{"id":25175,"date":"2024-02-03T23:22:15","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T23:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/?p=25175"},"modified":"2025-01-09T21:25:32","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T21:25:32","slug":"the-first-adair-village-women-at-oscs-postwar-married-student-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/2024\/02\/03\/the-first-adair-village-women-at-oscs-postwar-married-student-housing\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Adair Village: Women at OSC\u2019s Postwar Married Student Housing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s fall 2023 History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2023 in OSU\u2019s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women in Camp Adair\u2019s history.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Austin McCarville, Clare Buresh, and Felicity Howell<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Pictured here is the Adair Village Council in 1950. The council is almost entirely male, excepting Mrs. B. Davis and Mrs. P. Pearson. From The Beaver<\/em>, 1950. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Adair Village, a small community in Benton County, Oregon, is best known as a site of several military installations, most notably Camp Adair, a training cantonment during World War II. For several years in the late 1940s and early 1950s, though, the area was known as Adair Village, and it served as housing for married students attending Oregon State College (now Oregon State University) and their families. Archival materials at OSU\u2019s Special Collections and Archives Research Center offer a unique window into the lives of women who, for a brief period of time, made the area their home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We learned that Adair housed OSC students and their families in the papers of Dan W. Poling, who served as Dean of Men at OSC\/OSU from 1947 to 1970. The papers included Poling\u2019s dissertation, written for his Doctorate of Education at the University of Oregon in 1956, chronicling the creation and operation of married student housing at Adair, titled \u201cAdair Village: A Post-War Project in Community Living for Married Students of Oregon State College.\u201d Poling noted that federal legislation that funded temporary child care for working mothers during the war also \u201cma[de] possible the construction of Adair Village for married students of Oregon State College.\u201d A section of the dissertation titled \u201cFamily Life Programs\u201d details aspects of daily life, and we were drawn to Poling\u2019s discussion of the Mother\u2019s Club, which prompted us to investigate the lives of women and mothers in married student housing at Adair.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The front page of The Community Spirit<\/em>, November 19, 1948. The homemade style of the newsletter is markedly different from the professional style of The Camp Adair Sentry<\/em>, published by the War Department when the area served as a World War II military training facility.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Poling noted that the Mother\u2019s Club was open to all women in the community, not just mothers. Poling documented the club\u2019s work to create and support the Little Beavers Play School and other activities and resources for children, including a community park, \u201cCordair.\u201d He also mentioned that Adair residents wrote and published newsletters.[2]<\/a> We worked with archivist Tiah Edmunson-Morton to locate issues of Community Spirit<\/em>, a biweekly newspaper published by the \u201cVillage Church Board,\u201d which ran from November 1948 through May 1950. The newsletter was created on a typewriter, included illustrations but not photographs, and was reproduced on a mimeograph machine, in purple ink. Its first editor was resident Larry Hagen, an OSC faculty member, but by 1949 it was being edited by Joyce Kelly, a teacher at Little Beavers Play School). Community Spirit<\/em>, which editors hoped would be an \u201cinteresting, informative, and informal paper,\u201d offers a unique window into the daily lives and activities of Adair\u2019s women residents, particularly through its discussion of the Mother\u2019s Club\u2019s activities.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The November 11, 1949 issue of Community Spirit<\/em> mentions both specific women and various activities planned by the Mother\u2019s Club. An upcoming Mother\u2019s Club meeting would feature a Mrs. Eleanor Peters teaching members how to make candy and dip chocolate and discussion of a Thanksgiving Turkey raffle and the community dance schedule.[4]<\/a> Another article featured Helen Ingram, a soloist in the church choir, who along with Virginia Nelson (a teacher at Little Beavers Play School) hoped to start a community choir.[5]<\/a> Grace Harrington, who graduated from Julliard in concert piano performance, announced that she was accepting piano students.[6]<\/a> And Maxine Morgan and Moira Tan wrote to the editor to share that the presence of pet dogs in their homes served as protection against \u201crude conduct\u201d of the community\u2019s maintenance workers.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Two women provide childcare through Oregon State College\u2019s Red Cross chapter. The Beaver<\/em>, 1948. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the Mothers Club\u2019s most significant contributions was providing activities for children, including educational programs and child care. The Adair Village Directory, also located in SCARC, called the Mother\u2019s Club the \u201cmost active non-governmental group\u201d in the community.[8]<\/a> The Oregon State College newspaper, the Barometer<\/em>, included advertisements for nursery school classes at the Little Beavers Play School, led by a Mrs. Katherine H. Reed, and for a Mothers Club rummage sale at the school.[9]<\/a> After the school secured a permanent location in unit D-9, the Barometer<\/em> announced an open house, organized by a Mrs. L.D. Marriage, in February 1948 to show off improvements made to the building. The improvements were performed by \u201cmothers\u201d who \u201ccleaned, decorated, and remodeled the interior\u201d and \u201cfathers\u201d who \u201cassisted by constructing play equipment and individual lockers for the children,\u201d reflecting a common division of labor in the mid twentieth century.[10]<\/a> At least one other option for child care, Alameda Randall staffed a nursery at Adair.[11]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The participation by Adair women in clubs and volunteer work, particularly child-focused campaigns, is not surprising. It reflected a longer history. Since the late nineteenth century, American women had been busy forming clubs and working through them to influence women\u2019s lives and society more generally. The General Federation of Women\u2019s Clubs (GFWC), founded in 1890, represented a wide variety of clubs, from mothers\u2019 clubs and study clubs to gardening clubs and service clubs. And while the activities of women\u2019s clubs might not seem very important, they had played a significant role in American history. According to historian Paige Meltzer, women\u2019s clubs had been \u201ccritical contributor[s] to the women\u2019s suffrage campaign, the creation of the Food and Drug Administration and the Children\u2019s Bureau, and the passage of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Health Act,\u201d which provided federal funding for infant and maternity health care programs in the 1920s. Meltzer argues that in the 1940s, the GFWC promoted the idea that American mothers were responsible \u201cfor the health of the individual family, the local community, and the nation.\u201d[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the short time that Adair housed married OSC students and their families, its women, in their roles as mothers, wives, teachers, and volunteers, were crucial to creating \u201ccommunity spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Dan Poling, \u201cAdair Village: A Postwar Project in Community Living for Married Students of Oregon State College\u201d (PhD dissertation, University of Oregon, 1956), Dan Poling Papers, Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, OR (hereafter SCARC), 12, 133-134. For more on the legislation, see William M. Tuttle, Jr., \u201cThe American Family on the Home Front\u201d in World War II and the American Home Front<\/em>, ed. Marilyn M. Harper (Washington, DC: The National Historic Landmarks Program, 2007), 63.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Poling, \u201cAdair Village,\u201d 133-134, 139-140, 108-109.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Community Spirit<\/em>, November 11, 1949 and Community Spirit<\/em>, November 19, 1948, SCARC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> \u201cMothers Club,\u201d Community Spirit<\/em>, November 11, 1949, SCARC, 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> \u201cHelen Ingram Soloes,\u201d Community Spirit<\/em>, November 11, 1949, SCARC, 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> \u201cInteresting People,\u201d Community Spirit<\/em>, November 11, 1949, SCARC, 2-3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> Maxine Moira and Moira Tan to the Editor, Community Spirit<\/em>, November 11, 1949, SCARC, 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> Adair Village Directory<\/em> (Adair Village, OR: Adair Village Council, October 1949), SCARC, 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> \u201cCouncil Approves $5 Increase in Registration Fees,\u201d Oregon State Daily Barometer<\/em>, December 2, 1947, 2; \u201cAdair Village Mothers to Hold Rummage Sale,\u201d Oregon State Daily Barometer<\/em>, May 20, 1948, 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a> \u201cLittle Beaver School to Have Open House,\u201d Oregon State Daily Barometer<\/em>, January 27, 1948, 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> \u201c\u2018Who\u2019s Who\u2019 at Adair Village,\u201d Adair Village Directory<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12]<\/a> Paige Meltzer, \u201c\u2018The Pulse and Conscience of America\u2019: The General Federation and Women\u2019s Citizenship, 1945-1960,\u201d Frontiers: A Journal of Women\u2019s Studies<\/em> 30, no. 3 (2009): 52-76.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s fall 2023 History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2023 in OSU\u2019s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women in Camp Adair\u2019s history. By Austin McCarville, Clare Buresh, and Felicity Howell Adair Village, a small community in Benton County, Oregon, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1451,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1345961],"class_list":["post-25175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hst363"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1451"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25179,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25175\/revisions\/25179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}