Sponsored by Texas A&M University, Texas Agricultural Extension Service and Arts Council of Brazos Valley
In the photo above and the two that follow, an unidentified woman is shown performing some of the most common tasks of rural Texas women in all time periods--food preparation, house cleaning, and dishwashing. As will be seen from the remaining photographs exhibited here, rural Texas women performed many additional tasks between 1930 and 1960.
Industrious, ambitious, and hard-working rural Texas women regularly tended large gardens and raised flocks of chickens for meat and eggs. They preserved prodigious quantities of food in a variety of ways. Some of what they grew, cooked, baked, preserved, and made, they sold to obtain funds to improve their homes and surroundings. Others repaired and restored furniture to increase the attractiveness of their houses. During wartime and other emergencies, they did the work normally left to the men. In spite of all these various tasks, rural Texas women still found time for public service and recreation.
All of the photographs in this exhibit were taken by or for the Texas Agricultural Extension Service to document the many projects and programs in which they were involved throughout the state. Since the photographs document specific programs, some tasks are not documented. As far as is known, no woman was ever a laundry or house cleaning demonstrator. Thus there are no photographs of these activities. Some of the photographs were used in the Extension Service annual report and other publications; others were sent to agricultural journals, especially in Texas and the South; and still others were given to the subjects themselves.
The individuals’ names have been given as the several photographers recorded them, in accordance with the social usage of the time the photographs were made.
This exhibit is made available by Texas Humanities Resource Center, Austin, Texas.
This exhibit is made possible in part by a grant from the Texas Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Designed and produced by the staff of the University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio.
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