Finding Our Farm Roots
by: Stewart Truelsen, a frequent contribution to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Focus on Agriculture series. Formerly, he was director of broadcast services for AFBF.


“I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes,” wrote poet Carl Sandburg after the First World War. The old empires were gone, and Sandburg was anxious to look ahead. “I tell you there is nothing in the world only an ocean of tomorrows, a sky of tomorrows.”
 
Today, Americans view the future with some trepidation because of terrorist threats, economic uncertainty and media alarms about global warming. Perhaps this is a reason there is so much interest in looking back instead—in tracing our family histories. Life was simpler 100 years ago, but it certainly wasn’t any easier. One consolation is we didn’t have to live it then, our ancestors did.
 
Many of the people doing research in libraries today are family historians, and libraries have added greatly to resources for this pursuit. Putting together a family history gives people a sense of belonging and a better appreciation of who they are. After all, we all carry the DNA of those who went before us.
 
Genealogy, the study and investigation of ancestry and family histories, is big business. One of the top genealogy Websites – www.Ancestry.com -- was the target of an investment deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It has collected 5 billion names from historical records, counts 2.5 million active Website members and recently introduced DNA testing.
 
What many Americans will find in their family’s background is a farm or connection to farming communities. 1920 is a significant date in this respect. It marked the first time in our nation’s history that more people lived in cities than rural areas. Thirty-five urbanized areas in the United States now have a population of more than 1 million. In 1900, there were just four: New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston.  At that time nearly 40 percent of the population lived on farms. Today, no more than 2 percent live in farm-operator households.
 
Almost every family today has someone who is considered the family historian or genealogist. I am not that person in my family, but I was fortunate enough to find a box of letters written by my grandmother to my father in the late 1920s, early 1930s. My father had gone to Chicago in search of work. His mother kept him up to date on things back home in northwest Iowa where my grandfather farmed and was the county Farm Bureau president.
 
Her letters are revealing of farm life in those difficult times. No one trusted banks so it was no surprise when an elderly neighbor was found dead at his kitchen table; in front of him was a paper sack containing $3,000. Grandma hoped Calvin Coolidge wouldn’t run for re-election, probably because he had vetoed farm legislation. She couldn’t hang wash out to dry for three weeks because of dust storms. Corn rose to 72 cents a bushel in early 1929, but wouldn’t you know it, my grandparents had already sold their crop. What little spending money my grandma had came from raising her chickens.
 
Living in the past is never recommended, but searching out the past can be rewarding. It could lead to a new appreciation for our nation’s agricultural heritage and how far it has taken us.

11/5/07