar and when we did we used it as candy -- and then put in the jars which were covered with cloth that was then coated with beeswax. Another good cover was a hog bladder -- they were the best. Sometimes we had molasses pulls and once in a great while we would have some real striped, candy. That was a treat[!?]

Most of our medicine was homemade too . . . There wasn't much social life on the farm and I didn't pay any attention to it until I was older and moved into Salem and Corvallis. The churches didn't have any young peoples . . . organizations and they were dead serious with everything. Sermons lasted for hours and you could [smell?] the hell fire in them. We never had church suppers or the like until way past my time. The only social thing about the church was the camp meetings. That was where most of the courting was done. When a boy would get old enough for a wife the father would let him use the horse and buggy for a trip to the camp meeting to get him a wife. . . .

Most of these people came to church on foot over the muddy roads. The ones who came by wagon used a hay-rack, and mother and father sat in a chair at the front while the children were churned about in the straw strewn in the wagon bed. . . .

After a long service "meeting" was out, and neighbors had a grand hand-shaking party, and then families often invited other families to dinner. This crude church, located where Alfred Station now is on the Southern Pacific Railway, a few miles north of Harrisburg, which then was a small village, was the only public gathering place, except perhaps on the Fourth of July, when families went on mass, with shiny new shoes to Corvallis, to "the Celebration". . . .

The games played were: ante over, crack the whip, base, hide and seek, tag, ring around the rosie. . . .

The big event of the year was the Fourth of July. Everyone in the countryside got together on that day for the only time in the year. The new babies were shown off, and the new brides who would be exhibiting babies next year. Everyone would load their wagons with all the food they could haul and come to town early in the morning. On our first big Fourth at Corvallis mother made two hundred gooseberry pies. You can see what an event it was. There would be floats in the morning and the one that got the [girls?] eye was the Goddess of Liberty. She was supposed to be the most wholesome and prettiest girl in the countryside [md] if she wasn't she had friends who thought she was. But the rest of us weren't always in agreement on that. She rode on a hay-rack and wore a white gown. Sometimes the driver wore an Uncle Sam hat and striped pants. All along the sides of the hay-rack were little girls who represented the states of the union. The smallest was always Rhode Island. . . .

Just before lunch - and we'd always hold lunch up for an hour - some Senator or lawyer would speak. These speeches always had one pattern. First the speaker would challenge England to a fight and [berate?] the King and say that he was a skunk. This was known as twisting the lion's tail. Then the next theme was that any one could find freedom and liberty on our shores. The speaker would invite those who were heavy laden in other lands to come to us and find peace. The speeches were pretty fiery and by that time the men who drank got into fights and called each other Englishmen. In the afternoon we had what we called the 'plug uglies' [md] funny floats sad clowns who took off on the political subjects of the day. There would be some music and then the families would start gathering together to go home. There were cows waiting to be milked and the stock to be fed and so there was no night life. The Fourth was the day of the year that really counted then. Christmas wasn't much; a Church tree or something, but no one twisted the lion's tail. . . ."

-- end of excerpt. 

Sadly for the Federal Writers' Project, some of it's writer's politics got in its way. Sources indicate that some of them were active in Left-wing politics. There were even those suspected of being Communist and Socialist. At the time, that was a real taboo, and it didn't sit well with some who were questioning the political goals, if any, of the Federal Writers' Project. 

Their works were supposed to be non-bias and free of politics, but some of there works were not. Because of that fact, a lot of their works became suspect and soon much of it was strongly opposed in state legislators as well as the United States Congress. As a result, during most of its time, the Federal Writers' Project was hit with constant criticism. 

In particular, a great deal of harsh criticism came from Congress and their House Un-American Activities Committee. Since the program depended on Congress for its funding, it was not a surprise when Congress cut off all funding for the Federal Writers' Project in 1939. In 1940, when its funding completely ran out, some states attempted to sponsor the program but that didn't last and it ultimately died off completely in 1943.

Common sense tells us that rural Americans in the 19th century were more self-sufficient than we are today. The reason that I say it's common sense is that most of us realize that the folks back then simply did not have the goods, services, and modern conveniences that we have today. Even by the independent self-reliant standards of today's rural America, folks like myself and others who live here in rural areas are hardly as self-sustaining as they were back in the day. In many way, that's simply because it was a simpler life. Harder, but simpler. 

Tom Correa