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Monday, May 12, 2014

Nat Williamson, From Sharecropper to Farm Owner, Guilford County, 1938


This photo is from Slate magazine's history blog. For more pictures of the Williamson family see http://ruralnchistory.blogspot.com/2014/04/nat-williamson-and-children-on-farm-in.html. The photos on both blogs are part of the Library of Congress collection.

Proud new owner pays off 40-year-loan in just 7 years

“Searching for the Farmers Who Posed for Government Photographers During the Depression” was published online in The Vault, Slate magazine’s history blog.
Joe Manning identified a Guilford County family, the Williamsons.  “Nat Williamson, previously a sharecropper, was the first black farmer to receive an FSA loan to purchase his farm. While the agency gave him 40 years in which to pay off the $2,980 loan, he managed to do so in seven.
“Manning’s interview with Vivian Sexton, one of Williamson’s granddaughters, revealed that Williamson's father was born into slavery right before emancipation. The family stayed in Guilford and Caswell Counties, in North Carolina, after the Civil War, and many still live there. The land remains in the family, though it’s no longer being used for agriculture. Several of Williamson’s children and grandchildren have built houses on parcels of the former farm.”
Sexton recalled, of the years after the Vachon photos were taken: “When we were growing up, the only thing we bought from the store was like sugar and salt and coffee. Everything else was grown or made. We raised pigs and chickens. My grandfather grew sugarcane and made molasses. We had an apple orchard. He sold butter and eggs, apple cider, vegetables, watermelons and peaches. He had a farm stand in the summer.”
To read the entire story, go to http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/03/14/fsa_photographs_follow_up_interviews_with_families_of_people_in_john_vachon.html




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