Person County Revisted

Library of Congress Call Number: LC-USF34- 019729-E [P&P]

For as long as I can remember, I have admired an 8 x 10 black and white photograph that my Grandma Irene always had. It shows her sitting on a front porch with my Mom as a baby on her lap and with my two aunts and uncle surrounding her. It was taken in Person County, NC where my grandparents lived on a farm that my grandfather worked as a sharecropper. The photo depicts a lovely slice of time in rural America’s history that sadly cannot be relived.


Well, at the turn of the century, a NC newspaper ran a feature highlighting local moments in history for the prior 100 years. In the section on the 1930’s, there was a photograph of a sharecropper in a tobacco field with two of his children. They were only seen from behind but somehow a distant relative, who is also the family geneaologist, recognized the people in the photograph as my grandfather, aunt and uncle. This relative did a little research and found out that seven other photographs of my family were in the Library of Congress and could be viewed on the Library of Congress website. The photographs were taken by Dorothea Lange. Of course, I immediately went to the Library of Congress website (www.loc.gov) but I was able to find over 50 pictures of my family on the farm they sharecropped in Person County, NC and at the local general store.


It turns out Dorothea Lange was one of a number of photographers hired by the Farm Security Administration during the period from 1935 – 1944. Some of the other photographers include Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, and Marion Post Wolcott. They were charged with documenting the plight of sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and migrant workers after the Great Depression as a way of drumming up support for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. Under the direction of Roy Stryker, the program also expanded to include documentation of daily American Life. Since Marion Post Wolcott joined the project in later years after the new direction was given, her photographs are more varied and, sometimes, whimsical, which I love so check her out.


Anyway, throughout this post, I am sharing some of the photographs of my family that Dorothea Lange took. They are from the Library of Congress website (www.loc.gov). Once you access the site, click on “Prints and Photographs”, then click on “Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black and White Negatives”, then in the search field type “Person County”. Once you have one that looks like any of the photos in this post, you can then click on “Browse Neighboring Items by Call Number” to see more of my family.
 

By the way, the Library of Congress website contains a wealth of information. Besides the documentary photography section mentioned above, I also recommend the following collections: Civil War, Daguerreotypes, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, and Brady-Handy Collection.

Library of Congress Call Number: LC-USF34- 019758-E [P&P]

Library of Congress Call Number: LC-USF34- 019751-E [P&P]

Library of Congress Call Number: LC-USF34- 019706-E [P&P]

Library of Congress Call Number: LC-USF34- 019716-E [P&P]

Library of Congress Call Number: LC-USF34- 019727-E [P&P]

Library of Congress Call Number: LC-USF34- 019740-E [P&P]

Library of Congress Call Number: LC-USF34- 019733-E [P&P]

Library of Congress Call Number: LC-USF34- 019737-E [P&P] LOT 1498

Library of Congress Call Number: LC-USF34- 019784-E [P&P] LOT 1498