The machine-readable finding aid for this collection was created by the
Copyright 2007, Utah State Historical
Society. All rights reserved.
Reproduction, storage or transmittal of this
work, or any part of it, in any form or by any means, for commercial purposes,
is prohibited without prior authorization of the Utah State Historical Society.
This work may be used for scholarly and other non-commercial use provided that
the Utah State Historical Society is acknowledged as the creator and copyright
holder.
Items in the collection are original documents or typescripts of original documents.
The Federal Writers' Project was set up nationally as one of the Work Relief Programs of the Works Progress Administration in 1935 and continued for approximately seven years. In 1939 the Writers' Program under that name was decentralized in considerable measure, greater emphasis being laid upon the state administration, and from 1939 to its close in 1943 the project in Utah was called the Utah Writers' Project. The name of the national WPA program during this latter period was also changed, from Works Progress Administration to Work Projects Administration.
The Historical Records Survey was commenced originally as a subdivision of the Federal Writers' Project, but in 1936 was made an independent program and so continued until its close with the transfer of its files. The National Office files were placed in the Library of Congress, and the local office files in various state depositories-in Utah's case, in the State Historical Society.
The official sponsors of the two allied though different programs in Utah were the Utah State Historical Society for the Historical Records Survey, and the Utah State Institute of Fine Arts for the Utah Writers' Project. (The Institute of Fine Arts also sponsored the WPA Music Project and the WPA Art Project in Utah.)
The original state director of the Federal Writers' Project was Maurice L. Howe, and when the Historical Records Survey project was set up, he also acted as director of that program. In 1938 Howe was detailed to the national office of the Federal Writers' Project and remained in Washington until the fall of 1942, when he became field information officer of the Social Security Administration at Denver until his death in June 1945. Upon Howe's departure, Charles K. Madsen became state director of the Writers' Project, and served through June 1940. Dale L. Morgan then became director, or as the position was now called, supervisor, and served until October 1942 when he resigned to go to Washington. Grace Winkleman Byrne was the last director of the Project, closing it down and transferring its files to the Utah State Historical Society early in 1943. Meanwhile Dee R. Bramwell in June 1939, became state director of the Historical Survey in Utah. Subsequently he was placed in the state WPA administrative organization, and Cleon Harding, in 1940, became supervisor of the Historical Records Survey, serving in this capacity until the project closed.
In some areas the Historical Records Survey and the Writers' Project worked in the same fields; each for its purposes was interested, for example, in pioneer diaries, autobiographies, and kindred records. When the files of both passed into the keeping of the State Historical Society, these parallel files were at once consolidated and lost individual identity as pertaining to either project; they have since been referred to simply as the "WPA Manuscript Collection of the Utah State Historical Society." Some other files, especially the photograph collection of the Writers' Project, have been directly consolidated with the Society's own holdings, though it would probably be possible by examination to establish just what part of such consolidated files came from WPA if hereafter it should be determined that a meticulous inventory of photographs and maps in the Society's possession be made.
The WPA Collection is made up of the files of the Utah Historical Records Survey and the Utah Writers' Project which were placed in the custody of the State Historical Society when the Work Projects Administration was terminated nationally early in 1943. The Board of Control of the Society determined at a meeting in March 1953 that an attempt should be made to organize these files and inventory them for use. Dale L. Morgan, who had been associated with the Historical Records Survey from 1938 to 1940, and with the Writers' Project from 1940 to 1942, was employed to do this work to the extent that the Society had funds available to finance it. The available resources made possible six weeks' work in the matter of calendaring the combined Historical Records Survey-Utah Writers' Project collection of transcripts of pioneer journals, autobiographies, life sketches, and interviews.
Until 1979, the collection remained more or less in storage, and in large degree inaccessible, in the Society's possession. The primary purpose of the 1979 inventory was to establish controls over that part of the WPA Collection which had been largely inaccessible. This involved a great deal of manual labor in setting the files up in functional order, storing them in the same order, and then inventorying them. An orderly transfer of these files from WPA to the State Historical Society had originally been contemplated, but it seems to have been overlooked when the time for transfer came. The original materials stored at the project offices were kept in steel files. The society at that time did not have the resources to provide similar steel files so that drawer for drawer, the files could be set up in the Society's offices as they had been on the project premises. Instead, these editorial files were transferred from the Federal Government's steel files to reinforced pasteboard files provided by the Federal Government. However, since these files were not uniformly the same size as the steel drawers, the move resulted in the materials getting badly jumbled together.
Reestablishing internal logic in the files involved an immense amount of work, and might easily have been impossible except for Dale Morgan's personal acquaintance with their original character. To compound the problem, at some point after the Morgan inventory, the files were once again transferred to a different-sized container, this time standard Records Center boxes provided by the Utah State Archives. During that process of transfer, the files were once again jumbled, and the Morgan inventory rendered of little use as a finding aid. Thus it was necessary to go back through the collection again and correlate the contents of the Records Center boxes with the Morgan file drawer inventory.
For the most part, that correlation was possible. The fact that researchers have been allowed to search through the collection without the benefit of a finding aid, however, resulted in some materials being misfiled. Some of that misfiling was corrected in 1979, but there still remained approximately two Records Center boxes of badly jumbled materials that needed to be sorted painstakingly, page by page, and filed in appropriate places. By 2006, the collection remained stored in Records Center boxes, and it was necessary to transfer the collection to archival-quality boxes and folders with appropriate labels. In the process, the collection was arranged according to the 1979 register, ensuring that the materials were in their proper order and accounted.
The files in the collection represent the functions for which they were first created. This will become apparent from the inventory that follows, with explanatory remarks that accompany the various sections of the inventory. The collection is arranged alphabetically under each series. Permanent numbers have been assigned to the various files so that this inventory may be used as a finding medium.
Historical Records Survey
Writers' Project
Art Project Collection
Miscellaneous
United States Works Progress Administration (Utah Section) Records, 1938-1943, Utah State Historical Society.
Transferred from the Works Projects Administration, 1943.
The United States Works Progress Administration (Utah Section) Records are the physical property of the Utah Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah. Literary rights, including copyright, may belong to the authors or their heirs and assigns. Please contact the Historical Society for information regarding specific use of this collection.
The files in the collection represent the functions for which they were first created. This will become apparent from the inventory which follows, with explanatory remarks which accompany the various sections of the inventory. The collection is arranged alphabetically under each series. Permanent numbers have been assigned to the various files so that this inventory may be used as a finding medium.
Heber Grant Ivins Papers, 1910-1974,
Dale Lowell Morgan Papers, 1940-1969,
World War II Collection, ca. 1940s-1980s,
WPA Biographical Sketches,
Office of Price Administration Scrapbook, Mss A 5220 .
Photographs have been removed and filed as