Slide show to depict small family farmers
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This still image of William Gaynor of Fairfield is one of many photographs on display Saturday at South Woodstock’s Green Mountain Perkins Academy, depicting the struggles of small family farmers working in Vermont during the Great Depression of the 1930s. PHOTO PROVIDED |
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STAFF REPORT - Published: September 4, 2009
SOUTH WOODSTOCK — It's a one-of-a-kind flashback to the strife and struggles endured by Vermont family farmers during the Great Depression and it's on display this weekend at the Green Mountain Perkins Academy.
Historian and former Vermont Life magazine editor Nancy Graff will present a show of slides, captured for seven years through the lenses of nine photographers charged by the federal Farm Security Administration to document the unvarnished rural lives of farmers during one of America's most trying times.
The presentation, sponsored by a grant from the Vermont Humanities Council, will be shown at 2 p.m. on Saturday and is free and open to the public.
It's called "Looking Back at Vermont," and according to event coordinator Bob Williamson, "goes beyond the usual sugar-coated pastoral to the very heart of everyday folks in their heroic toil with the land."
According to Graff, the photographic mission "was the first large-scale effort to show a nonromantic portrait of ordinary Vermonters, not our power brokers, business barons or blue bloods."
The Green Mountain Perkins Academy is located in South Woodstock, about five miles south of Woodstock on Route 106. The Academy is also home to the South Woodstock Historical Society, and is open for tours Saturday, Sunday and Monday, according to information provided by Williamson.
From 1848 to 1898, the academy was a private, co-ed school and alumni include New Hampshire Congressman Hosea Parker, Vermont Gov. Ebenezer Ormsbee and New York Times Editor Charles Miller.
For more information about this event or tours, call event coordinator Bob Williamson at 457-3609 or e-mail rjwmson@aol.com.
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