Dorothea Lange caption: Young mother, twenty five, says “Next year we’ll be painted and have a lawn and flowers.” Rural shacktown, near Klamath Falls, Oregon, September 1939. General caption number 47.

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” -Dorothea Lange

“She (Freta Baldwin) was a fairly hard woman, because she had to work so much. Life wasn’t real easy for her. And she never had much money.” -Richard Barlow, grandson of Freta, and son of June Baldwin

I saw this photograph seven years ago (2008), stared at it for at least five minutes, and then exhaled. Lange created thousands of lyrical, melancholy portraits of (mostly rural) families struggling for survival during the Great Depression. But this picture has a special sweetness to it. The mother looks down, perhaps camera-shy. The children appear overdue for a nap. The young woman in the window fixes her hair, maybe anticipating that she will wind up in the next picture. Instead of distress, Lange gives us hope when she quotes the mother: “Next year we’ll be painted and have a lawn and flowers.”

As with virtually every photograph Lange took for Franklin Roosevelt’s Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration, from 1935 to 1939, this Klamath Falls family was not identified in the caption, by order of Roy Stryker, manager of the photo-documentary project.

Faced with the daunting task of finding out who they were, I contacted the Klamath Falls Herald & News and persuaded them to publish the photo to see if anyone recognized them. I have used this method successfully over the years, but not this time. No one contacted me, or the newspaper.

Lange took four more photos of this family, all but two of them referring to “General caption number 47,” for which I could find no explanation. I looked at every one carefully, studied the captions, and tried to find some clues. Here are the photos.

Dorothea Lange caption: Family living in tent while building the house around them. Near Klamath Falls, Klamath county, Oregon, August 1939. See general caption number 47.

Dorothea Lange caption: Family living in tent while building the house around them. Near Klamath Falls, Klamath county, Oregon, August 1939. See general caption number 47.

Dorothea Lange caption: The children, seen in opening of tent in earlier photograph, before their new home. Rural shacktown. Near Klamath Falls, Oregon, September 1939.

Dorothea Lange caption: Mother and two children, husband, his brother and brother’s wife shown. Near Klamath Falls, Oregon. Rural shack community on outskirts of town, September 1939. General caption number 47.

Searching the census seemed like a futile exercise because, in 2008, public access to the 1940 census wasn’t expected until 2012, and it seemed unlikely that the mother and father would have been married and had any children in 1930, the year of the previous census. Besides, with no names to search, what would be the point? So I posted the first photo of the mother and her two children, along with the caption, on my website, hoping that someone might spot it and know who they were. But six years went by and no one contacted me.

In early 2015, I went to my public library to look for books about photographer Dorothea Lange. I found one called Daring to Look, by Anne Whiston Spirn, and was shocked to see the cover.

The book was about Lange’s work for the Farm Security Administration in 1939, including her travels to Klamath Falls, one of her last assignments before she was let go by the FSA in October. Three of the photos of this family appeared in the book, along with the mysterious “General caption number 47.”

Lange’s general caption 47: Date: August 23 and September 29, 1939. Place: Near Klamath Falls, Altamont District, Klamath County, Oregon.

Subject: To show process of resettlement in the West.

Photographs were made in fast growing rural shacktown. The home was photographed on August 23 and revisited six weeks later. In that time the family had dismantled the tent and were living in a nearly completed self-built, one room house.

Family consists of husband, wife, two small children, and husband’s brother. They came originally from Oklahoma to Oregon. Father works on WPA. Paid $10.00 down for the land. Pay $5.00 a month out of WPA earnings.

Father: “We build as we can, to get away from rent and get something for what we pay out.”

Mother: “First we had the tent on the ground. Then we moved it up on the floor, when we got it down. We didn’t take the tent down ’til we had a roof over it. Next year we’ll be painted and have a lawn and flowers. We’ll put our driveway over there where those beans are. We’ve got rabbits now and we’ll get some chickens as soon as we can. We think we’re doing swell.”

I saw a new clue: The location was described as “Altamont District, Klamath County, Oregon.” It occurred to me that I had already been using the 1940 census as a resource since 2012. I did some checking and learned that Altamont was a separate census district, and that the population of that area was considerably lower than that of Klamath Falls. That meant that if I wanted to try again to search for the family, I could look under that location instead of Klamath Falls. But still, I had no clues about the possible name of the family.

But there were some searchable factors particular to this family. The mother was about 25 years old, married and white. She had two children, a girl about 6 years old, and a boy about 3 years old. Her husband’s brother and his wife lived with them or near them, so their last name was probably the same.

So I went to the 1940 census for Altamont, and looked for all married white women about 25 years old. There were 61 possibilities, but only two had two children, a boy and a girl, of approximately the right ages. One of the two families was Freta Baldwin (26 years old), husband Leroy (33), daughter June (8) and son Jerry (4). Living next door were Winfred (35) and Sylvia (27) Baldwin. I was certain that I had identified the family.

Next I found the death record and obituary for Jerry Baldwin. The obituary listed his late parents, Leroy and Freta, and a surviving nephew, Richard Barlow, of Klamath Falls. I guessed he was the son of Jerry’s sister June (probably Barlow). I found Richard’s phone number, called him, and emailed him the photos. He had never seen them, or even heard about them. He recognized his mother June, his grandmother Freta, and his uncle Jerry. I interviewed him several months later. Based on that interview, the Klamath Falls directories, newspaper archives, and various other sources, I was able to uncover the story of Freta Baldwin and her family.

Freta Inez Stiles was born in North Carolina on January 16, 1914. She was one of at least six children born to North Carolina natives Jackson and Ivy Stiles. By 1920, the family was living in Oak Bar, California, about 120 miles southwest of Klamath Falls. In the 1930 census, Jackson, Ivy and five of their children including Freta, were listed as living in Klamath Falls, where Jackson worked in a logging camp. Freta was no longer in school, having left after completing the eighth grade. Two months after the census was counted, Freta married Leroy Baldwin, in Klamath Falls, on June 14, 1930.

Leroy Franklin Baldwin was born in Idaho in 1907, the son of Charles and Laura Baldwin, natives of Kansas and Nebraska respectively. Leroy’s brother, Winfred, was born in 1905. By 1930, Leroy, single, was living in the Altamont section of Klamath Falls, and worked for lumber company. (It appeared at this point that Lange’s statement in general caption 47: “They came originally from Oklahoma to Oregon,” was not correct.)

Leroy and Freta had two children, June Marie, born in 1932, and Jerry Roger, born in 1935. In August and September of 1939, Leroy had a job with the WPA (Roosevelt’s Work Progress Administration), and the family was apparently receiving assistance with buying a small parcel of land and building a one-room house in Altamont, the address of which is now 2919 Altamont Drive. In August and September, Dorothea Lange dropped by.

By 1942, the family had sold the house, and was living about a mile away at 1607 Austin Street, in Klamath Falls. In 1946, Freta was living at the same address, but husband Leroy was not. Either divorced or separated, Freta worked at the Mary Ann Drive-In, a restaurant in downtown Klamath Falls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two years later (March 16, 1948) she married Albert Young, an Oregon native, who worked for the Klamath Forest Protective Association. No children were to be born from this marriage. First husband Leroy died in 1955.

Over the years, Freta and Albert moved at least four times to various addresses in Klamath Falls. Freta died in Klamath Falls on October 30, 1992, at the age of 78. Albert died a year later. June Baldwin Barlow died in Klamath Falls on May 15, 2003, just six days short of her 71st birthday. Jerry Baldwin died in Klamath Falls on June 28, 2010, at the age of 75. June’s son, Richard Barlow Jr, tells the rest of the story in the following interview.

The following is my edited interview with Richard Barlow Jr. (RB), son of June Baldwin and grandson of Freta Baldwin. Interview conducted on February 23, 2015.

JM: What did you think of the photos?

RB: I think they’re great. My grandma never mentioned them.

JM: What year were you born?

RB: 1949.

JM: Your grandfather Leroy died in 1955. Do you remember him?

RB: No.

JM: Records confirm that he died seven years after your grandmother married her second husband, Albert, your step-grandfather.

RB: I didn’t know she and my real grandfather divorced. I always thought he had died before my grandmother married Albert.

JM: Who did your mother marry?

RB: Richard Barlow Sr.

JM: When were they married?

RB: I don’t know, but I think my mother was about 17 or 18 when they married.

JM: Where were your parents living when you were born?

RB: In Klamath Falls. I think it was at 205 Mortimer Street.

JM: Did they own that house?

RB: Yes. We were there till I was six. And then my parents bought a brand new house, at 4407 Bristol Avenue.

JM: How many children did your parents have?

RB: There were three of us: Cynthia, Sandra and me. I’m the oldest. All of us still live in Klamath Falls.

JM: Most of the people photographed by Dorothea Lange were poor. Do you recall your mother telling any stories about growing up?

RB: Well, she mentioned that they didn’t have much when she was growing up, but when I grew up, my parents always had enough for food and clothing and a house.

JM: Did your mother finish high school?

RB: I think she did.

JM: What did your father do for a living?

RB: He started off being a projectionist in the theaters, and later moved to appliance repair. He also had a laundry business.

JM: Did your mother work?

RB: She was mainly a homemaker, but in later years, she worked with my dad doing dry cleaning at a laundromat he owned.

JM: Your mother died in 2002. What was the cause of death?

RB: COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). She was a smoker. My father died in 1997.

JM: What was your mother like?

RB: She was a very strong mother. She was a home body. She enjoyed cooking and cleaning. She was the cleanest woman I’ve ever known. She repainted the house every year, and cleaned the house every day. She liked to keep herself busy.

JM: Her little brother, your Uncle Jerry, is in the photos as well. What was he like?

RB: He was a free spirit. He was divorced twice and didn’t have any children. He had strong carpentry skills. He was mostly a home builder, and specialized in cabinetry and finish work. At one time, he worked on subdivisions in the Sacramento area. It’s interesting that my grandmother’s father, Mr. Stiles, built quite a few homes in Klamath Falls and Altamont, and Jerry wound up doing the same thing.

JM: What was your grandmother Freta like?

RB: She was a fairly hard woman, because she had to work so much. She had to drive a truck during the war (World War II). She was a cook and waitress in a restaurant, and then she and my real grandfather broke up. A few years later, she remarried. Life wasn’t real easy for her. For most of her life, she never had much money. But things got a little better when Grandpa (Albert) won the lottery.

JM: They won the lottery? When, and how much did they win?

RB: It was in 1985. Grandpa always bought lottery tickets. At that time, Oregon had a program going where if you were an instant winner, you would send in the ticket, and they would draw ten of them once or twice a year, and the winners would get to spin a wheel and get a big prize. The minimum prize was a thousand dollars, and the biggest prize was a few million. My grandpa had a winning ticket, so he sent it in. A while later, he got a letter that his ticket was picked and that he needed to go Salem (the capital) to participate in the spinning of the wheel.

My daughter and I took him up there. We were in the audience when he spun the wheel, and it stopped on the $2.3 million prize. He didn’t jump up and down or scream; he just said, “I won,” and that was it, but we were going berserk in the crowd. Grandma wasn’t there because she was in the hospital with some sort of back problem. Grandpa called her and just said, “We won, and we’ll be home in a while.” He didn’t tell her anything more. They chose to take the money in twenty annual payments, which worked out to about $94,000 a year.

Right away they used some of the money to get my grandma’s mother out of a nursing home. They took her home to live with them, and got home health care for her. And they bought a larger house, because they were living in a tiny house, with only about 600 square feet. Later, when Grandma got very ill, the money helped to keep her at home, instead of going to a nursing home. Those were the chief benefits. Otherwise, Grandpa didn’t know what to spend it on.

When they died, the money went to their estate, in the same monthly payments. My mother and Uncle Jerry each got half.

JM: How did that change your mother’s standard of living?

RB: Not much, really. It was $47,000 a year. They were retired by then. They paid off their house and managed to have a new car every couple of years, but that was it. There wasn’t a huge difference in anybody’s life style.

JM: Did you spend a lot of time with your grandmother when you were young?

RB: Yes, with her and my step-grandfather Albert. He worked as a carpenter for a fire protection agency in Klamath Falls. He built lookouts and other structures. In the summertime, he would be out in the woods a lot, and I would go camping with them. My grandparents ended up living at 333 ½ East Main St. The building was on the property of one of my dad’s three laundromats, the one that had the dry cleaner in it where my mother worked.

JM: I think your grandmother looked beautiful in the photo in front of the house, but she was looking down, as if she were camera-shy.

RB: She might have been. But I remember her as forceful woman. She used colorful language and told you what she thought.

“First we had the tent on the ground. Then we moved it up on the floor, when we got it down. We didn’t take the tent down ’til we had a roof over it. Next year we’ll be painted and have a lawn and flowers. We’ll put our driveway over there where those beans are. We’ve got rabbits now and we’ll get some chickens as soon as we can. We think we’re doing swell.” -Freta Baldwin

“I many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. I’ve heard it said that that was the highest quality of the human animal. I encountered that many times, in unexpected places. And I have learned to recognize it when I see it.” -Dorothea Lange

What happened to the house that the Baldwins built in 1939?

It still stands, has gone through a number of owners, and has been substantially remodeled more than once. It was last purchased on September 10, 2014, for $75,000. It has 778 square feet of living space.

*Story published in 2015.