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Today's program is entitled Baking, Soil Erosion, and Rats, Oh My, How the Records of the Extension Service May Enrich Your Family History Research by Jenny McMillan Sweeney. Ms. Sweeney holds a master's degree in public history with a certificate in archival administration from the University of Texas at Arlington and an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Texas Tech University. While working on her graduate degree, Ms. Sweeney completed her internship at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York as part of the Frank and Peggy Steel Internship for Youth Leadership Program. Prior to coming to the National Archives at Fort Worth, Ms. Sweeney was the education and tour programs manager at the legends of the game, baseball at the Fall Park at Arlington, Texas. Ms. Sweeney began her career at the National Archives in Fort Worth in 2007 as an education specialist. Many of her duties included conducting teacher workshops, presenting public programs and distance learning programs, and assisting educators and students in finding archival materials for research purposes and classroom needs. Ms. Sweeney, along with her two education colleagues, authored the free e-book, Baseball, The National Pastime in the National Archives. I'm now turning our broadcast over to our presenter, Ms. Sweeney. Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today and giving me the opportunity to share with you some of my favorite records at the National Archives, the Records of the Extension Service. Excuse me. You may ask yourself, why would I be interested in looking at the records of the Extension Service to help enrich my family history research? Well, these records really provide us a glimpse into early 20th century life in the United States. And although you aren't going to get the opportunity to find those vital records that genealogists generally seek such as birth, marriage and death records, these records really give you an opportunity to understand what your family member's life was like, what their everyday existence was. We get a real flavor of that by looking at these records. You might learn how men were able to work on the farm, the crops that they grew, the animals that they raised. You may learn about what women did in order to beautify their homes, the meals that they cooked, and maybe even about the clothing that they sewed for their families. And you can also learn about how school-age children may have been involved in 4-H clubs and the different skills that they were able to learn in order to become future successful farmers and homemakers. So some of these records are also going to provide us information about clubs and organizations that our ancestors or family members were a part of. We might also be able to find photographs that you never knew existed before or learn stories about some of your relatives that you had never heard before. So what I'd like to do is start the talk by turning over to the next slide and learning a little bit more about the history of the Extension Service briefly. So prior to the Extension Service becoming the Extension Service that we may be aware of, there were a couple of agencies that did work that eventually rolled into the Extension Service. Between 1888 and 1915, there was the Office of Experiment Stations, and they conducted scientific research in order to find more scientific and effective ways for agricultural practices. There was also the Office of Cooperative Demonstration work and the Office of Farm Management. Both of these were early part of the 20th century. Next slide please. In 1914, the Smith Leader Act was passed and this particular act, next slide please, was what rolled all of these organizations into what we now know as the Extension Service. What it did is it extended outreach programs through land grant universities to educate rural Americans about advances in agricultural practices and technology. And these advances helped increase American agricultural productivity dramatically throughout the 20th century. The Extension Service still is in existence today and it is used to help serve the educational and developmental needs of communities across the United States. They support different clubs, classes, and events to help citizens keep pace with the rapid, modern advances in agricultural techniques and technologies. Next slide please. The records of the Extension Service, the way that they are set up, is that first by year and then each county, or I'm sorry, first by year, then by state, and then broken down by counties. Each county in the United States had an agricultural extension agent who basically, the agricultural extension agent's role was to focus on helping farmers learn about and adopt new scientifically based agricultural practices. And this was generally mostly associated with men. So sometimes it's called the men's agent. And then there was the home demonstration agent, generally, you know, associated with women. And this particular demonstration agent would help rural housewives improve their home economic skills. And then sometimes the counties would have a 4-H agent that would help and be devoted to youth education and activities. Both focusing on agricultural as well as home economic skills. However, most counties did not have three agents. So a lot of times the extension agent and the home demonstration agent would also oversee the 4-H clubs as well. It just depended on how many people they had employed at the time. So each county then did submit an annual report and the content of these reports really vary. It depends on what information the county agents chose to include a lot of the time. Some are more detailed than others. Some include photographs as well as other things that I will highlight throughout the presentation. So if you want to go ahead and move to the next slide, please. These records do provide a rich source of information on rural life. So the records that the National Archives hold are generally between the years of 1909 and 1944. As I mentioned before, the reports are arranged by year and then state. For each year there are reports from the state administrators by subject area and then followed by the reports from each county. These records are available as microfilm at the National Archives in College Park. And there is a handout that also has been added to the new tube for under resources, which includes Claire Kluskin's guide to the agricultural extension annual reports and the related records. The most recent one that she put together was March 2020. And I definitely appreciate Claire graciously allowing us to utilize this for this presentation and to provide information to those viewing. Okay, next slide, please. So I work at the National Archives in Fort Worth and we actually have the original records of the extension service for the state of Arkansas. So today I'm going to really focus on the state of Arkansas and highlight the records that we have, but they are a good indication of what the records will look like in other states and counties. So the way the records are arranged for Arkansas is that they are arranged by date, then county, then each county has a statistical report which might have statistics on certain things such as how many cows the county has, how many farmers are planting soybeans or those kinds of things. So it's very, you know, dry information, just basic statistics. And then you have the narrative report, which is what I'm going to focus on today. And then for the narrative reports, you'll have the men's division, then the women's division, and then also the Negro division. Up until the 1960s, there were segregated extension agencies in the counties so that you would have the, you would have light extension agents serving the white population and African American agents servicing the African American communities. So we'll take a look at several of these. Next slide, please. So examples of things that were included in some of the men's division program narrative reports are information on soils, pastures, farm crops, corn, oats, cotton, soybeans, peanuts, potatoes, horticulture. And you see here some wonderful photographs from some of these reports. You have a young man standing in a corn field. You have a group of men standing eating some, from enormous slices of watermelon. Next slide, please. Also included in the men's information forestry, livestock, poultry, agricultural economics, and engineering. The 4-H clubs, fairs, tours for the future. Next slide, please. Some of the topics that are listed in the women's division are home grounds, better homes, home management, home furnishings, home health sanitation, foods, nutrition, clothing, food preservation, outlook, and recommendations. Okay, next slide, please. So here's an example of a report from Lee County in 1929, Lee County, Arkansas. And you'll see on the left side is the cover page for the report. And you have the name of the county and who the report was submitted by and the dates with which the report covers. The next page includes the table of contents for the report. Next slide, please. So each of these pages lists a little bit of information about different things. It says the status of county extension organizations, forms of organizations, and so on and so forth. Then it goes and it begins speaking of different things. And there's a little paragraph about each one of these different things within the community. Next slide, please. And you can see moving on that there are these different topics such as home furnishings, home poultry, home dairy are included. Next slide, please. So this really, these reports just depended on the agent and how involved they were in writing their particular narrative report. Next slide, please. And as you can see, there is an outlook and recommendation. It's a little sad because I know that this is 1929, right towards the end of the year, right after the stock market crash. And it does talk about the positive outlook that they have for the next few years in this particular county. And it's a little heartbreaking knowing what we know now in hindsight what these people would be facing shortly after this. Next slide, please. So here's an example from the Negro reports were set up the exact same way with a cover sheet, a table of contents, and then the narrative reports. And many of them include wonderful photographs such as these. I love this picture on the bottom right hand corner. You see these women standing there and what they were actually doing in this photograph is they were learning to make mattresses. And you can kind of see the fluff floating out in front of these women when the photograph was taken. So there are a lot of wonderful photographs in these reports. Well, in some of the reports, not all of them. Next slide, please. So one of the things that I think is helpful when looking at the records of the extension service is when you're looking at where your people lived, right? Your ancestors or family members lived. It's really a good thing to have a map of the counties so that you can know what to be looking for. Because again, these records are set up by county. And so it is helpful to see which counties surround the county that they lived in. And even if they lived in a county or a county in a neighboring state, because there still may be information related to the people that you're looking for. Next slide, please. So as I mentioned, I will be focusing on Arkansas. And I'm just going to give some examples of the interesting and fun things that I found. We'll take a look at some of the narrative reports from the men's division first. Here's some information from Wash Taw County in 1929 on a topic of dairy husbandry. And you see this wonderful photograph of this gentleman standing there with his cow. And I love how the little puppy has gotten into the photo there as well. And what I think is really interesting is you can go through and you can read about dairy husbandry in the county and information. And then it says Mr. Slaughter purchased a bull from a register of Merrick Cowell paying $350 for him. And today in 1929 money, $350 would be approximately $5,300 today, which is pretty high price, right? And it says his neighbors all made fun of him for it. And at the time, but they all changed their minds now as he has 10 heifer calves from the bull now and are worth the price that he paid for the bull according to Mr. Slaughter. So, you know, here's a little antidote that was provided in this narrative report about Mr. Slaughter. We know that he bought this bull and it was very, very expensive and all of his neighbors made fun of him. But in the end, he was the one who did the right thing because he was able to get so many young heifers out of that investment. Next slide please. You can kind of learn what different counties were involved in and what they were known for or raised. This particular narrative report from Madison County in 1934, it says a Thanksgiving feast. And it says not every county in the state can produce turkeys with as much success as the poultrymen of Madison County. You can hear the pride that the extension agent is putting into these words because his work would have been a direct effect probably on the poultry being raised in this particular county. Next slide please. Another thing you might learn about is the community itself. This particular report from 1919 in Cleburne County, Arkansas shows a picture of men trying to get this wagon out of the mud. And underneath it, it says the old road. And on the right hand side, there's a picture and it says the new road. And I don't know about you, I kind of feel like the roads might look pretty similar, but regardless, the extension agent felt that it was necessary to put improvement of roads into the report showing what the people of Cleburne County did to improve the road situation in their county under his watch. Next slide please. You might find things such as pamphlets such as this. This is a 1935 yearbook for Union County's home demonstration council. And within the year, you might find things such as those individuals that served as officers for the club, the different people involved in different committees throughout the club. And so this might give you an idea of what some of your relatives or family members may have been involved in or their personal interests, right? Because generally, if you join a club, you're going to want to work in an area of something that interests you. So this might give a little bit of insight into what they did in their free time. Next slide please. Many of the agents also included newspaper clippings, and these are really interesting to look at as well. This is a particular topic of home dairy, and it lets us know that there was a butter exhibit where these women were molded butter, and there were 17 entries of butter for this particular exhibit, and this woman here, Mrs. C. U. Albao, she was a master farmer's wife, and she had molded over 1,500 pounds of butter this particular year, and she won second place in this particular... Next slide please. Another thing that's kind of interesting is, you know, the younger... This is a 4-H club, and what they were involved in was putting together and making clothing out of feed sacks. And so this is... And if you want to go ahead and do the next slide, it's going to show a larger version of this picture. You can see these young ladies and the fashion of the day that they created themselves out of feed sacks, and they were able to create these outfits at a cost from 5 to 67 cents, which is about 76 cents to a little over $10 in today's money, but they were able to create these designs and fashions through the extension service work that they did. Next slide please. This is another example where they would create dresses or they would create clothing out of different things, such as they would take clothing and reupholster furniture and things like that. So these are some of the other reports giving examples of that. Next slide please. You can see that there was a little ottoman of some sort that was covered in fabric from something else. Reduce reuse and cycle. Definitely will be motto of the day then. Next slide please. So one of the ways to get people involved were to have contests. I mentioned the contest of the young ladies creating clothing out of feed sacks. This is an example. This was a pledge for an enrollment card to be involved in the gardening and canning contest. And so the idea was that different women in the community would be enrolled in the contest. They would sign up for it, provide their address, and then provide the home demonstration agent with the number of things that they did that particular year. And this really brought up different, it got people out doing these things. Next slide. So this is that particular gardening and canning contest. And the photograph that you have are the three women of the Prairie View Home Demonstration Club. And the prize for the contest, if you can see sitting there in the woman in the middle's lap, is an 18-quart pressure cooker. And the individual that won this particular contest, that was their prize. And you see the club members there. And you see a few children and babies also sitting with the women there. And you have the women that were involved in the leadership of this club listed as well. So you can find out if your person was involved and had a leadership role in any of these organizations. Next slide, please. Here's a photograph of a woman named Catherine Harris. And she has had a picture with her 360-quart containers of fruit, vegetables, and meats that she had canned over the summer in 1934. She lived in Monroe County. And you can see that everything is very nicely displayed there as she is getting her photograph taken of the work that she had done. And canning these foods in the summer would ensure that these families had access to foods that they would not normally have during the winter months and help with nutrition as well. So next slide, please. So there are always things that you never expect to find in these records, which are kind of fun. These are from a report of Union County in 1934. And it talks about banana trees. There was a woman, Mrs. J. W. Slaughter. She was married to a doctor. And they lived in El Dorado, Arkansas, and they had 25 banana trees. And they were going to be put up for the winter so that they could be out the next year. And used. And I just thought it was really interesting because I don't think of El Dorado, Arkansas where you have bananas growing. But, you know, if you remember, this is going to be, you know, the height of the depression. People do not have a lot of money, and they certainly don't have money to be spending on civilized things. Well, knowing that Mrs. Slaughter is the life of a doctor, it somewhat shows her social standing and her ability to be able to afford something, you know, such as a banana tree. Next slide, please. So Better Homes Week was a program that was put on each year by many of the home demonstration agents for families to highlight their homes. And it was a way to see what other people had done to improve different things in their homes. And also not just their homes, but their gardens as well as the surrounding land. Next slide, please. This photograph where you see this man looking into this little building, it is the entrance to a cellar that was built on this particular, you know, home, at this particular home. And then you see a really nice garden put together. These remind me of the, you know, events that are done today, these tours of homes. We all, you know, we might go to those things, you know, a couple of times, you know, every once in a while to see what people have done, how they've decorated their homes, what improvements they've put into their homes, and maybe, you know, we would like to do that. So this is kind of a lesson about. Next slide, please. And the other thing is, is you don't ever really think about the, what houses look like, or maybe your person's home, you don't always have photographs of those. And sometimes these photographs and these narrative reports have that. These are a picture of a group attending the Better Homes tour, looking at the gardens and this young lady giving a demonstration on what she was doing in her garden on page 13 there. Next slide, please. Here's an example of some of the homes that you can see in this particular report from Madison County in 1934. So kind of an interesting thing. You might have an opportunity to see what, you know, one of your relatives or family members' homes look like if you haven't seen them before. It's a possibility. Next slide, please. So as I mentioned before, there might be information on different civic organizations. This particular report tells us that Mr. Ray L. McLester was the founder of Cleburne County Farmers Union. So you might learn about different things that they were involved in, which may give you an opportunity of other places to search out or seek information about their life and what they were involved in. Next slide, please. Schools. So with information from the 4-H clubs, there's lots of information about schools in these reports, which is really exciting to me. I love this one. It says the best club in Cleburne County is the Wolf Bayou Club, 20 miles from the railroad, way back up in the jungles. Again, I'm not sure that I would think of Arkansas as having jungles, maybe forests, not so much jungles. But, you know, here you have a photograph of the class. If you want to do the next slide, please. It's going to bring up a picture of the class, and you might be able to see your, you know, person you were looking for or seeking out and then some of their, you know, maybe family members or friends or close neighbors. Next slide, please. And you also might see, you know, pictures of the actual schools they attended. Because a lot of these, being one-room school houses, did not have, you know, were wooden buildings and may not be in existence anymore today. This particular report from Pope County, you can see that this agent actually hand wrote their reports. So she does have quite a photographs, but she is handwritten in the information about these schools in Pope County. Next page, or next slide, please. This particular one in Pope County was interesting to me. She does talk about that all the clubs are in fine condition, but she ended up having to let most of the contests go because she broke her arm. So we've now learned a little bit about the agent within Pope County in 1929 that she herself had a setback, right, having broken her arm and still having to maintain working. So maybe she couldn't type. And so she was writing in because her other hand was indisposed having been, you know, maybe in a cast or sling or what have you. Next slide, please. So here are some pictures. I love the fact that she draws little arrows to point people out that she is, you know, highlighting in her captions of these photographs. Next, next slide, please. So, you know, talking about photographs that you may not have or be aware of, this is, I think it's kind of fun. You have this picture on the right hand side at the top where it says W.K. Williams and D.J. Burleson on Magazine Mountain attending the 4-H club camp. They are taking, they are shown taking their morning shave at the spring. So here are these two individuals, you know, in this nice little camp event for this 4-H club and they're shaving in the morning. And more than likely I would assume the families don't have these pictures. So kind of a fun little thing to see about them there. And you would know that they would have been involved in the 4-H club in Pope County. Next slide, please. You have here pictures of this particular 4-H group. They were learning to vaccinate hogs. And so they are seen here with some of the instruments that they would have done used in their vaccination. Next slide, please. Here's a photograph of a young lady and it talked about how they were growing small tomato plots. I don't know about you guys. I thought this was rather a large tomato plot, but maybe that's just because I don't have a lot of land in my yard. I, you know, if I get one, it's just one little tomato plant. Looks to me like even if this is a small one, she's got quite a few there and looks like she's got some nice fruit there on the stalks. So next slide, please. Here's a fun one, Lila Swighart. Here she is with her truckload of watermelons that she was able to grow while in 4-H. And that she had from one acre of watermelons, the total amount she received from the sale was $197.97. And after the expense of producing them, she came back with a net profit of $151.67, which is pretty amazing. So kind of an interesting thing. You actually have, you know, the money that she would have earned from her growing these and selling these watermelons. Next slide, please. Here is Lester King standing in his field of cotton that he grew, shows what he was able to do. And he's standing there with his arms up high saying, look at me, here I am in the middle of the cotton field. Next slide, please. This young lady, Dorothy Bowers, and how much she's standing in her cotton field and what she was able to grow. And how much she, it cost her $5.22 an acre in order to produce this cotton, but I don't have the amount that she was able to make from the cotton. She was 12 years old when she was doing this work. Next slide, please. This was an interesting one. This is a report about a young lady, Maude Alice Williams. She is the one with the number two written there underneath her, and she went to compete in a contest. It doesn't exactly say what the contest was, but the contest was at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. And for whatever it was that she won, she won second prize, and the prize was $10 in gold. So it's a pretty amazing opportunity and prize that she won, which was $10 in gold. From what I've learned from Arkansas, the state contest, the students would go to what was called Farmers Week in Fayetteville at the University of Arkansas and compete each year. However, the African-American students would travel to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to compete each year. And so Maude is obviously doing that here. Next slide, please. You have Edna Breeding here talking about her 4-H club work, what she's done. She's grown some things, and then she's canned some things and won different contests at the state fair, or county fair, excuse me. And if you, I think Edna was quite the overachiever. She did a lot that particular year. And if you go to the next slide, you can see Edna wrote out what she's planning to do for the next year. She's definitely planning to do even more club work and enter contests at Fayetteville, which would have been Farmers Week that following year. Next slide, please. Here you have Woodrow Epperson. He was a champion pig club member. So we learned about him. He bought this pig. It grew, and his plan then was to have piglets raise them and sell them to other club members. So these young students are able to do this work and hopefully gain, you know, vital skills as well as maybe making a little bit of a profit from it. Next slide, please. This is one of my favorite stories that I found. This young lady, Thelma Huston, was listed in her achievements as a club member. She had entered several different contests and won many of them. But one of the main ones she won was Table Setting. And she was very, very proficient apparently in table setting. Because of her table setting skills, she was able to earn housing at the University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff, where she was able to attend the university there, but also receive some of her board paid for. The report goes on to say that after a little while, she was so impressive with her table setting skills that the president of the university decided to have her set his table for when he entertained different guests or VIPs at the university. And so because of that, she then became, she got full board, room and board at the university for her table setting skills, which I just thought was fascinating. You know, people may know that, you know, great grandmother Thelma or great aunt Thelma went to college, you know, during the depression, but they may not have any idea how she got there. Well, we now know that she was an amazing table setter. And all I can think of is doubt nabby when they, you know, measure how far things are, you know, in the intro to what they're doing that Thelma was doing the same thing, measuring out the plate and the cup and the, you know, silverware. So just kind of interesting. Next slide, please. Ruth Williams, this young lady and interesting thing about her you learned that she actually was in a fire at a young age, and seriously burned her face and her hands. And through this, you learn that she was able to go to St. Louis, Missouri and receive treatment because of certain individuals within the community. She was somebody who worked, you know, was involved in the 4-H Club and this particular information was included in the report. Next slide, please. You have these, you know, top people that are honored that are involved in 4-H, this woman, J.B. Williams. Mrs. J.B. Williams, she was the local leader of the 4-H Club in Fairview. This is her niece here, Catherine Williams. Next slide. And then there's a young man as well, and they are highlighted for awards that they received in the 4-H. So not only do you have photographs that are included in the report, but you also have a pretty extensive newspaper clipping that gives information about their involvement and their awards in the 4-H Club. Next slide, please. You can learn about different county extension agents. Obviously, I mentioned the one before that broke her arm. This is information about a man named Still Kennedy, and he was an agent for Cleburne County in 1919. It has a newsletter that he writes. If you go to the next slide, there was a poem that he wrote that he sent out to all of the farmers in his county and different information that he provides to them. So you learn a little bit about the personality and relationships that the agent themselves had with people in the community. Next slide, please. So this brings us to the close of this presentation, but definitely one of my favorite, favorite, favorite things I've ever found at the National Archives. You never know what you're going to find. And some of the stories in the 1928 time period, these here are from Mississippi County, and I'll show a few others from a few other counties. These, it says here, during the spring months, there seemed to be an unusually heavy infestation of rats on nearly every farm in the county. When it came to plant gardens, it was a general complaint that the rats ate up the garden as fast as the plants came out of the ground. Corn in the crib was being destroyed by the rats. Rats were catching all the chickens, and when corn was planted in the fields, rats ate up the corn as fast as it came out of the ground. Fields containing as much as 300 acres were destroyed by rats. One farmer reported that the rats ate up a whole litter of pigs. So this photographs, these photographs are photos of boys and their dogs, and then there's piles of dead rats in front of them. So what happened at this time was a county-wide rat extermination campaign was put on by the Extension Service, the county Chamber of Commerce sometimes, and also the schools. So the goal was to have students in school killing rats to help with this awful rat infestation. Next slide, please. So you can see here's another fabulous photograph of these young girls. They're holding, they're literally holding up dead rats by their tails, which totally gives them the EVGVs. And they've got a dog here, and they're just so excited that they've killed these rats. Next slide, please. You have information here, and what was great is that not only were these students encouraged to kill rats, but there were prizes that were going to be handed out for the killing of rats. And so they were going to give out first, second, third, and fourth place for girls, for boys, and then also for schools. And so different counties had different prizes for this, but you can see here information about, it says here, first individual boys, Herbert Miles of Redline. He killed 2,253 rats, okay? So this is stuff that you can't make up, okay? Who would think that you would have all of this information about these young kids killing rats during this time? Next slide, please. You can see there was all kinds of paraphernalia put out there. Flyers, rats, mice, don't be a slacker. Let's oust the rats, you know? And they're trying to encourage, you know, this rat killing campaign. Next slide, please. This is kind of one of my favorite. It talks about Miller County, Arkansas, and one of the things is it mentions the different prizes that we're going to be giving out. It says schools, first prize, $3 worth of books, second prize, a $45 Victrola, third prize would be $32 worth of playground equipment. For boys, first prize was a $22 Winchester repeating rifle. Second prize was a trip to Farmers Week, you know, that trip to Fayetteville to compete at the University of Arkansas. Third prize was a shotgun. Fourth prize was a single shot 22 rifle. For girls, first prize would be a $25 wristwatch. Second prize was going to be a trip to Farmers Week, apparently a really big deal for Farmers Week. Third prize was a $15 Cedar test, and fourth prize was a $5 Vanity. So these were the prizes that were up, you know, for these young people to win if they could prove to be the county's best writers. And what I loved is you might think, well, how did they know how many rats were killed? Well, it says here in the report, the rats were killed by any method. Their tails cut off and carried to school where the teachers counted them and reported to us each week the totals received. And at the end of this campaign in Miller County, they had a total of 649 students involved in the rat-killing campaign, 50 schools within the county, and at the end they killed a total of 95,849 rats, which just totally grosses me out. But they were successful clearly in the campaign. Next slide, please. And you can, through the reports, find who received the different prizes. You have listed here Aina Vaughn killed 2,135 rats, and she won first prize for girls. This particular school killed 7,574 rats. So you have all these wonderful photographs. You have Ruby Dixon here, who is as cute as a button. But you would have had no idea that she was one of Miller County's most lethal rat killers. And she killed 2,127 rats. So these are stories that probably did not get passed down in the families, I'm guessing. Maybe, maybe not. But these are some of the things that are truly hard to believe that they're in our federal records, but they were there and just too good to be true. So these are just some of the wonderful examples of the types of things that you can find in the extension service records. Again, you're not going to find those certain dates of birth, marriage, and death, but you're really going to get a flavor of how these individuals lived, what their lives were like, what they did on a daily basis, what they did to socialize with friends, families, and friends, family, and neighbors. So if anybody has any questions, I am happy to try to answer them the best I can. Wonderful, Jenny. Oh my goodness. You have so many fans. Thank you for this wonderful, wonderful presentation on behalf of all of the attendees. I'm looking at the chat and we have many folks who have ancestors who are on the farms and they just cannot wait to dig into these agricultural records. Having said that, I do have a few questions that have come to you online in the chat. We'll start with how do you find family members? Specifically, we are looking, if you are looking for family members, what records give good clues besides historical newspapers and the census? As to where they live? She doesn't do that. Okay, so if we don't mind moving to this next slide, I can tell her where these records are available and some upcoming information on them, if that's okay. I'm sorry, next slide please. That's more rats. So these records are microfilms and the microfilm is available in Washington, D.C. There is film for every one of the 50 states as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia and this guide that Claire Kluskens has put together, next slide please. You can see that on the left-hand side you have the microfilm number, then the annual reports, the state, the years that the microfilm covers and the number of roles that there are. And then there's also photographs that are available on microfilm that are listed on this handout as well at College Park, Maryland, Archives 2 and photographs within the original records. The original, most of them are kept in Kansas City. I will say that because the extension service was an agency that received money from federal, state and local, federal, state and county monies, sometimes you will find records available in county or state archives as well. Or even at the Land Grant University for the state. I know that some of the records for the state of Texas are held at Texas A&M University. So these records are available. Now the question that you had mentioned, Andrea, she said census records and newspapers. I'm wondering if she's getting at how to find where they're located. And if so, where to find them in the records, in these particular records? Well, we'll see if she wants to go a little further and we'll come back to that question. Okay, great. Yeah, thank you. In fact, you predicted that next question by telling us that these records are on microfilm. Let's do the next question. Are these records digitized and available online? Okay, so great question. Before doing this presentation, I reached out because I know that a lot of people would want to have access to these. Now there are going to be some local, you know, county, state libraries that may possibly have ordered microfilm from the National Archives and have them available. But if you don't mind going to the next slide, please. And maybe the next one after that. Digitization at the National Archives. The head of digitization. I spoke with her and records from the extension service. The microfilm for these states that are listed on this slide and the next slide are slated to be digitized this spring and available in the National Archives catalog. I don't know exactly when this spring, but they are slated to be digitized and available sometime late this spring. So that gives us, right, that the states listed after Missouri will also be included in the future. So it is very labor intensive to digitize this information, get it described, and then put into the National Archives catalog, but that is what is being worked on. So although you may not be able to find that information now, it is something that in the future we will be working to get done. And these states here hopefully by the end of the spring will be available. Now remember that those are going to be digitized images of microfilms. So they're not going to be as clear as the images I was showing you today because I actually scanned those from original records. So even if you can at least see the microfilm, then maybe you can then see what you actually want to see in original records available in Kansas City. Wonderful. Okay. I'm excited. I'm sure a lot of people who are watching are going to be anxious to see those records online even after scans of microfilm. Yes. It is the top of the hour, but we have several more questions. So we're going to keep going if you don't mind. Sure. And we've got lots of folks watching. This is about the actual agency and its employees. The question is, was the agency and its employees under the Department of Agriculture because of the changes or through the changes and developments to the agency or were they state or county employees? Unfortunately, that is a question I don't know the answer to. I can look into that and see. I believe that I have included my email address as well in the presentation, maybe on the next slide, that if the individual wants to contact me, I can look into that and see. And, you know, agency records are available or if it would be more of a county employment and those records being if still in existence with the county. I apologize. I don't know the answer to that. No, that's fair enough. We respect that. And thank you for offering your email address so we can follow up. I'm going to go back to that researching online. May or may not know this yet. The question is, is there an index or research guide online? Right now, the index, what we have is the one that I have provided. So an index is not going to be available when these are digitized. However, that being said, the National Archives has a, you know, a citizen archivist program. And when these are uploaded, we would love to have people help us in tagging, you know, photos and placing names in the transcription. That would help tremendously with people searching through these records. So if you have it in you to want to help with that task, I'm sure that the National Archives would be more than happy to have you help us in that endeavor. Great plug. Yes. Thank you. Please help us. If you love this topic and you know something about it, you really have something valuable to offer to us. If I could spend my whole life doing that, I would, but unfortunately I can't. This is an interesting comment and then question. Someone wrote, I see some parallels with the Tuskegee Valley Authority records. Well, these are way more expensive. Other than presentations like this, how can we at the National Archives help the public to know more about them? I mean, I, my opinion is, is that outreach is the way to let people know about them. And unfortunately, you know, because of time and a lack of funding and those kinds of things. We're not doing near as much as we did when I first came to the archives, you know, 13 and a half years ago. I mean, I just, you know, plugging it as often as we possibly can writing articles, you know, getting the articles submitted to different magazines is, you know, the way that I can think of that. I mean, I didn't even think about the TVA records. I think that's a very good parallel. You know, it's just us doing it, you know, these things are something that I find very intriguing and interesting. And every chance I have an opportunity to plug them, I do, whether it be, you know, in a situation where I'm in a professional setting or a personal setting. My husband and daughter and I went to Arkansas, you know, a couple years ago, we were in this little bitty town, tiny place, walked in. The place was amazing. It had been there for over 100 years. They had records related to that particular building. And I started thinking, I was like, you know what, so I started telling the guy about these records. And when I got back, I kind of, I looked up that particular county to see if, you know, people's names were in there. And sent him a little email and said, hey, you know, we have this information on this particular building and these people, you know, that had owned that building previously. If you're interested, let me know. And, you know, I'll see what I can do to, you know, get fans to you. Sadly, he didn't reach back out. But, you know, you can only do so much. Thank you for that sort of complicated question. And it goes way beyond and above what you're doing and trying to help folks. So a little easier question maybe if there's a National Archives employee who might also know the answer to this. The question is, when was Farmer Week State or Tuskegee Week? Do you know that? What, like when during the year was it? Yeah, they're saying when, when was Farmer Week? Off the top of my head, I don't know when it was. And they may not have been at the same time. You know, I'm assuming it was put on through the state and the land grant college that was involved, you know, in it, at least for Arkansas, the University of Arkansas. And when they planned it, it could have been very different then than it is now. Or even if they still have it now. I know that in, you know, Texas, we have the, like the Texas State Fair where still young individuals compete, right? With their livestock and those kinds of things. But I don't, I don't know when it was. Does anybody else? We'll monitor chat and see if anybody else chimes in. I have a couple more questions that I think are more generic and so we're going to ask for future folks watching. This question is, how do you find an individual agent's records? Well, again, I don't know about the individual agents because I'm not sure if they were. Again, this was an agency that didn't receive money from federal, state and county. So I'm not sure if the individuals were county employees, state employees or federal employees. So that is something that I'm going to look a little further into and you're welcome to email me. And I will be happy to let you know what information I am able to find out about that, you know, for the future. Okay, thank you. And it could have been different also in different places. You know, it may not have been the same in Arkansas as it was in Idaho. I don't know. Right, right. Well, yeah, they're not federal records and we won't have that. Next question is, do you, do we have records for every state? Yes. There is microfilm for every state as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Now, how much of those records are available? I don't know. Each of them is going to be different. They have different, you know, numbers of roles of microfilms. So they're it, but there is stuff for every state. There are reports for every state. Great. That's great news. The last thing I'm going to say is actually more of a comment. It's kind of interesting to see if you found anything about cats. The comment is, I was wondering why barn cats weren't featured in the rats campaign. Cats, not rats, was a common saying. So I have, in all of the different counties that I've found rats stuff in for Arkansas, I have not seen anything about cats. So I don't know why they wouldn't have. That's a very good question. You would think that they would have wanted to do that. I don't know. No cats. I will say I had a friend that worked at an archives in Texas and she knew about the rats and she just sent me an email one day and was like, I found rats in our records. And they were records from Texarkana, which borders obviously Texas and Arkansas. And they found, you know, information about the rat killing campaigns in Bowie County, which is the county that Texarkana is in on the Texas side. So that was kind of fun to see, but I have not seen anything about cats. That is interesting. Well, I'm going to end with that last comment about cats and rats. Thank you so much, Jenny. If we did not get to your question or you have one later, again, please submit it to Jenny at Jenny.sweeney at narra.gov. Please know that the presentation video recording, the slides and the handout will remain available on this YouTube webpage. Finally, we value your opinion. So please take a minute to complete a short evaluation. Find the link under Show More. On behalf of the National Archives, thank you so much for joining us. Again, thank you, Jenny.