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The Farm Security Administration was the principal New Deal agency fighting poverty in the Depression years. It secured loans for struggling farmers promoted better farm management, and helped communities to establish cooperatives. The agency also sponsored famous teams of photographers who travelled the U.S. recording the effects of the Depression and the accomplishments of the FSA.
In 1940 and again in 1942 and 1943, noted FSA photographers Jack Delano and John Collier visited the small towns of the St John Valley – Fort Kent, Frenchville, Madawaska, Wallagrass, Lille, St Agatha. In addition to documenting the FSA's extensive programs in the area, their assignment was to portray a unique region and culture.
Working nearly 50 years later, historian C. Stewart Doty was able to find 100 individuals from 15 of the 20 families photographed by Collier and Delano. He interviewed many of them, and his account of the Depression years in northern Maine draws on their memories of hard times. The story is completed by a contemporary series of photos, taken by Jack Walas, of many of the same people and places.
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