52 Ancestors: Frank Roe's Grapes of Wrath
For this week's #52Ancestors prompt on "Migration," I want to share the story of my great-grandfather Frank Roe, whose life embodied the great migrations that shaped early 20th-century America. His story, which I explored in depth in my book "The Last Wagon," demonstrates how external forces often drive personal migrations, reshaping family histories in unexpected ways.
Born on November 1, 1898, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Frank's early life was rooted in his Romani heritage. His mother, Rachel Mason, came from a long line of travelers who had made their way from England to America in the 1850s. Yet Frank's life would be marked by different kinds of movements, forced not by tradition but by the sweeping changes in American history.
By 1930, Frank had established a home in Pottawatomie, Oklahoma, where he and his first wife, May, raised their growing family. Their children - Rachel, Hazel, Von Joseph, Clarence, and James D. - were born into what seemed like stability. However, the Great Depression and the devastating Dust Bowl would soon force them to join one of America's most significant internal migrations.
The transformation from settled life to migrant worker wasn't a choice but a necessity. As Oklahoma's soil turned to dust and work became scarce, Frank made the difficult decision to head west. Like many "Okies," he joined the exodus to California, hoping to find better opportunities in the promised land of the West Coast. This journey wasn't the seasonal travel of his Romani ancestors but a desperate push for survival with his children in tow. Yes, I only said children, as his wife went back to Missouri.
Frank's story takes a personal turn in 1938 when, after May returned to Missouri to care for her ailing sister, he married Tessie Clark in Sebastian, Arkansas. Together, they joined the stream of migrants heading to California's agricultural regions. By 1940, they had reached Kern County, where they lived in the migrant camps that would later be immortalized in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."
The census taker's notes from 1940 paint a stark picture. Despite having only a first-grade education, Frank worked as a farm laborer, finding only eight weeks of work in the months before April 1940. They lived in one of the many "Little Oklahomas," a makeshift community where street numbers were replaced by simple designations in government records.
What strikes me most about Frank's story is how it parallels his Romani ancestors' experiences of living on society's margins, though now as part of a different marginalized group - the Depression-era migrants seeking survival in California's agricultural regions. While his ancestors chose their movements, Frank's migrations were driven by economic necessity and environmental disaster.
Frank's life reminds us that migration stories aren't always about crossing oceans or choosing new adventures. Sometimes, they're about following the harvest, seeking work, or simply trying to survive. His journey from Oklahoma to California, from settled life to migrant camps and back again, reflects a crucial chapter in American history. One that shaped not only my family but countless others.
This past Christmas, my husband and I left our home in Idaho to visit family and have a little adventure. While traveling south through Kern County after visiting family in Modesto, my husband and I crested those same hills that Frank and countless others, including my husband's grandmother, would have traversed - though we were heading in the opposite direction. As we drove, I couldn't help but imagine what those families must have felt as they came over those hills from the east, leaving behind the parched, unforgiving Mojave Desert. What emotion must have flooded their hearts as they looked down for the first time on the lush, green valley below? After months or years of hardship, that first glimpse of California's fertile Central Valley must have truly seemed like the Promised Land. In that moment, despite the decades between us, I felt deeply connected to their hope, their desperation, and their dreams of a better future.
*Do you have ancestors who were part of the Dust Bowl migration? I'd love to hear your stories in the comments below.*
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