Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Your Ancestors in the 1930s Great Depression

 Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1)  What did your ancestral families do during the Great Depression (1930-1940)? Did they keep their jobs and standard of living?  Did they suffer personally or economically?

2)  Share your information about your ancestors in the Great Depression in your own blog post, writing a comment on this blog post, or put it in a Substack post, Facebook Note, or some other social media system.  Please leave a comment on this post so others can find it.

NOTE:  I could use ideas for different SNGF topics.  Please email me (randy.seaver@gmail.com).

Thank you to Marian B. Wood for this week's SNGF challenge topic.

Here's mine:

1)  My patenral grandparents, Frederick Walton and Alma Bessie (Richmond) Seaver resided in Leominster, Massachusetts during the 1930s. They had two sons and two daughters at home, and both sons went to college in the early 1930s.  Fred's job changed and he took a pay cut, and they lost their house in Leominster and had to move into rental housing.  My biography for Fred notes:

The 1930 census captures the family at a moment of relative stability: Fred owned a home worth $5,000, complete with that modern marvel, a radio set. His daughter Ruth, at 22, was teaching in a public school, while Frederick Jr. and Edward were 18 and 16 respectively, and young Geraldine was still in school at age 12.

However, the Great Depression soon shattered this comfortable existence. Fred took a substantial pay cut at DuPont, and the bank foreclosed on the Hall Street house mortgage. The proud homeowner and factory superintendent was forced to move his family into an apartment on West Street in downtown Leominster, and eventually to an apartment at 90 Main Street. This reversal of fortune must have been particularly difficult for a man who had worked his way up from comb painter to factory superintendent.   

My father, Frederick Walton Seaver Jr., went to Dartmouth College for a year in 1931, dropped out because of a football injury and the family finances, and came back to Leominster and worked at odd jobs and eventually as an investigator for a bank and finance company. He may have lived with friends in the mid-1930s, and lived with his sister Ruth and her family for awhile in the 1940 time. 

2)  My maternal grandparents, Lyle and Emily (Auble) Carringer resided in San Diego at 2130 Fern Street during the 1930s.  They had one daughter, my mother Betty, at home, and Emily's mother, Georgianna (Kemp) Auble, lived with them.  Lyle's job as an accountant continued at Marston's Department Store, and they did not suffer significant financial setbacks.

My mother, Betty Carringer attended San Diego High School and then San Diego State College from 1936 to 1940 and became a teacher.

3)  Lyle's parents, Henry Austin and Della (Smith) Carringer resided in San Diego at 2115 30th Street. Austin retired from his job at the North Island Naval Air Station in 1932 at age 79, but they had apartment house rentals that provided sufficient income for them. 

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