The Historical Records Survey (HRS) was a project of the Works Progress Administration New Deal program in the United States. Originally part of the Federal Writers' Project, it was devoted to surveying and indexing historically significant records in state, county and local archives. The official mission statement was the "discovery, preservation, and listing of basic materials for research in the history of the United States". The creation of the Historical Records Survey was one of the signal events "in what Solon Buck called the 'archival awakening' of the 1930s".

Organization

Organized on November 15, 1935 under the direction of Luther H. Evans, the Survey began life under the Federal Writers' Project and in October 1936, became an independent section of Federal Project Number One and the Works Progress Administration's Women's and Professional Division. The project was granted a budget of twice over: one budget was for a survey of federal records located outside of Washington, D.C., and another budget in the same amount was for a survey of state and local historical records.

In 1939, with more artistic federal programs under attack from Congress, partly because they employed suspected Communists, the less controversial HRS was moved to the Work Projects Administration Research and Records Program, Professional and Service Division. Over the course of the program, HRS employed upwards of 10,000 American workers. Base pay for a month's work was between $50 and $60. In 1942, the HRS was reorganized under the Works Progress Administration Service Division War Service Section, which later discontinued "fact-finding, survey, records and clerical services" as superfluous to the war effort.

Achievements

thumb|Publications from Missouri, Mississippi, Rhode Island, and New Jersey

According to regional historian Clifton Dale Foster, "In most states, several diverse projects were operating simultaneously. Its largest project was the Survey of County Records, which located, identified, arranged, and described massive amounts of public records found in county archives. The result was the publication of some 628 volumes of inventories. Other programs of major importance included the Survey of Federal Archives, directed by Philip M. Hamer; the Survey of Church Records; and the American Imprints Inventory." indexes of vital statistics, book indexes, bibliographies, lists of newspapers, cemetery indexes and newspaper indexes, the Atlas of Congressional Roll Calls Project, "a continuation of Richardson's Messages and Papers of the Presidents",

HRS directories

  • Child, Sargent B. and Holmes, Dorothy P., WPA Technical Series, Research and Records Bibliography No. 7, "Bibliography of Research Projects Reports - Check List of Historical Records Survey Publications", Revised April, 1943, created by the Federal Works Agency, Work Projects Administration.
  • Commercial reprint of above: Child, Sargent B. and Holmes, Dorothy P., Check List of Historical Records Survey Publications, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1969.
  • Hefner, Loretta, The WPA Historical Records Survey: a guide to the unpublished inventories, indexes, and transcripts, Society of American Archivists. 1980

thumb|"WPA worker typing old historical records" in Kentucky

See also

  • American Guide Series
  • Index of American Design
  • Mathematical Tables Project

References

Further reading

  • Hogan, W. Ransom. (1939). The Historical Records Survey: an outside view. LSU Dept. of Archives, Louisiana State University.
  • Kelly, Andrew, Kentucky by Design: The Decorative Arts and American Culture (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2015).
  • McDonald, William F. Federal Relief Administration and the Arts (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1969), pp. 751–827.
  • Smiley, David L., "The W.P.A. Historical Records Survey", in In Support of Clio: Essays in Memory of Herbert A. Kellar, ed. by William B. Hesseltine and Donald R. McNeil (Madison, Wis.: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1958).
  • Bryan L. Mulcahy, Works Progress Administration (WPA) Historical Records Survey
  • Steve Paul Johnson, WPA Historical Records Survey
  • The WPA: 60-Year-Old Investment Still Yields High Dividends
  • Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Historical Records Survey