Oral Stories

This is a collection of oral stories from various sources.

Many were collected by WPA workers. The WPA (Works Progress Administration) was one of the many programs/projects designed in 1935 as a relief measure to provide work for the unemployed caused by the Great Depression.

One of the projects was the Federal Writers’ Project which provided jobs for historians, teachers, writers, librarians, and other white-collar workers. These people interviewed, collected, compiled and transcribed histories of an informants’s family, education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations.

The Arizona State Archives in Phoenix, Arizona has film copy for Arizona Writers Project manuscripts. The interviews of persons from Cochise county were Copied from microfilm by Wilola Follett and transcribed by Vynette Sage. The WPA interviewers in Cochise County were Edward J. Kelley, Helen M. Smith and Romelia Gomez. The interviews took place between 1938-1939.

*See letter of explanation from Helen Smith.