According to the Library of Congress: “The photographs in the Farm Security Administration…form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed, for most of its existence, by Roy E. Stryker, who guided the effort in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935-1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937-1942), and the Office of War Information (1942-1944).”

The FSA was another of the New Deal programs of the Franklin Roosevelt administration. One of its missions was to provide loans to farmers to either acquire land suitable for farming, or to improve their existing farms with the purchase of animals or equipment, or the building of a new house or barn.

John Vachon, one of the celebrated young photographers for the FSA, headed into Illinois in May of 1940, having just roamed farming communities in Iowa and Missouri. He stopped in the Crawford county town of Robinson, in the southern part of the state, where a young family was about to receive an FSA loan. There are about 10 photos of this family on the Library of Congress website, but none of the captions give their names, a typical omission for FSA photos.

I saw the photo above, and was immediately attracted to this lovely, almost Madonna-like portrait, so I contacted the Crawford County Daily News, which subsequently published the photo and a small story about my project. Meanwhile, I found the other photos of the family, and also learned about A Southern Illinois Album, by Herbert K. Russell, a book of FSA photos. I ordered it, and the very day that the UPS driver dropped it off, I received the following email:

“I am writing to you about a picture that was in my local paper today of a woman and a child. That is Minnie and Donald Patton, my mother and baby brother. My name is Charles Patton, and I am 77 years old.”