From 27 October through 31 October 2010, the 44th Annual Meeting of the Oral History Association met in Atlanta, Georgia. Read an account of the conference in “Annual Oral Historian Brain Swap - Whew, What a Conference!” on the Kentucky Historical Society’s blog “History Burgoo.”
During the conference, a video trailer for Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story was shown. This documentary, produced by the Smithsonian and co-produced by David A. Taylor, who also wrote the companion book Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America (Wiley & Sons, 2009), recounts the activities of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers Project. The documentary has been aired on the Smithsonian Channel and is now available on DVD. For more information, see the official webpage or the author’s discussion of his book on BookTV.
The Federal Writers Project and other groups under the Works Progress Administration produced several resources no genealogist should do without. Many writers, under the auspices of this project, indexed and abstracted records, and transcribed tombstones in historic cemeteries. Below are just a few of the books created by the Works Progress Administration in various states, from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Library’s online catalog:
- A Brief History of the Towne of Sudbury in Massachusetts, Together with the Programme of Exercises Enacted in Commemoration of Its Three Hundred Anniversary, 1639-1939, compiled and written by members of the Federal Writers' Project, Works Progress Administration in Massachusetts
- Berkeley County, West Virginia Marriages, by Works Progress Administration of West Virginia
- Delaware: A Guide to the First State, compiled and written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of Delaware
- Dinwiddie County, the Countrey [sic] of the Apamatica, compiled by the Workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Virginia
- Grant County, West Virginia Births, Marriages, Deaths, Wills, Inventories and Church Records, copied by Works Progress Administration of West Virginia, Historic Marker Project
- Index to birth record Washington County, 1882-1920, compiled by Indiana Works Progress Administration
Many of these published works are held in large genealogical libraries, such as the Library of Congress, the Allen County Public Library, and the DAR Library, and some are also held in the libraries of state and local archives, historical societies, and genealogical societies around the country.
Another very important, yet lesser known, project of the Works Progress Administration was the Historical Church Survey, part of the Historical Records Survey program. WPA members visited historic churches around the country and completed survey forms that included information as to previous buildings, the date of construction of the current building, the first settled clergyman, and what records were extant at the time of this visit, ca. 1936. Specifically, the survey addressed minute books, register books of baptisms, confirmations, marriages, members, and deaths, record books of Sunday Schools, financial records, unpublished and published historical sketches, and other records. Often transcribed historical sketches or hand-drawn outlines of the church buildings accompany these survey forms.
The Historical Church Survey forms are held by various repositories around the country, including state archives, historical society libraries, and university libraries.
One of the most important resources created by the Federal Writers’ Project, specifically relevant to African-American genealogists, are the slave narratives. Recorded between 1936 and 1938, FWP writers located and interviewed surviving former slaves from around the country. These narratives detailed the lives of enslaved African-Americans before, during, and after the Civil War. Digital images of all of the narratives are now available for viewing on the Library of Congress website, which also includes photographs of several hundred of the interviewees, and even a few audio recordings of some of the former slaves.
View the slave narratives at the Library of Congress’s Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938, website.
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