ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maude Tracy was born in Surprise Indiana, March 28, 1911. She grew up in a small southern Indiana farming community doing what most girls did in those days; learning the skills needed to survive as a woman. She learned a little readin', writin' and arithmetics at school, and a lot about working a farm while keeping a home. From sunrise to sunset a woman's day of cooking, cleaning, mending, washing, gathering, butchering, milking and plucking was never done.  Except for Sunday of course, that was church day.

Once she mastered those skills she was ready, ready to take on the opportunities that lay before her, and to all women of the time - she became a farmwife.

She married Ora Tracy December 8, 1928. Settling in Jennings county, in the tiny town of Hayden, she began her "career" while developing a brand new skill: keeping her man happy and fed.

It was backbreaking work during a rough time in America but Maude was a hard-working optimist and happily did what she had to do without complaint. And Maude was one of the best.

This blog is one year out of this remarkable woman's life on the farm in 1932, exactly as recorded by Maude in the unused back pages of her high school chemistry notebook.

Maude and Ora Tracy