Presenter: Jane Rollins
Format: Download MP3 Audio

Just over 100 years ago a patch of scrub 135 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah was home to 200 Jewish immigrants who wanted to be farmers. The Clarion Agricultural Colony in Sanpete County is long gone now, but it was one of 40 Jewish agricultural colonies that were established in the United States between 1882 and 1910. This talk will place Clarion in the context of the back to the land movement among Jewish immigrants to the U.S. What motivated 200 men, women and children ? only one of whom had any farming experience? to leave their homes in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore for the Beehive State? How did they eke out a living in on 6000 acres of desert that was prone to heat, winds, and insects? Attendees will learn what skills are needed to research an idealistic family that left the city and headed west.