Financial Crash Impacts a Tiny Island

 _By Tiffany Amber Stockton

There has been a lot of talk of financial struggle and hardships lately, what with the ever-rising inflation and prices nearly double what they were 2-3 years ago. My family has had to make some significant changes to preserve as much of those hard-earned dollars as possible, and I'm sure a lot of you who are reading this have had to do the same.

Although it's not as bad as the Great Depression, there have been definite ways my local community has come together to help each other through these tough times, sharing the burden and lightening the overall load. That's what communities should do.

Island Life During the Great Depression

The Great Depression was the longest and most devastating economic downturn of the 20th century. Spanning much of the 1930s, it shook not only the United States but the entire world.

The crisis began in the U.S. after the stock market crash of October 29, 1929—“Black Tuesday.” Within just three years, global GDP dropped by an estimated 15%. By comparison, the so-called Great Recession of 2008–2009 saw worldwide GDP fall by less than 1%. The contrast is staggering, yet many today mistakenly believe the two were on the same level.

Unemployment in the U.S. soared to nearly 25%. Personal income, tax revenues, profits, and prices all collapsed. With jobs scarce, families had to adapt quickly, often leaning on creativity, hard work, and each other to survive.

Island Ingenuity in Hard Times

On Chincoteague Island, poultry farming grew rapidly during these years. Families raised chickens not only to feed themselves but also as a source of trade and income. By 1950, the island was producing more than one million birds each year.

This was also when two devastating storms forever changed the landscape of both Chincoteague and Assateague Island. With 18 inches of flooding and the highest tide ever reported, a new inlet was carved out of the barrier island just south of Ocean City, Maryland, destroying a railroad bridge and dragging railcars out into the ocean.

Wages remained mostly steady, but many employers couldn’t keep as many workers. That meant every able family member pitched in. My grandfather was only 13 when he stood beside his father behind a barber’s chair, cutting hair to help feed his nine brothers and sisters. Customers often paid with food or by bartering services when money was scarce. Shellfish were a common exchange of goods for service on Chincoteague.

Harvesting the Land and Sea

Oystering, clamming, fishing, and crabbing weren’t just pastimes on Chincoteague, though. They were lifelines. The bounty of the sea was sold, eaten, or exchanged for other necessities. Hunting ducks and waterfowl also supplemented the food supply, and handmade wooden decoys became a useful and profitable tool. Those decoys remain cherished collectibles from the island today, and you can see them in several shops on Main and Maddox Streets.

Clothing and shoes were patched and repurposed until they could no longer be worn. My great-grandfather even cut old tires into strips and tied them to the bottoms of his children’s shoes to reinforce worn-through soles. Nothing went to waste.

Lessons We Can Still Learn

Perhaps the greatest lesson from the Great Depression is that hardship often drives people closer together. On Chincoteague, bartering, skill-sharing, and mutual support were the rule. These days, it seems to be the exception and a rather foreign concept. I'd love to see America return to this.

Those who endured learned to live simply, save diligently, and give generously. Many continued those frugal habits for life, building enough wealth to enjoy their retirement and even leave inheritances for their families.

When I look around today, I can’t help but notice the contrast. Even after paring down and simplifying our home, we still live with far more than ten families combined might have had during the Depression. It’s rather humbling, but it also reminds me to live with gratitude rather than excess.

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN:

* If you had to trade your skills or services instead of using money, what would you offer?

* What’s one “make-do” or frugal practice you learned from your parents or grandparents?

* When life gets hard, do you tend to lean on community, or try to go it alone?

Leave answers to these questions or any comments on the post below.

** This note is for our email readers. Please do not reply via email with any comments. View the blog online and scroll down to the comments section.

Come back on the 9th of each month for my next foray into historical tidbits to share.

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BIO

Tiffany Amber Stockton has embellished stories since childhood, thanks to a very active imagination and notations of talking entirely too much. Honing those skills led her to careers as an award-winning and best-selling author and speaker, while also working as a professional copywriter/copyeditor. She loves to share life-changing products and ideas with others to help them just get rooted and live a life of purpose.

Currently, she lives with her husband and fellow author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, along with their two children, two dogs, and five cats in southeastern Kentucky. In her 20+ years as a professional writer, she has sold twenty-six (26) books so far and has agent representation with Tamela Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. You can find her on Facebook and GoodReads.

Through 'High Water and Hell,' Kentuckians Fight Against Disasters

The devastation across the southern U.S. from recent hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods made me think about historic floods and how people dealt with them.

“Man, indeed, cannot control the rainfall,” wrote R. L Duffus in 1944. “He can alter the courses of streams only slightly. The water that falls on the high places must eventually go down to the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the sea, and by the ancient routes. But man can determine somewhat the time and manner of its passage. He can hold it back to prevent floods.”

The 1937 flood affected towns along the Tennessee
River, including Gilbertsville, KY, near where
Kentucky Dam was built in the 1940s.

A quick search produces a list of multiple significant floods in every decade, in all parts of the country. But since I grew up in Kentucky, where my current works-in-progress are set, this article will focus on what is called the Great Flood of 1937. In January and February that year, record levels of precipitation fell across the Ohio Valley, from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi River. The resulting flood left 1 million people homeless, killed 400, and caused $500 million (nearly $11 billion in today’s dollars) property damage, with Kentucky being particularly hard hit.

Before construction of dams by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) from 1933 to 1944, residents living near the Tennessee River and its tributaries endured flooding as a regular part of life.

While TVA had multiple goals—production of electricity, improved navigation on the Tennessee, a stronger economy in the region, higher living standards, and soil conservation—flood control was high on the list.

Towns on the Cumberland River were also affected
by the Great Flood of 1937, as shown by this barn,
left upended in Kuttawa.

One farmer explained, “When these (river) bottoms flood and wipe out our corn and bean crop that leaves us with nothin’ to feed the stock in winter, not to mention, nothin’ to sell.”

That person spoke only of damage to crops, which happened frequently, not the devastation caused by major floods.

The west Kentucky city of Paducah sits at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers, with the Cumberland flowing into the Ohio about 20 miles upstream. When record rainfall during January and February 1937 combined with rising waters flowing from the Appalachia Mountains to the east, the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio Rivers all began to swell and overtake their banks. Sleet and ice on Jan. 10 downed telephone, telegraph, and power lines, cutting off communications for the city. By Jan. 17, the looming disaster had become evident.

Flooded streets in Paducah, KY, became "rivers
of muck" when cold temperatures added ice.

This photo of a cow that survived
 the flood on the balcony of a house in
Paducah, KY, for 3 weeks appeared
in National Geographic Magazine.

Continuing rain, compounded by cold temperatures, turned streets into “rivers of muck,” wrote Charlie Jackson, who spent six weeks living on the second floor of a house abandoned as the waters rose. He survived using a hastily made wooden boat which allowed him to retrieve food, coal, and whiskey from vacated buildings. Jackson, who helped rescue people and discourage looters, called his experience “about three weeks of high water and Hell.”

Some 27,000 residents fled Paducah, with complete evacuation supervised by the military beginning Jan. 30. The water level crested at 60.8 feet on Feb. 2, submerging nearly 95 percent of the city, but water continued to rise until mid-February.

More than 200 miles northeast, the much larger city of Louisville, located on the Ohio River, received a record 19 inches of rain that January. With the Ohio River reaching a crest of 57 feet of water, or 27 feet above flood stage, an Army engineer called it a flood of “almost biblical proportions.” Three-fourths of the city was covered, forcing more than 230,000 Louisvillians to evacuate. Ninety people died, and damages were estimated at more than $54 million (equivalent to about $1.2 billion today).

After that flood, one letter to the editor, published in the Louisville Courier Journal, said of the people of Kentucky, “When ‘the chips are down’ and the going is rough, they all throw their shoulders back, stick together, and fight. Those are your God-fearing people, as the saying goes.”

In spite of some looting, violence, and discrimination in providing relief that Jackson described, citizens of all the cities and towns affected by the flood worked together to rebuild.

Seems resilience is one characteristic the victims of the latest disasters have in common with Kentuckians of 1937.

Sources:

The Valley and its People: A Portrait of TVA, (c)1944
Renie from Golden Pond by Barbara Hilliard, (c)1998
McKenzie Martin, “The 1937 Flood,” ExploreKYHistory, https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/items/show/369.
Robertson, J. E. L. (2004). “High Water and Hell So Far”: A Paducahan Remembers the 1937 Ohio Valley Flood. The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 102(2), 183–206. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23386285
Historical Photos from archives of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and McCracken County (KY) Public Library

Multi-award-winning author Marie Wells Coutu finds beauty in surprising places, like undiscovered treasures, old houses, and gnarly trees. All three books in her Mended Vessels series, contemporary stories based on the lives of biblical women, have won awards in multiple contests. She is currently working on historical romances set in her native western Kentucky in the 1930s and ‘40s. An unpublished novel, Shifting Currents, which takes place during construction of Kentucky Dam, placed third in Inspirational Romance in the nationally recognized Maggie Awards, and second in Historical Christian Romance in the Touched By Love Awards.

Her historical short story, “All That Glistens,” was included in the 2023 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction collection and is now available free when you sign up for Marie's newsletter here. In her newsletter, she shares about her writing, historical tidbits, recommended books, and sometimes recipes.