Resources
Robin A. Edgar
Personal Legacies: Surviving the Great Depression
by Robin Edgar (Buy now) 
Personal Legacies: Surviving the Great Depression explores ordinary histories during extraordinary times. Adding living color to the black and white facts about that era, it focuses on how individuals from various walks of life survived and how that survival shaped their lives.
The book became a catalog for an exhibit at The Charlotte Museum of History and inspired a documentary with PBS affiliate WTVI.
“In this inspirational collection by Robin Edgar, the children of the Depression remember the hard times with nostalgia because they enjoyed a family cohesiveness often lacking in today’s comparative good times.”
– Ellen Scarborough, former reporter/feature writer, The Charlotte Observer & The Fayetteville Times
Excerpt from Personal Legacies: Surviving the Great Depression
by Robin A. Edgar
R. (Robert) Powell Majors
Born Dec 12 1906
“We survived because we lived within our means.”
(An excerpt from Personal Legacies: Surviving the Great Depression)
R. Powell Majors graduated with a degree in Business Administration from the University of Florida in 1928. That November, he accepted a job for $125 a month with Peat Marwick and Mitchell, a public accounting and auditing firm in Charlotte. He had to sell his tuxedo for eighteen dollars in order to have money to move there. For the first two months, he stayed at the YMCA on the corner of Second and South Tryon Streets and then rented a room with a college friend in a private home on Greenway Avenue off of Caswell Road, close to Mercy Hospital. He rode the streetcar to work, buying four tickets for a quarter. (read more about how Powell Majors survived the Great Depression)