War is Personal: World War I
Primary Source Research
Name:
Date:
Essential Question: What were the personal lives of both soldiers and people at home in
Oregon like during World War I?
Oregon Social Science Standards: 4. Interpret historical perspectives through personal,
local, state, tribal, national, and global narratives.
HS.10. Evaluate an historical source for point of view and historical context.
Part I: The Life of the WWI Soldier
Resources:
The Atlantic: World War I in Photos
http://www.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/wwi/
Library of Congress: Stories from the Veterans History Project
Primary sources include: diaries, memoirs, letters, photos, maps, military documents
http://www.loc.gov/vets/stories/ex-war-wwi.html
Historic Oregon Newspapers
Can be accessed from Multnomah County Library:
https://multcolib.org/resource/historic-oregon-newspapers
* Linda or Jill will provide you will a MCL number if you don’t have your own
Search Tips:
- Click on Search tab
- Select newspapers you are interested in: hold down CTRL to select more than one
- Select specific range of dates (1914 to 1919, for example)
- Search terms: War, World War, Great War, trench, Europe, etc.
Things to Look For:
What was life like in the trenches? _____________________________________________________
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What did soldiers do when they were not in battle? _________________________________
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What were some general complaints soldiers wrote about? ________________________
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What did soldiers wear? What did they eat? What weapons did they use? How did they get
around? Write down anything else that seems interesting, or strange, or different from how
you think soldiers operate today:
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Part II: Life on the Homefront
The Historical Oregonian, 1861-1987
Can be accessed from Multnomah County Library:
https://multcolib.org/resource/historical-oregonian-1861-1987
Search Tips:
- Make sure “World War I and its aftermath” is checked under “Eras in American History”
OR make Custom Date Range
- Search terms: war, Portland, Oregon, etc. Use quotation marks to search for entire
phrases.
- Return By: Best matches first
- Click and hold on the mouse to navigate documents.
- Use yellow arrows to navigate between pages.
- These records include every article written in The Oregonian for these years. This will
require a lot more scanning and searching on your part for relevant information. Read the
headlines before clicking on an article to deduce whether it’s important or not.
Things to Look For:
What types of activities were people involved in to support the “war effort”? What
organizations ran activities?
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What industries in Portland were affected by the war? Were they positive or negative
effects?
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What was the popular opinion (according to The Oregonian) towards pacifists, or men who
didn’t enlist in the war?
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What was the role of women at home? _____________________________________________________
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What culture (music, art, theater) was popular at the time? What other matters were
people concerned about? Note anything else interesting you see:
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After you do your research…
Assignment:
Write a letter FROM a soldier in Europe to a loved one back home in Oregon,
- OR Write a letter from a friend or family member in Oregon TO a soldier in Europe about what
life has been like at home.
Guidelines:
- The soldier or the civilian can be any nationality, rooting for any country in the war.
- Your letter should be roughly one (typed) page long.
- Be creative! But also use the information you’ve found from the primary sources.
- Your letter should be formatted like a professional letter--not a research paper. However,
you will still have to cite your sources. Use EasyBib.com to create your citations. This site
also lets you know if your resource is credible or not. You can also use Citation Maker on
the OSLIS website, http://secondary.oslis.org/@@mla-secondary.