CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS (CCC's) RESOURCES

Click on the label CCC's or Civilian Conservation Corps to bring up other informative posts on this subject from the past here at Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

***

Three million young men, from families in poverty due to the Great Depression, joined the CCC;s from 1933 to 1942. Some of these men also then enlisted to serve in World War II. 

Here are links to good resources to start your exploration.

The National Archives of the United States. I know that the search in their expansive catalogue is intimidating and difficult for most people but they did recently announced it had been reworked. My suggestion is that you open an account with them and then use the Ask the Archivist opportunity to get to where you want to be with these records.  

NARA archives - RESEARCH GUIDE CCC's

National Archives U.S.A Catalogue - CCC's

The next link is to a blog and website that someone put up on the internet years ago that was a true labor of love. I want to honor that person for all the information they have provided to us.  It features so much information including state by state guides that is useful. Topics such as soil conservation and segregation have their own pages.  Many THANKS to that person...

https://cccresources.blogspot.com/search/label/Accidents - see the sidebar to go to the topic you are interested in.

C 2023 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy

REVISITING THE CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS

I was quite excited to find a handwritten testimonial from a relative about his experience in the CCC's recently.  I posted about the CCC's several years ago and wanted to revisit the web site.

CCC LEGACY ORG

Now that I have the names of two different camps he worked in, I will check the states for the camps by name.  There are photos of some of the camps... and an opportunity to share.

Of the many links there is this one: THE LIVING NEW DEAL which has interactive maps where you can find ART /PUBLIC WORKS made by New Deal craftsmen and artists.

Using the Dollar Times Inflation Calendar that I have on my side posts, I learned that $30 in 1940 is equal to $550.66.

Just a note October 2022 : Click on the label CCC's or Civilian Conservation Corps to bring up other informative posts on this subject.

THE UNITED STATES CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

THE UNITED STATES CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS  : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

DID YOUR GRANDFATHER or another MALE RELATIVE JOIN THE CCC's as a teenager in the 1930's (GREAT DEPRESSION ERA leading into World War II era) in order to learn skills and most importantly SEND MONEY HOME? 

Not just anyone could sign up.  This was a RELIEF PROGRAM (which I sure wish was still going on today) that existed from 1933 to 1942 in the US.  It was part of President Roosevelt's "New Deal" and a man had to be 18-23 years old (eventually they took men 17-28 years old) who were unmarried an unemployed.

CCC LEGAGY. ORG - RESEARCH includes links to forms to send away to the right National Archives (Saint Louis) and information on CAMP LISTS.

So OK, the difficult has been (hopefully in the past) that men who joined the CCC's were sent to various camps, not necessarily close to home. The goal was to SEND MONEY HOME and LEARN SKILLS. The 1940 census might be of help to some of you, but don't count on it. I've personally been unable to use a database to search that census for CCC members I'm looking for. One of the reasons is that a typical participant stayed in the program for 6 months and could reenlist a total of 4 times for a 2 year stint.  This wasn't a branch of the military, but there was a sort of boot camp at first to see if a person was physically fit before they started doing a lot of hard physical labor, like building walls or planting trees to reforest a burned out area. A person could be transferred around to where there were work projects. Many men from poor families dropped out of high school to join or first did the CCC's and then enlisted in the military. There were separate camps for veterans and Native Americans.

Today when you go to many parks, you will find stone walls and stairways that are still in use that CCC workers built. (Such is the case in some of the Santa Monica Mountains here in Southern California.)

C 2015-2025 Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot All Rights Reserved Including Internet and International Rights

THE DUST BOWL by KEN BURNS - ONE OF THE BEST DOCUMENTARIES AMERICAN GENEALOGISTS COULD WATCH

Did you know that when the Dust Bowl refugees (called "Exo-Dusters")  came to California on Route 66 citizens tried to stop them from entering the state at the borders ,not wanting these people to have any public support?  THE 1930's  MIGRATION OF THE DUST BOWL PEOPLE  DWARFS THAT OF THE MIGRATION OF THE COVERED WAGON ERA!  This was also one of the worst ecological disasters to happen in the 20th century.

This and many other facts that were brought forth make THE DUST BOWL by Ken Burns a film that should intrigue anyone working on American genealogy. The film has a multitude of black and white images of the people, the farmsteads, and the black clouds of dust that devastated farming and caused many to die of dust fever, a lung disease, including many children, and left many with life-long lung ailments.  This wasn't a little dust.  This was a chronic barrage of massive clouds that even left the equivalent of sand dunes of dusk and is a testimonial to ecological disaster that was man made but also man resolved after much suffering.  The film also has testimonials by some of the children who experienced migration who are now past mid-life.

Among the facts covered that are compelling to me and other American researchers are the following:

The clouds of dust were so fast and dark that some people thought the Biblical end of the world was upon them.  The dust blackened the skies and chocked them and gave them dust pneumonia. The dust caused static electricity that made using phones impossible.  The Buffalo grass that they had replaced with wheat is what nature and time had evolved as the perfect ground cover for a sometimes wet and sometimes parched area of the country there near Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle.  Eventually 40,000 farmers signed up to learn a new technique called contour farming which over several years time did resolve the issue, but through the 1930's 80% of the Great Plain soil was eroded.  As a result of the Dust, COUNTIES LOST 30-40% of their population in the 1930's. Schools closed.  (See the changes by looking at the 1930 and then 1940 census.*)  But 75% of the population hung in there maybe because they had families in the local cemeteries.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took a train ride, covering a couple thousand miles, in order to see for himself and talk to the farmers.  Now that we know that Roosevelt hid his crippled body, when we see film of him standing, with an aid next to him, arm provided support, and then raising his arm to wave, we know what an actor he was.   He saw that millions of acres were abandoned and that the children were underweight.

Many Dust Bowl families were too proud to accept what public relief there was.  HERE THEN COMES THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS...  Young men made $30 a month and had to send $25 of it to their families.  Some people were critical, feeling that they were being paid to stand around, but others saw that over time these young men learned skills and used their hard physical labor to improve the country.  (I can tell you that there is a park nearby where I live where the walls and steps that CCC's members built are still in use and in great shape.)  And here then comes THE WORKS PROJECT ADMINISTRATION.
THE WPA BECAME THE BIGGEST EMPLOYER IN THE NATIONS with 8 million people employed and saving themselves from starvation.

By 1937 other ecological disasters were happening.  The 1937 OHIO RIVER FLOOD that effected the city of Pittsburgh with houses floating away


THE DUST BOWL a film by Ken Burns is a production of Florentine Films and WETA Television   C 2012  The Dust Bowl Film Project, LLC

Review C 2014 Ancestry Worship Genealogy

WOODY GUTHRIE WAS MOVED TO LOS ANGELES BECAUSE OF THE DUST BOWL and is probably the most famous DUST BOWL migrant.

THANKSGIVING GATHERINGS and THE 1940 CENSUS - WILL THE FAMILY STORIES EVER BE BACKED BY DOCUMENTATION?

This year the 1940 census has given us so much to look forward to, so much to research and add to our family history writing and genealogy research. 

Thanksgiving gatherings are a good time to talk about the family history and to add stories to your research.

I like to add family stories, testimonials, oral histories, to any book on a family that I write, mindful that it's documentation that makes the project a genealogy project rather than a story project and that some of the stories may not hold up to the research. 

The biggest protestations I've encountered while research genealogy come from those who grew up believing something or other about their family that the research doesn't prove, but when writing about these discrepancies it's the wording you use to explain the controversy.  For instance I was once researching a branch of a large Southern family and they had held a family reunion a few years previous.  One of their earnest and sincere members sent me a copy of the genealogy that had been distributed to the members.  I followed this research back and found that it stuck right where I was but this family researcher didn't bother to write "The following is speculation."  I had to.

The information you may have found in the 1940 census is a good starting point for discussion, especially if you bring along some copies to look at after everyone has eaten and the left overs have been put away and the dishes washed!  Family members who lived during the Great Depression or World War II may hitch onto information about who was supporting the family, who joined the CCC's (Civilian Conservation Corps), and so on.

Record whatever anyone has to say. 

Though I've found that some stories people tell are inaccurate, I've also gotten some informational leads that lead me to the accuracies.