Frank Heath Interviews (2013)

Frank Heath, who was on the board of the Grinnell Historical Museum, interviewed Iowa farmers in 2013 who had grown up in area farms in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. These interviews were compiled into the book Conversations with Iowa Farmers. Quotes from individual farmers are dispersed throughout the work. Topics discussed include farming, family life, childhood, technology, school, and others. 

Four other pieces by Frank Heath are also linked here. They include three interviews–one each of Mary Ellen Lynch, Larry Ellis, and Ernest Jones–and an August 1922 Grinnell Register article of J. R. Steele describing Union Township, Poweshiek County, Iowa, as it was in his childhood. 

For more on farming in Grinnell, see Dan Kaiser’s blog post “How We Used to Work.”

For help on downloading PDFs and MP3s in different browsers, visit the Downloading Documents page.