Historical Potpourri: Historical nuggets from Federal Writers’ Project

While aimlessly surfing the web I stumbled onto a site for the Library of Congress. The mission of the Library of Congress is to make its resources available and useful to Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge. It offers broad public access to a wide range of historical and cultural documents.

The Library of Congress presents these documents as part of the record of the past. These primary historical documents reflect the attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of different times.

These life histories were compiled and transcribed by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers’ Project for the U.S. Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940. The Library of Congress collection includes 2,900 documents representing the work of over 300 writers from 24 states. They are typically 2,000-15,000 words in length.

The histories describe the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and more, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations. One writer, Edith L. Crawford, caught my attention because Carrizozo is given as her town of residence at the time.

Unfortunately not much biographical information of the Federal writers Project exists.

Crawford’s contribution on narrator Lawrence H. Dow of Carrizozo was especially interesting. He was 61 years of age in 1938 when Crawford conducted the interview. Dow was born in Lincoln, NM in 1877. His father, Eugene W. Dow was born in St. Lawrence, NY. Most of the interview was about his father, Eugene.

Eugene came to New Mexico in 1861 re-enlisting in the army. After his army discharge in Arizona, he made his way to Ft. Stanton in 1868. There, as a civilian, he continued his interest in carpentry.

He and a partner decided to move to Ruidoso River, as Ruidoso was known then, and built a gristmill and a sawmill for Will and Paul Dowlin. Dow and his partner worked at the mill and married two sisters, Isabel and Concepcion Hill of Tularosa. Later they “squatted” on land on Alamogordo Spring, which I assume is later to be known as Alamogordo.

Eugene resided in several places around Otero and Lincoln Counties (Otero County was once part of Lincoln County). He moved back to Lincoln, NM where Lawrence, the narrator of the story was born.

In 1904 Lawrence married Carrie Peppin, daughter of George W. Peppin, who was sheriff after William Brady, who had been killed. The couple had eight children. At the time of Crawford’s story, Lawrence was finishing his fourth term as Lincoln County assessor when the county seat was still in the town of Lincoln.