James Leazer, Page One

J.A. Leazer a 19 year old weaver and his family. Highland Park Mill, Rock Hill, S.C., Began working at 9 years. Makes $1.50 a day now and says he probably can't get any more as a weaver. Many of them marry young. Location: Rock Hill, South Carolina. May 1912, Lewis Hine.

"My father was a bad guy. He brought another woman into our house once. He snuck her in the back door. He would come home intoxicated and just beat up on everybody, for no reason. I can still remember things like that from my childhood." -Howard Leazer, son of James Leazer

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This photograph doesn't look much like the work of Lewis Hine. Except for the undistinguished backdrop and the reference to child labor in the caption ("began working at 9 years"), it looks more like a professionally done portrait of a handsome young couple with their first child. It was disappointing when I later found out that the Leazers were headed for great difficulties.

According to the National Park Service, the Highland Park Mill, formerly the Rock Hill Cotton Factory and the Standard Mill, opened in 1889. The company sold stock to the general public, among them school children who pooled their money to buy shares. Beginning in 1898, the mill grew to include several related structures, including a cotton oil mill, a seed house and a mill village. The mill operated until 1968, and is listed on the National Register. The complex was recently converted to senior housing.

It didn't take long to identify the people in the photo. South Carolina posts a lot of its birth and death records online. An obituary led me to the couple's son, Howard, and a niece, Jane Mullis. Neither had seen the photo.

James Arthur Leazer was born in Rock Hill on May 17, 1893. He was one of at least seven children born to David Leazer and Melinda (Atkins) Leazer, who married in about 1890. Both parents worked in the mill as weavers. James Leazer married Mary Collins in about 1911. Sadly, their first child, Ruby, the baby in the photo, died of meningitis in 1921, at the age of nine. Their next child, James, died of dysentery in 1915, at the age 15 months. Their last child, John, was born in 1940 when James and Mary were both about 47 years old. John died of influenza seven months later. According to their son, Howard, his parents had 14 children, seven of which survived until adulthood.

After a marriage fraught with turmoil, James and Mary separated in 1946. She passed away in 1959, at the age of 66. He passed away in Charlotte, North Carolina, on April 12, 1973, at the age of 79.