- G. Granddaughter of William Henry Barlow
           - Granddaughter of Alfred Jordan Barlow (Barlar)
           - Daughter of Thomas Jefferson Barlar

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Dolly Adell (Barlar) Davis

( Living )

   WW II - Civilian Service 

Dolly graduated HS in 1943 in Columbia, TN.  After working in the defense industry (ex., Oak Ridge) for approximately 1 year, she then went to the War Department, Officers Division in Washington, DC, where she served until the war was over.

 

 

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Women Serving the Military

Many women performed needed services directly support­ing military units both overseas and in the United States. Above is a photo of women at work in an apartment house turned into office space for the Foreign Function Bureau, Washington, D.C., December, 1941.

All around the country women stepped into government jobs vacated by men. More than a million women, many of them young and single, came to Washington D.C. As more men were deployed overseas, women -- both military and civilian --were admitted into professional classifications previously reserved exclusively for men. By 1944, women accounted for more than a third of civil service jobs.

Women who answered the call to government service were not promised careers. “Government Girls” as they were known could only hold their jobs for the duration of the national emergency because the federal employees who had been drafted or reassigned were entitled to reclaim their jobs at war’s end. 

Clerical work was a typical female job in the War Department, and women moved mountains of paper during the course of the war. Women civilian employees of the War Department were permitted to wear WAC uniforms, obscuring the distinction between military units and civilian employees. 

 

 

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