While this is not a photograph of Nancy Doan, she was also an elderly woman whose projected needs were not met by Old Age Assistance because she owned 50% of a worn-out sandy farm in rural Northeast Texas.
Several years ago I found a box of letters pertaining to my husband’s great-great-grandmother. Nancy Elizabeth Haneline was born in Kentucky on February 10, 1862. She married William G. Doan in Arkansas about 1888 or 1889. The family came to Hunt County in 1896. So far everything seemed typical of the era.
However, as I dug deeper into the box I found a letter pertaining to her Old Age Assistance (OAA) plight dated July 15, 1936. The Texas Old Age Assistance Commission assured Mrs. Doan she would “get the earliest possible consideration on your application for Old Age Assistance.” It was during the Great Depression and she certainly needed financial assistance. The next letter dated July 21, 1936 advised Mrs. Doan she had been approved for Old Age Assistance for the monthly sum of seventeen dollars ($17).
However, Joseph F. Nichols signed a letter dated December 16, 1937. Nichols was a prominent Greenville attorney, former mayor, and represented Mrs. Doan for a fee of one dollar ($1). He began by lambasting the Texas Old Age Assistance Commission for what he called “reprehensible and outrageous acts of the Commission and (Texas) Legislature. The lawmakers in Austin had passed a law stating if the aged person owned any land and received income from that land, they were not eligible for Old Age Assistance.
Mrs. Doan owned 50% interest in 52 acres of sandy farmland near Celeste. To support herself, she rented out her half of the farm to tenants who were entitled to live in the house on the farm. It was her son who rented the farm and she was living with him, but their combined projected income for 1938 was not sufficient to care for her needs. Mr. Nichols wrote a heart-wrenching letter on her behalf.
According to Title I (Grants to States for Old Age Assistance) of the 1935 Social Security Act, each state was to provide a plan that would be approved by the Social Security Board for assistance to those most needy persons over the age of sixty-five. Texas added a few stipulations not included in the Social Security Act of 1935. An additional Act passed by the 44th Legislature in 1936 was to reduce the number of persons receiving old age assistance benefits while providing more revenues for paying such benefits. Nancy Doan owned fifty per cent interest in a 52-acre farm in Hunt County. Since she rented out her share of the farm, the OAA Commission could argue she had an income. Little wonder Joseph F. Nichols was so outraged. I wonder if she stopped accepting rent from her son would she have received the original seventeen dollars?
We’ll never know. She died in April 1941.