Wilfred (left) & Alfred, Elaine (top) & Glenice, Guilford, Vt, Aug 1941. Photo by Jack Delano.

Children of Warren Franklin, FSA (Farm Security Administration) dairy farmer near Guilford, Vermont, Aug 1941, photo by Jack Delano.

On the Library of Congress website, there are over 700 photos taken in the summer of 1941 by Jack Delano, for the Farm Securities Administration. Vermont has a present-day image as a bucolic tourist destination, and a home for well-to-do people fleeing urban environments for an alternative, back-to-nature lifestyle. But the state is also known for its long history of rural poverty and struggling agricultural economy. So it isn’t surprising that the FSA would have brought its programs and its photographers to the Green Mountain State.

Three of Delano’s photos show some of the children of the Warren Franklin family, on their farm in Guilford, a small town in Windham County, near Brattleboro. The names of the children were not given in the captions. I quickly found several people named Franklin living in the Guilford area, and within a few hours, I was talking Wilfred Franklin, one of the boys in the photo above.

On March 8, 2008, I drove to Wilfred’s home in southern Vermont and interviewed him, his twin brother Alfred, and his sister Elaine Petrie. They were eager to share their memories, and full of good humor. It proved to be a very enjoyable visit. They even posed for a picture, 67 years after they posed for Jack Delano.

According to the family, Warren Franklin was born in Guilford on March 26, 1900. His first wife died of appendicitis in 1923. Their first child, Lawrence, was only nine months old. Several years later, Warren married Nancy Scranton, his first wife’s sister. She was born in Wardsboro, Vermont, on January 20, 1899. Warren and Nancy had six children: Gordon, Russell, Elaine, Glenice, and twins Alfred and Wilfred.

See the interview and some family photos on the following pages.

Warren Franklin Family, Page Two