From 1945 to 1977 Roanridge Training and Conference Center in Missouri was the primary center of operation for the Division of Town and Country within the Home Department, although the two entities were structurally distinct. The Division’s records contain administrative and program files, conference materials, reports generated by the Division (often in consultation with Roanridge or with persons affiliated with the National Council’s Unit of Research and Field Study), and resource materials formerly housed in the Roanridge Library. Of particular interest in the latter series is a scrapbook collected by Edna Eastwood on the Church’s early ministry to the “isolated,” and a set of surveys generated by the Unit of Research and Field Study. Also present are subject files and correspondence documenting field visits and consultations to rural areas throughout the country.

This collection consists primarily of administrative records and publications of the Rural Workers Fellowship. The administrative records include materials relating to governance and membership of the Fellowship, information about the Fellowship’s publications (including a history of the publication Crossroads), and correspondence about the Wilbur Cochel Memorial Library. Publications include the Fellowship’s official organ The Rural Messenger, 1927-1943; Crossroads, 1943-1962; and Crossroads Newsletter, 1962-2010. The run of Crossroads Newsletter is nearly complete, although it ends with the August 2010 issue. The records also include a run (with index) of a related publications distributed as an interdenominational resource entitled Christian Rural Fellowship Bulletin, which was an influential voice documenting Episcopal and other twentieth-century rural ministry.

The collection comprises correspondence, minutes, surveys, reports, financial records, printed materials, photographic materials, audio-visual materials, maps, and charts dating from 1939 to 1978. The photographic materials include two cubic feet of prints and negatives and more than two thousand slides, which often topically parallel other records found in the collection.