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A Place at the Table: 1942

July 1942. "East Montpelier, Vermont. The Charles Ormsbee family and his widowed mother, Mrs. Myrtle Ormsbee, at dinner." Happy Thanksgiving from Shorpy! Photo by Fritz Henle for the Office of War Information. View full size.

July 1942. "East Montpelier, Vermont. The Charles Ormsbee family and his widowed mother, Mrs. Myrtle Ormsbee, at dinner." Happy Thanksgiving from Shorpy! Photo by Fritz Henle for the Office of War Information. View full size.

 

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Industrious laborer, self-employed

Charles H. Ormsbee was born on 24 June 1901, making him just 41 in this picture. In the 1940 Federal census, he is listed as a self-employed farm laborer with an 8th-grade education, working 48 hours per week and having worked 52 weeks in 1939; he owns his $15,000 home (and presumably the farm it sits on) and employs two hired hands. Wife Myrtle, sons Carroll and Richard, daughter Marilyn, mother Myrtie, about seventy, and lodger, Lucy Johannesson, complete the ménage. No clue as to the older gentleman's identity; no appropriately aged male is in the household for the 1940 census, though it's possible he replaced one or both of the draft-age hired hands listed previously.

Mr. Ormsbee died on of heart disease in Berlin, Washington County, Vermont on 27 May 1978, so he had a pretty good run.

Freedom From Want

This photo could be the example for the famous Norman Rockwell painting from 1943.

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