Following Up with the FDR Library about Louise's letter

After I received David's email about Louise writing FDR about Otto's job, I visited the FDR library on-line.  Although they have many interesting resources available to look at, correspondence isn't one of them.  I emailed them asking if letters were part of the Presidential papers and briefly explained the story.


I received the following prompt response:
 Dear Ms. Riley:

Thank you for your recent inquiry to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library concerning a letter sent by Louise Krausman in late 1935 to the President regarding her husband's termination from the Library of Congress.

We have searched the President's Official File related to the Library of Congress, the President's Alphabetical File, and various indexes and finding aids to our collections.  Unfortunately, we were not able to locate a letter or reference to Louise Krausman.

The Roosevelt White House received thousands of letters per day.  Many of these letters were from the general public requesting some sort of assistance or a particular service.  Usually, such request letters were referred out of the White House to the relevant department or agency for further handling.  Sometimes the correspondent would be sent a polite response from the White House indicating that the letter was being sent to the appropriate department.

I suspect that Mrs. Krausman's letter was referred either back to the Library of Congress for its attention, or perhaps to another agency such as the WPA who perhaps employed Mr. Krausman and detailed him to the Library of Congress. I recommend, if you have not already done so, that you obtain a copy of Mr. Krausman's original civilian personnel record.  The original letter may be located there, or at least a chain of employment paperwork that would indicate in greater detail the chronology of his dismissal and reinstatement.

The National Archives retains the personnel records of federal civilian employees at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri.  I recommend contacting the NPRC at 314-801-9250 or by e-mail at cpr.center@nara.gov.  You can go to the following link for more information on accessing personnel service records:

http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/civilian-personnel/

I hope this information proves helpful.  Good luck in your search.

Regards, Bob Clark

Bob Clark
Supervisory Archivist
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library
4079 Albany Post Road   Hyde Park, NY  12538
Phone  845.486.7742     Fax  845.486.1147
www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu

I had no idea that you can order personal files for former federal employees.  This is a great resource that could be very interesting if you had a family member who once worked for the Federal Government.  The cost is between $20-$50 depending on how many pages are in the file.