These titles are mostly first-person accounts of life in Massachusetts collected during the Great Depression. The WPA project categories include: LIVING LORE IN NEW ENGLAND and FOLKLORE IN THE BERKSHIRES.
Subjects include: OCCUPATIONS AND INDUSTRIES, including labor unions, strikes, unemployment, commercial fishing, shoe manufacture, rubber manufacture, wire mill, textile mill, papermill, logging and timber and agriculture (apple orchards); FOLKLORE, including superstitions, ghost stories, Irish fairy-stories, children's rhymes and games; POLITICS, including local town government; SPORTS; CRAFTS, including hair wreaths and quilting; DAILY LIFE, including clothing styles, home furnishings, child rearing, courtship and marriage, illness, suicides, death and funeral customs, cooking, and education; LOCAL HISTORY, including architecture, city vs. county/insider vs. outsider divisions; ETHNIC STUDIES, including dialects (Irish, Portuguese, Yankee) and immigrant experiences; and TRANSPORTATION, including horse and automobile.
Interviews were conducted by project workers Louise G. Bassett, Seymour Buck, Charlotte Busby, Alice Kelly, Christabel Kidder, Jack K. Leary, Mark Leiberman, Merton R. Lovett, Emily B. Moore, Clair W. Perry, Ethelda Stoddard Richardson, Rosalie Smith, Wade Van Dorn, Edward Welch, Harry Wheeler and Robert Wilder.