Esther Elizabeth Pond Smith was born in Craig, Nebraska on December 25, 1899 to Charles and Anna Pond. In her senior year at Plainview High School in Nebraska, Smith took on a job as a rural teacher of home economics. After graduation, she enrolled at Iowa State College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts in Ames, Iowa, and completed her Bachelor of Science in home economics. In 1935, Smith came to Pullman to become Washington State College’s Extension Economist in home management. During her time in this position, she wrote more than twenty publications for the Extension Service and was published in Kelvinator’s Kitchen Reporter. Most of her articles related to time and motion economy, and streamlining common household tasks. Smith’s work and studies are focused on domestic management. In 1945 she was appointed by the Human Nutrition and Home Economics Division of the United States Department of Agriculture to complete micro-motion studies on food preparation in farm kitchens in order to establish the most efficient arrangement of kitchen equipment. When her husband Stanley A. Smith retired in 1950, the couple moved to Ankara, Turkey. Esther Smith died in Pullman in 1988.
The collection consists of 34 2"x2" glass slides and 16 2.5"x2.5" photographic prints. None of the images are dated; 14 of the slides are labeled. All the images deal with home interiors, likely part of the State College of Washington Home Economics research.
This is an unprocessed collection. Any arrangement reflects either a pre-existing order from the records' creators or previous custodians, or preliminary sorting performed by staff.
The slides and the prints have been placed in separate protective sheets, with the labeled slides in their own sheet.
This collection is open and available for research use.
The photographs were published and so are in the public domain.
[Item description]
Preliminary Guide to the Esther Pond Smith Photographs, circa 1940s-1950s (UPC2013-03)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
These were received on June 25, 2013 from Joye Dillman, and initially accessioned as part of the Esther Pond Smith Papers, Cage 812, originally MS 2013.17.
These were separated out of the Esther Pond Smith Papers, Cage 812, when those were processed in 2014.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.