Genealogy and Local History Blog

Tagged: WPA

Local History

The New Deal Comes to Grapevine: History of the School the WPA Built

In a past blog we looked at back-to-work initiatives generated during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Most of the funding of Grapevine’s New Deal projects became available through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). These included a canning factory, a sewing room, a new grammar school building, a renovated high school, a new homemaking education building, and the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) Office. The Public Works Administration (PWA) provided funds for a water project. The canning factory story is covered in the August 2024 edition of the Grapevine Historical Society newsletter On The Vine (”Yes, We Canned!”), so be sure to check it out. Today’s blog will discuss the history of the Grapevine school the WPA helped to build. Grapevine had just incorporated in 1907. In 1908 the town first voted a bond issue of $12,000 and a fifteen-cent maintenance tax for a two-story red brick...

Genealogy / Local History

Genealogy and The Great Depression

(Credit: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16629774) Oh, say, don’t you remember, they called me AlIt was Al all the timeSay, don’t you remember, I’m your palBuddy, can you spare a dime? Source: LyricFind – Songwriters: E. Y. Harburg / Jay Gorney – Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? lyrics © Songtrust Ave, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC US government responses to the Great Depression of the 1930s generated some unique resources for genealogists and family historians. Today we’re going to look into some genealogically valuable records generated as a result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and see how they can be used to enhance family history research. We need to look for these records for two main reasons. First, the Depression was an all-encompassing event that changed family narratives. Second, how relatives responded to or weathered such a crisis formed an essential aspect of family history....