Skip to main content
Interview with Janice R. Harman
Your browser does not support embedded PDF files.
Interview transcript

Interview with Janice R. Harman

Interviewee (American, 1919 - 2011)
Interviewer (American, 1937 - 2017)
Date2006 November 3
Mediumdigitized audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration: 32 Minutes, 22 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineConnecticut Museum of Culture and History collection
DescriptionAudio cassette tape of an interview with Janice R. Harman. She was interviewed on November 3, 2006 by Bruce M. Stave and Sondra Astor Stave at Duncaster in Bloomfield, Connecticut.

Janice Harman was born on August 17, 1919 in Hartford, Connecticut. Her family moved to Glens Falls, New York when she was in the third grade and is where she grew up. She returned to Connecticut for college attending Connecticut College in New London, where she majored in Economics.

Beatrice Fox Auerbach had established the Auerbach Major at Connecticut College, a special class, and in 1939 or 1940, Janice participated in this program. In the Auerbach Major, the women, juniors and seniors, would spend four weeks in the summer, a week at Christmas, and a week at Easter at the G. Fox store in Hartford. A small group of women were chosen and were paid twenty dollars a week, and they stayed at the Heublein Hotel. The women worked in various non-selling departments, including with the delivery team. Chase Going Woodhouse was their advisor.

Janice describes how she modeled in the Connecticut Room showing the latest fashions. She describes what it was like living in Hartford in 1939-1940. During World War II, she worked at the Office of Price and Administration.
Object number2009.85.11
NotesSubject Note: From 2006 to 2008, the Connecticut Historical Society carried out an oral history project to collect first-hand impressions of G. Fox & Co. and its long-time president, Beatrice Fox Auerbach. Over thirty former employees, as well as two of Mrs. Auerbach's grandchildren, Dorothy Brooks Koopman and Rena Koopman, contributed their memories in interviews conducted by the Stave Group, Oral History Consultants. Funding Note: In 2006, the Connecticut Historical Society received a grant from the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving to support the collection of oral histories, the cataloging of G. Fox & Co. materials and Fox and Auerbach family materials, and the creation of web pages. Additional funding for the oral histories was provided by The Prospect Fund, The Brookside Fund, and The Maple Tree Fund. The Connecticut Historical Society gratefully acknowledges these generous supporters. Without such generosity, this project would not have been possible.
On View
Not on view
Collections