Articles

Finding Your Family in Federal Record Group 33.6: Navigating the Agricultural Extension Service Archives

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Abstract

The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 established the Agricultural Extension Service to disseminate agricultural research to farmers. An unintended by-product of this work was a huge rural history archives: Federal Record Group 33, the Records of the Extension Service, which provides a granular record of life on farms and in rural communities. This article illustrates the use of the Extension Service’s annual reports for researching local history and genealogy and evaluates access to these archival materials and their depictions of rural communities. The study finds that the rural communities documented in the Extension Service materials often are unaware of this resource because of limited local finding aids and online access.

How to Cite:

Hobbs, C., (2015) “Finding Your Family in Federal Record Group 33.6: Navigating the Agricultural Extension Service Archives”, Archival Issues 36(2), 22–35. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/archivalissues.11005