I get a lot of inquiries from people interested in finding out if their ancestors or living relatives were Harvey Girls or Fred Harvey employees. I also hear from journalist looking to track down Harvey Girls or their families. Some day there will be a brilliant database of all this information, cross-referenced with published stories and obituaries. Until then, there is one resource that should be better known than it is.

The “Harvey Girl Lists” are well-hidden in the website of the nascent Fred Harvey Museum in Leavenworth. While Fred’s old house on Olive Street is still being fixed up as a full-service museum, the web work that was done a couple of years ago–to at least create a rudimentary spreadsheet style resource bringing together some published sources–is still useful. Follow this link to the Harvey Girl Lists and you’ll see information on many Harvey Girls and their families, including some emails for descendants. They also have a list of Other Harvey Employees which, while limited, is at least a place to start.

Keep in mind that some of the information the Harvey Girls list comes from older published sources, including the appendix from Lesley Poling-Kempes’s The Harvey Girls. While that lively academic book is still widely available, it was primarily based on an oral history project done in 1983, and has not been updated since its publication in 1989. So a number of the people she makes come alive are, sadly, no longer alive.

If any local Harvey Girl group is keeping a registry and wants to send me a link, I’d be happy to post it. In general, a lot of the local groups are not aware there are people in other Harvey cities doing the same thing. Ideally, One Nation Under Fred should be a place where all Harvey-fascinated people can find each other.

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