Family tradition has it that my maternal grandfather, John H. Ufkes (1917-2003) served in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. I've never taken the time to try and access the records, but have decided to give it a try.
The National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis has the records and will search them via mail and send copies for a fee. Fortunately his name isn't too common, so the fact that I don't have some of the details they need may not be a problem. If the name was Smith, I might need to have more specifics.
We'll have an update as the research requests progresses.
Family tradition is that his father worked for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) or perhaps the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (USCS) during the Depression era as well. Locating those records may require a little more digging around. We'll keep readers posted as we make our way through these Depression era government employment records.
