Several years ago, I was invited to visit with an elderly Amish husband and wife at their home. The family was among the most conservative Old Order Amish, belonging to a group called the Swartzentrubers.

The Great Depression, 1929–1939, weighed heavily on rural communities in the U.S., and so President Franklin Roosevelt proposed relief, recovery, and reform through a variety of New Deal agencies. One of those agencies — the Farm Security Administration (FSA) — provided relief to rural farmers.