WPA (Work Projects Administration)

During the Great Depression and because of high unemployment, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the New Deal to create jobs and get the economy going again. WPA was part of the New Deal and employed millions of people to construct public buildings, roads, and infrastructure. What is surprising is that the WPA also produced a goldmine of records for genealogists.

Part of the WPA was the Historical Records Survey created to preserve the history of the United States. The Historical Records Survey employed millions of people to index census records, naturalization records, passenger lists, church records, newspapers, birth, death and marriage records, and courthouse records. People were also hired to record oral histories of slaves and pioneers, family histories, country histories, and the list goes on and on.

The workers went into archives, historical societies, universities and compiled inventories. They went into courthouses, town halls, vital statistics, and inventoried records. Not only did they compile indexes they also transcribed many of the documents they found. Some of the information they gathered could easily become lost to age and neglect.

One of the projects in Morrison County, Minnesota (morrisoncountyhistory.org) was to collect oral histories from long-time residents, histories on townships, cities, churches, schools, etc. Projects like this were conducted throughout the United States and varied by locality. The locations of records, vary by state and locality too, making them more of a challenge to locate.

The Library of Congress and the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City have enormous collections of WPA records. When searching for these records, whether at the Library of Congress or the FamilySearch catalog or even the state or local archives you will get better results if you use the keyword search terms. Search terms such as WPA, Work Projects Administration, Work Progress Administration, and (Name of state or county) + Work Projects Administration or Work Progress Administration.

Even the social history found in these projects can help you understand your ancestors more. My neighbor was fortunate to locate an oral history of an ancestor that has led her to more information about an elusive ancestor, a treasure for her. Be aware that oral histories vary in length and quality. The transcribers wrote in the dialect of the interviewees without the use of tape records. Also, the histories may have exaggerations and selective memories. The information available is well worth the search.