The economic hardships of the Great Depression affected many individuals throughout the United States. The Sylvania Plant offset those hardships by offering jobs to many people within Fredericksburg and the surrounding local areas.⁹ Due to the benefits offered by the plant many individuals began to migrate to Fredericksburg in hopes of a stable income to help them through the trying times of the early nineteenth century. This type of immigration, specifically rural to urban, was very prominent in Virginia during the Great Depression.¹⁰ This is most likely due to the lack of agricultural jobs available during the period of the Great Depression.¹¹
One of the most important aspects of local history is highlighting everyday people as they are just as important to the historical narrative than the institutions that they worked for.¹² Therefore, the purpose of the above map is to highlight those who worked at the plant. The map highlights the very diverse working class of the Sylvania Plant. This diversity can be seen through women and African Americans working at the plant.¹³ The map also shows the workers’ proximity to the Sylvania Plant, which gives an understanding of how far they would have had to travel to get to their job.
Footnotes:
¹ Lee R. Coleman and Frasia D. Trice, An Economic and Social Survey of Spotsylvania County (University of Virginia, 1934), 49, HathiTrust.
² The Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Richmond, VA, “National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Sylvania Plant Historic District”, SG100004980. Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
³ 1940 U.S. Census. Fredericksburg, Virginia. Enumeration District (ED) 107-3, sheet no. 9-B, Katherine Woelffer in household of Ruben E. Woelffer, line 42. Digital image, accessed April 25, 2025, Ancestry.
⁴ 1940 U.S. Census. Spotsylvania, Virginia. Enumeration District (ED) 89-6, sheet no. 1-B, Robert Jett, line 41. Digital image, accessed April 25, 2025, Ancestry.
⁵ 1940 U.S. Census. Fredericksburg, Virginia. Enumeration District (ED) 107-4, sheet no. 5-A, William Lamison in household of Letcher D. Stower, line 23. Digital image, accessed April 25, 2025, Ancestry.
⁶ 1940 U.S. Census. Fredericksburg, Virginia. Enumeration District (ED) 107-4, sheet no. 5-A, Charles Buckingham, line 2. Digital image, accessed April 25, 2025, Ancestry.
⁷ 1940 U.S. Census. Fredericksburg, Virginia. Enumeration District (ED) 107-5, sheet no. 3-A, Willie E. Johnson in household of Alfred Thompson, line 13. Digital image, accessed April 25, 2025, Ancestry.
⁸ 1940 U.S. Census. Fredericksburg, Virginia. Enumeration District (ED) 107-1, sheet no. 2-B, Clarence Snellings in household of Harold Snellings, line 43. Digital image, accessed April 25, 2025, Ancestry.
⁹ Lee R. Coleman and Frasia D. Trice An Economic and Social Survey of Spotsylvania County, 49.
¹⁰ U.S. Census Bureau; 1940 VA Aggregated Census <census.gov>; (April 25, 2025) U.S. Census Bureau.
¹¹ Robert L. Boyd, “A ‘Migration of Despair’: Unemployment, the Search for Work, and Migration to Farms During the Great Depression,” Social Science Quarterly 83, no. 2 (2002): 554. EBSCOhost.
¹²Carol Kammen, On Doing Local History (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 46, accessed April 25, 2025, ProQuest.
¹³ 1940 U.S. Census. Fredericksburg, Virginia. Enumeration District (ED) 107-3, sheet no. 9-B, Katherine Woelffer in household of Ruben E. Woelffer, line 42. Digital image, accessed April 25, 2025, Ancestry. ; 1940 U.S. Census. Fredericksburg, Virginia. Enumeration District (ED) 107-5, sheet no. 3-A, Willie E. Johnson in household of Alfred Thompson, line 13. Digital image, accessed April 25, 2025, Ancestry.