6 - Ida Henry Simmons Goodrich - Autobiography of Early Life
1931, the year I was born, saw the doubling of unemployment to 16.3%, and everybody realized that the stock market crash of 1929 was having far reaching effects. Jan. 24, 1931, the stock market Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the day at 169. President Herbert Hoover was President, and, in that year, the Star-Spangled Banner became the country's official national anthem. Ida, dressed for church - 5 years old At this time, my father was a commercial fisherman, and my mother was a housewife. My father had purchased two lots on what is now Campton Ave. and my mother's mother had built us a two-bedroom house on that property in 1926, apparently in the middle of the depression. In 1926, the house had electricity, but during the depression my parents could not pay the electric bill and the power was shut off. My mother was pregnant with me during the long hot summer, and I was born at home, her fourth child. She was 35. Mama Some way, they had engaged a Doctor Henry of New Smyr...