Introduction

The Great Depression impacted the areas of Virginia’s Lost Appalachian Trail in ways similar to most in the 1930s.  Sheltered, to a degree, from the crushing blows of widespread unemployment seen in larger urban areas, rural communities still suffered mightily from the effects of the economic catastrophe.  Those from larger, diversified farms stood a better chance of navigating a world of want.

  There is no debate that rural communities suffered from the Depression.  Markets for agricultural goods dried up in nearby cities and those in search of anything better than the bleak future of depressed cities made trips back home to families in rural communities like Floyd, Hillsville, and Galax.

In the oral history accounts below, the pain of the Great Depression is clearly expressed.  The opulence of the United States in the 21st century is a far cry from what is remembered by those interviewed.

This module challenges students to read the accounts of those who lived through the Depression.  They should pay attention to those points that are reiterated by the interviewees and common themes on which they focused.  How are the recollections of these rural residents both similar and different from the larger view of the Great Depression that they have learned in class?  Why do these women feel that their families safely navigated the Depression? How do you think their experiences during the Great Depression impacted the rest of their lives? 

Virginia Standards of Learning:

VUS.1 The student will demonstrate skills for historical thinking, geographical analysis, economic decision making, and responsible citizenship by

1. a)   synthesizing evidence from artifacts and primary and secondary sources to obtain information about events in Virginia and United States history;
   e)   comparing and contrasting historical, cultural, economic, and political perspectives in Virginia and United States history;
   f)   explaining how indirect cause-and-effect relationships impact people, places, and events in Virginia and United States history;
   j)   investigating and researching to develop products orally and in writing.

VUS.10  The student will apply social science skills to understand key events during the 1920s and 1930s by

1. b)   assessing and explaining the economic causes and consequences of the stock market crash of 1929;
   c)   explaining the causes of the Great Depression and its impact on the American people; 

 

Objective: 
Students will analyze the effects of the Great Depression on a personal level by reading primary source accounts.

Students will write a letter from the perspective of someone living in rural Virginia during the Depression and address specific hardships of the time.

Collection of Sources (interviews located below the writing prompts)

• Dorothy Shifflet Interview  (1/29/19)
• Sally Dixon Rakes Interview (5/2/19)
• Proposal of the Blue Ridge Parkway

 

Teaching Strategies

1. Individual, paired, or guided reading of both interviews.  Students will hold their thoughts by writing what they perceive to be challenges of the time period.

 

1. Talk students through the individual hardships of the Depression with their broader understanding of the time period and their previous learning using a T-Chart and class participation.

 

1. Group discussion of the hardships faced by the interviewees and lead discussion comparing the challenges of life in the 1930s to today.  Also lead discussion of New Deal policies intended to help Americans get back to work and focus on the Blue Ridge Parkway construction in Southwest Virginia link.

 

1. Using maps of the area, show students where these women lived in relation to the rest of Virgina.

 

1. Assist students in their independent writing from another perspective assessing their understanding of the hardship that existed during the Great Depression.

 

Lesson Plan

 

Distribute copies (electronically or on paper) of Dorothy Shifflet’s interview about life in Floyd County, Virginia.  Individually, or in pairs, students will read and write about three challenges that people in Floyd experienced.

Examples:  

• She blames her parents separation on the economic strain of the Depression
• Both of her parents leaving the area for work opportunities
• People passing through her grandparents’ farm seeking a place to stay
• Enough food for people to eat “in town”
• People only had “relationships.”  Implying material wealth was nonexistent. 

 

Discuss what students share in a group format.  Begin a conversation concerning whether the statement Mrs. Shifflet gives supports or contradicts students’ understanding of the Great Depression.  Create a T chart on the board, and with the help of student recorders, identify those ideas that support or contradict and why.

 

Post or distribute paper copies of the interviews of Mrs. Shifflet and Rakes.  Students will read in pairs looking for items that stand out as real challenges for these women.  They should be prepared to point out differences that they see compared to how they live today. Compare and contrast their accounts and look for common themes.  Students will report their findings which can be written on the board.

 

After discussing with students the difficulties these women faced, lead a conversation about how these stories are representative of the whole time period.  

 

Direct students to the link for the proposed route of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The construction of the scenic road gives a glimpse at work projects created to stimulate the economy during the New Deal by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress.  Discuss how this route could serve as a boon for the local economy.

 

Having discussed the interviews and Blue Ridge Parkway, students will then write a letter from the perspective of a teenager living in the region of Virginia’s Lost AT.  If students need to be familiarized with the area, use the maps below to help them locate communities like Floyd, Galax, and Hillsville in Virginia.
Virginia’s Lost Appalachian Trail:  http://appalachiantrailhistory.org/items/show/1110

Southwestern Virginia:  http://appalachiantrailhistory.org/items/show/915

Writing Prompt and/or Warm-up Activity

Warm-Up Activity:  Based on your understanding of the Great Depression, what was life like for people living in cities during the time period?  What challenges did they face? What types of challenges would people in rural communities have faced during the Great Depression?

 

Assignment:  Students will write a one page letter from the perspective of a teenager living in rural Virginia about the hardships people faced during the Great Depression to someone living in a city.  Their letter should include challenges addressing but not limited to the following ideas:

• Food for meals
• The strain of additional friends, family, or strangers in need
• Money to purchase necessary goods (clothes, etc)
• Ways to help your family survive
• Any forms of entertainment 

 

Students should draw from the interviews as well as their understanding of the Depression on a broader level.

Interviews:

Interview with Dorothy Shifflet, (age 101), Tuesday, January 29, 2019 by Mills Kelly

 

Dorothy Cole Shifflet was born in Stafford County, Virginia in 1918. Her family, originally from Floyd County, returned to Floyd the following year. Her memories of growing up in Floyd and the surrounding county were very strong when she was interviewed in the winter of 2019. Her father, Shirley L. Cole, was the first County Agent for Floyd County, and was the principal proponent of bringing the Appalachian Trail to the region. He helped scout much of the original route of the trail in 1929-1930, and met regularly with the chairman of the Appalachian Trail Conference, Myron Avery, when Avery came to the region to work on the trail.

 

Part of the interview with Dorothy Shifflet was concerned with her memories of growing up in Floyd County during the Great Depression.

 

 

Interviewer: What was it like in town when you were young?

 

Dorothy Shifflet: In town, my main memories are of the Depression. Lots of people had nothing. 

 

Daddy was on the road a lot, making speeches, organizing things. He was always helping people with their animals. They called him “Doc.” When the phone would ring at night, people would call and ask for “Doc.” They called him that. He would drive off to help.

 

I would address letters for him at his office. He had a huge, big typewriter in his office. He would write lots of letters and I would address them, and then he would pay me 10 cents.

 

I know that I liked him an awful lot. I know there were some people who didn’t approve of him.

 

Interviewer: Why didn’t they approve of him?

 

Dorothy Shifflet: It was become of the separation. My parents were separated. 

 

Interviewer: Why do you think they got separated?

 

Dorothy Shifflet: It was the Depression. More than anything else. She went off to Richmond and took a beauty course. She never did anything with it, but then she stayed there looking for work. He went to Florida for work there. After they left, my sister and I had to go live with my grandparents at their farm up on Coles Knob.That land was a grant to my great, great grandfather from the revolutionary war. I didn’t see my father again until the 1950s when he came back to visit. He was still living in Florida then.

 

People were coming to the door at the farm all the time wanting to spend the night or to ask for food. The bottom just fell out of everything. People didn’t even have anything to eat so they hoped we could help. We went to my aunt’s for the summers, then we came back to grandma’s for the school year. I went to the Check School.

 

Things were worse for people out in the county than they were in town. But my grandparents had a pretty good-sized farm. So it didn’t affect them as much. We always had food at least. 

 

There used to be an old log cabin there back in the woods. Some people just lived there. They were old and we just visited them sometimes and took’m stuff. They just raised potatoes, sweet potato plants that they sold. They were very happy. It was just one room with a huge fireplace where they did all their cooking. It was wallpapered with pages from the Sears Roebuck catalog. 

 

One man and his daughter used to come to Floyd to visit. They lived in New York but were from Floyd. They jumped out of a window up there. It was terrible.

 

Everything changed during the Depression. Nobody had anything but relationships. My cousin and I would work in the summers. We had a bean patch and took them to market up in Roanoke. Then somebody started up tomatoes. They would can them and store them in the barn and then sell them at the market in Roanoke. We picked cherries and berries and took them to the market too. 

 

They say that in Floyd County a lot of people live a long time. There’s something in the air. My cousin I lived with is also 101. 

 

Interview with Sally Dixon Rakes, May 2, 2019 by Mills Kelly

 

Sally Dixon Rakes, age 79, grew up on the New River in Carroll County. Her father and grandfather operated Dixon’s Ferry, bringing local residents back and forth across the river where the Dixon’s Ferry Bridge stands today, just north of Fries. Until recently, the Dixon family had been living on on the river since 1838 on land that had been given to their ancestor Alexander Dixon as a grant. Hikers on the Appalachian Trail cross the New River using the Dixon family’s ferry. If they came from the east, hikers simply went to the family’s door, knocked, and asked for a ride across the river for five cents. If they came from the west, hikers had to shout across the river, which is quite wide at that point, until someone hear them and poled across to get them.

 

Sally’s memories of life on the river are very clear and she still remembers a few Appalachian Trail hikers who came to her parents’ house during their hike through the region.

 

__________________________

 

Interviewer: What was it like growing up on the river?

 

Sally Rakes: It was nice. It was fun. I enjoyed it. We at a lot of fish, squirrels. That’s what normal people did. We had floods sometimes. Daddy told me that once a Pentecostal church washed away and floated right by the house. That might have been in 1940 when the big flood happened.

 

My great grandfather built the ferry. He had a blacksmith shop out back. He used to “put people across.” That’s what we called it. They would holler from across the river and someone would go get them. That was quite a holler. Yes, but it carried pretty well there. We could hear them. Daddy or sometimes Momma would go and get them.

 

Interviewer: Where did you go for shopping and things like that?

 

Sally Rakes: We went to Galax. Fries was closer, but it was on the other side. So we went to Galax. Harvey Dixon used to go to Fries sometimes to sell vegetables.

 

I remember white markings for the trail along the railroad tracks on the other side of the river. We used to walk down the tracks sometimes and would see them there. I also remember seeing them on rocks on the Fries Road. A big old rock that came out to the edge of the road had a white mark on it. I knew it was for the trail. That rock is gone now. The took it away when they widened the road years ago. Maybe the 1960s. It was just before the convenience store. York Hill Road.

 

I still remember one hiker [Gene Espy]. He sent us a Christmas card. He had a beard and a walking stick. When Daddy brought him over, he sat and talked with us a while. I was seven or eight then. Sometimes the hikers would sit and talk with us for a while. I remember thinking they were probably hiking the trail.

 

Interviewer: How did your family come to be on the river?

 

Sally Rakes: Back in 1835 my great great grandfather got a land grant. Alexander Dixon. He got 3200 acres. I wonder what it was like then. Probably all trees. But he built a home there on the river. His son built the blacksmith shop. He made some moonshine too.

 

I went to elementary school at Iron Ridge. There was a gossan mine there [really, an iron mine]. It was a four-room school and had a bathroom inside. We were proud of that. Most of the schools around here were just 1 or 2 room schools, but we had 4. Everyone shopped at the company store.

 

My mother-in-law started working at the mill in Fries at age 14, but then they passed a law saying you had to be 16 to work, so they laid her off. She came from Pulaski to work in the mill. Then they hired her back to her job as soon as she turned 16.

 

I only worked for six months at the mill, then I went to work at PH Haynes. They make clothing, underwear, etc. Every garment was inspected in those days. Not like it is now. They had a strict dress code. No t-shirts. No shorts. 

 

A husband and his wife couldn’t both work together at the plant, so I had to quit when I got married. After that I was a stay at home mom.

 

Next thing you know, all the work went south of the border. The clothes they made there had holes in them. They weren’t good. People here had to sew them back up again. It was a mistake. He retired in 1997. 

 

Interviewer: What was it like growing up on the river?

 

Sally Rakes: We were just river rats. There were six of us. My mother had six children in six years. I was the oldest girl.

 

Interviewer: Tell me about the boats.

 

Sally Rakes: It would just skim across the top of the water. There were sloped gunnels. It was 30’ long and only a few inches high. Lower at the ends. It wasn’t very wide at all. It was painted red. We called it Red Bird. 

 

I’ve seen my daddy put eight square bales of hay in that boat. All 8 of us could fit in it. We would go across the river to Fries. Sometimes Daddy would pole us all at once. Every spring he put a fresh coat of tar on it.

 

Interviewer: Did the river ever freeze.

Sally Rakes: Oh yes. One year it froze so much that Daddy drove a jeep across. It scared us to watch that. When the ice would push up on shore, sometimes it would push fish out with it and we’d just walk along and pick them up.