Category: Research Resources

170,000 Photos of American Life During the Great Depression and World War II

During the Great Depression and World War II, the United States Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information hired photographers to document American life. The documentarians, working between 1935 and 1944, captured 170,000 pictures. This included many in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

It is described as one of the most famous documentary photography collections of the twentieth century, “creating visual evidence of government initiatives alongside scenes of everyday life during the Great Depression and World War II across the United States.”

Once the program ended, The Library of Congress became the custodian of this work. They were placed in public file cabinets where researchers could browse the prints, searching for visual clues of earlier times. In March 2011, Yale University received a grant to create an interactive web-based open soured visualization platform for these images. The free online platform, Photogrammar, allows a rapid search of the large photographic data set. Easy to use, it includes an interactive map, which facilitates locating images of interest.

If you are interested in the images of the photographers who documented America during the Great Depression and World War II check out this free resource https://photogrammar.org/maps

great depression era photo of church dorechester county md
“Dorchester County, Maryland. The congregation of this church are all waterman.”
Jack Collier, Feb. 1942. U.S. Farm Administration
homes of dorchester county great depression era photo
DORCHESTER COUNTY — “Dorchester County, Maryland. Home of an Eastern shore waterman.” Jack Collier, Feb. 1942. The U.S. Farm Administration

Wilmington Newspaper, The Sunday Star, Available on Google Archive

After Google launched an ambitious project in 2008 to digitize many local newspapers, the giant e-content provider scanned about 2,000 publications, including a Wilmington newspaper, the Sunday Morning Star.

Wilmington Sunday Star newspaper
The whole wide world in your home. Delaware’s only Sunday Newspaper.

 In the era when many dailies didn’t have Sunday editions, these periodicals functioned like newsweeklies, the broadsheet having a form distinct from the weekday news. They pulled together features and more in-depth, colorful pieces as reporters worked seven days to assemble stories for the Saturday afternoon deadline. It was this sought-after, far more leisurely reading on peaceful Sundays that made these publications unique.

Delaware’s only Sunday newspaper was first issued in 1881 by Jerome B. Bell. The second editor and publisher was Joseph H. Martin, who sold it to J. Edwin Carter in 1946. An agent for Alexis I. du Pont Bayard and Erwin M. Budner purchased the paper in 1949, and they became the controlling interest. 

The broadsheets contained robust women’s sections, news in photographs (once technology advanced), advice for modern living, entertainment coverage, history pieces, and “The Delaware Magazine,” a weekly insert.     

The last number of the 73-year-old paper rumbled off the press on April 18, 1954. It had revised its name and added new typefaces almost two years earlier to serve readers and advertisers better. But “The Star that had been such an important feature of Delaware Life since 1881 was out,” Morning News Columnist Bill Frank wrote. It is tough “to run a Sunday newspaper in Wilmington against the competition from out-of-town Sunday papers and their abundance of pages of comics.”

The Star – A Valuable Research Source

Bill Frank called the Wilmington Sunday Star a “fighting newspaper.” Often overlooked, it is a valuable source for genealogists and local history researchers. The coverage and perspective differ from what was covered in the city’s dailies.

Here are the links to the Sunday Morning Star on the Google archives, which provides free access.

Sunday Morning Star — 1881-1950

Wilmington Sunday Star — 1953-1954

Wilmington Newspaper, the Star
The Star, Wilmington, DE — “Can Wilmington keep its rum?”

Finding Old New Jersey Map

An old new jersey map from 1819 -- Harriet E. Baker's Book of Penmanship & Maps
Harriet E. Baker’s 1819 Map of New Jersey (Harriet E. Baker’s Book of Penmanship & Maps produced at Mr. Dunham Schools in Windsor, Vermont on March 31, 1819. David Rumsey Map Collection)

Thanks to the World Wide Web, public digitization initiatives, and the growth of social media, researchers and curious types have almost unlimited, convenient access to an enormous array of rare historical maps. As these old cartographic renderings, many seldom used or seen, come out of storage vaults and are made available virtually, they allow a vast audience to enjoy, learn, and become more engaged with the past.

The amount of excellent material we have on-demand continues to amaze me. This is thanks to forward-looking heritage organizations and individuals who leverage these 21st-century tools to share materials that wouldn’t be widely seen or used. 

There are many substantial, searchable collections online, the holding institutions providing free open access to the public. In line with this, I consulted the David Rumsey Map Collection for some New Jersey Maps, as I am doing fieldwork there. 

Old New Jersey Map in Book of Penmanship

While searching for detailed New Jersey county maps, I found several helpful items. But one attractive 1819 illustration of the Garden State caught my attention. It came from Harriet E. Baker’s Book of Penmanship & Maps, produced at Mr. Dunham’s School in Windsor, Vermont, on March 31, 1819. Harriet’s book contains some exquisite illustrations, including this old New Jersey Map.

After pausing to examine it, I located several more helpful old New Jersey Maps on the David Rumsey Map Collection site. The curator of rare materials started digitizing his 150,000 maps in 1996 — now, over 116,000 items are online. The curators add new material regularly.  

More Old New Jersey Maps

As for those New Jersey County maps, here is one example. It is the Smith & Wistar 1849 map of Salem and Gloucester counties, available on the Library of Congress website. Users may download high-quality scans of this detailed map.

An old New Jersey Map, the 1849 Salem & Gloucester counties map.
A Map of the counties of Salem and Gloucester, New Jersey, by Smith & Wistar, Philadelphia (1849) (Library of Congress)

For more high-quality maps, here’s a link to a section of my webpage that I use as a resource finder. This page provides links to digital repositories which have richly organized, mostly free information. 

Maryland Archives Adds Marriage Indexes for Cecil & Dorchester counties

The Maryland State Archives is gradually introducing new online records. And on 6/22/2002, the Archives announced that partial scans of the male and female marriage indexes for Cecil County are available online. The male index covers 1928-1977, while the female index is 1928-1935. Access is free.

For Dorchester, the Archives added the Dorchester County marriage records for 1865-1886

Here’s the link for the Dorchester County Marriage Records.

Dorchester County Marriage index
A page from the Dorchester County Marriage Record Book (Source: Maryland State Archives)