Hardy Family Photographs in Social Studies Lessons
NYS Social Studies curriculum for 4th Grade
Culture, Industrial Growth, Urbanization
NYS Social Studies curriculum for 7th and 8th Grades
Units 7-9: Maturing Industrial Society, Changes in Social Structure, The Great Depression
Industrial changes: have students use timelines, graphs, maps to show changes in amount of US land being farmed, amount of agricultural products as a percentage of US exports, and percent of US labor in agriculture from 1880-1940. Have students examine evidence of how farm machinery might have impacted farm labor and output.
Cultural changes: have students examine and describe changes in clothing styles for men and women from 1890-1940; also compare formal versus work clothes of men and women. Have students decide if they could identify an industrial worker from a farm worker from this period. Have students uncover positive and negative impacts of automobile on farm communities.
Socioeconomic changes: have students examine the impact of the shift from an agricultural to an industrial workforce. Have students consider ways in which the government might have helped farmers keep their families and workers on the farm (domestic policies, trade policies). Have students investigate how changing economic patterns in the U.S. brought about an increase in large manufacturing industries and a decline in family operated farms.
The following list of Web sites offer additional information and resources that relate to the topics addressed in the collection. In addition, several classroom lesson plans are identified as potential resources for which the images could be incorporated in classroom learning:
- National Archives document analysis worksheet templates (select Photos)
- National Archives traveling exhibit: The Way We Worked
- (Harvest of History site) NY agriculture history at the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown
- Primary sources from Harvest of History (local)
- Growing a Nation: The Story of American Agriculture
- Milking Machines
- Small Town America (stereoscopic views from ca. 1850-1910)
- Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area
- Wessel's Living History Farm (Nebraska)
- Lesson plan: buy an automobile or a tractor?
- WWII: The Perilous Fight (PBS)
- American Soldier Series (Attitude surveys of American soldiers in WWII)
- WWII sites
- BBC History: WWI and WWII
- Library of Congress Veterans History Project (oral histories)
Collection owner: Buffalo Niagara Heritage Village & Museum at Amherst (formerly Amherst Museum)