Rural Texas Women At Work, 1930-60

ACM Presents: “A Look back in time to --Rural Texas Women at Work, 1930-60” Traveling Exhibit at Armstrong County Museum Opens April 27 and continues to June 5, 2021 The exhibit is produced by Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Industrious and enterprising, rural Texas women performed the common tasks of housewives everywhere—cooking, housekeeping, and doing laundry. In addition, they raised large gardens, tended flocks of poultry, canned and preserved foods for their families, made and repaired furnishings, picked cotton, drove tractors, and took over the men’s work during World War II.

Drawn from files of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service archives at Texas A&M University, Rural Texas Women at Work, 1930–1960 uses photographs and explanatory texts to convey a sense of the lives of rural Texas women, helpful programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Extension Service, and the changes that swept across rural Texas during the Great Depression and World War II. Artifacts from ACM’s collections and local private collectors will be included in the exhibit. Armstrong County women eagerly joined into the activities and training events sponsored by The Extension Service during this time. Quilts from several of the Home Demonstration Clubs were donated to ACM and will be on display.