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Memories by Bev Jackson Cotter

During the Great Depression and during his first 100 days in office, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act, he had the general public in mind. He didn’t know exactly how it would affect my family.

The Subsistence Homestead Division was a portion of that act. The plan involved homes for 25,000 families at a cost of $25 million dollars, $1,000 per unit, money which would be returned in monthly mortgage payments. Ninety-nine communities were designed, 98 in the U.S. and one in Alaska which was not yet a state. Minnesota had three — Duluth, Austin and Albert Lea.

In 1935, 80 acres were purchased from the James Carey estate east of Albert Lea. Twelve five-acre and two 7-1/2-half acre sites were plotted. The Federal Emergency Relief Agency hired 40 local men to build foundations, roads and driveways and dig wells. Then the C.M. Tapager Construction Company of Albert lea built 14 four- and five-room cottage style houses on the lots.

Applications were available for factory workers with some farming experience and good credit records. Dad and Mom applied. Out of the 125 applicants, they were one of the 14 selected. For $13.06 a month they received a home, an outside building big enough to house their car, a cow, some chickens and an outdoor toilet with portable containers. Their first year’s rental payments made the down payment on their new home.

Mom and Dad and my four sisters moved in in September 1936.

I remember Mom talking about the acres of mud following the construction of those houses, the men coming home from work on snowy days and shoveling the long driveways and the road, Saturday night neighborhood parties and dances in basements, everyone dressing up to celebrate Col. Albert Lea Days, canning vegetables fresh from her garden, no plumbing, no electricity, no phone, and in the first years, the deaths of two children — one hit by a car on the way home from the nearby country school and the other when her clothes caught on fire, and my birth at home assisted by a neighbor and Dr. Voss, a local osteopathic physician.

I was only 3 years old when my family moved back into Albert Lea and I do not remember living on The Project as the area came to be called, but to my parents and sisters, names like Zitterick, Butters, Brown and Godtland always brought back many memories — memories of a chance to own their own home in the country, and a chance during those difficult Depression years to be a part of President Roosevelt’s plan for the revitalization of America.

Note: The Fair Labor Standards Act passed in 1938, giving factory workers engaged in the production of goods for interstate commerce a minimum hourly wage of 25 cents.

Bev Jackson Cotter is an Albert Lea resident, who writes based on her own memories, as well as research from books, dating from 1882 to 2005, written about county history. We are interested in your memories and invite you to share your own at letters@albertleatribune.com.