Early Settlers' Personal Histories

As part of the Works Progress Administration's (WPA) Federal Writers' Project many older citizens were interviewed to provide first hand recollections of their life's history (primary sources). In Arkansas these were done in the early 1940's when the WPA was beginning to downsize and funds dried up.

Although many other states had published their works from the Federal Writers' Project earlier, Arkansas' work was never published. Many of the remaining handwritten interviews are stored in the University of Arkansas' Special Collection Library. in Fayetteville. U of A has begun transcribing some of these with their

African Americans in Arkansas series.

Greenwood High School challenged other high schools to take on the project of transcribing their counties' interviews. This involves contacting the U of A Special Collections library, arranging to have copies made of the original interviews, having students type out exactly what they read with imperfect spelling and grammar and sharing the transcriptions. The hope is that when all of the state interviews are done that they will be included in the Library of Congress' American Memory Collection.

The following Early Settlers' Personal Histories were transcribed by Greenwood High School Media Center student workers. They began with our county, then in 2007 students transcribed the surrounding counties. Arkansas Counties Map. The interviewees are answering questions from the WPA Questionnaire. In the third round of transcriptions, copies have been acquired for the following counties  to begin transcription:  Washington County (Box B251) - 26 copies,  Madison County (Box B148 & Box OV 6) - 80 copies & 4 copies, Johnson County (Box B123) - 21 copies, Pope County (Box B197) - 47 copies,  Yell County (Box B266) - 40 copies, Montgomery County (Box B166) - 19 copies,  Polk Counties (Box B191) - 9 copies

Crawford County

Franklin County

Johnson County

Logan County

Madison County

Scott County

Sebastian County

Washington County