Biography

The Wallace Women History Project is a series of interviews conducted by independent scholar Virginia Wadsley with members of the Henry Wallace family. The interviews were funded by the Wallace family. The collection consists of thirteen interviews, two conducted by Patricia L. Pilling and Peg Anderson in 1974, and the remaining interviews conducted by Wadsley in 1994. The Wallace family settled in the state of Iowa in the nineteenth century. Reverend Henry Wallace was a Presbyterian minister who moved to Des Moines and later acquired several farms. His family subsequently became associated with agriculture and politics. Reverend Wallace, followed by his children and grandchildren, were responsible for creating and editing Wallace's Farmer, an agricultural magazine. Wallace's son Henry C. Wallace and grandson Henry A. Wallace became Secretaries of Agriculture under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, respectively. Henry A. Wallace also served as Roosevelt's vice-president. Two of Reverend Wallace's granddaughters, Mary Wallace Bruggmann and Ruth Wallace Wijkman, married foreign diplomats and dedicated themselves to foreign service during World War II. The entire Wallace family boasts a rich legacy of farming and experimental agriculture, with strong attachments to the state of Iowa.

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