Introduction

In August 1934, Corinna Stafford traveled from her home in Atwater, Minnesota, to Floral Park, New York, to care for her Aunt Evelyn’ s and Uncle Russell’s children. During the year Corinna was in New York, her mother Ruth Stafford wrote her two or three times a week, with details of daily life in the village of Atwater and Kandiyohi County.

On August 12, 1934, Ruth Stafford wrote to her daughter, “I have been thinking you had better save all my letters because I plan to keep events up to date for you and in years to come my letters should be a complete diary of the doings of the Stafford family at home (for a year). You and Myron and Harriet and Gloria will then enjoy reading them—I mean in later life.” This book is a compilation of those letters.