Arthur Chalifoux, Page One

Lewis Hine visited North Adams in the last week of August 1911. He was in neighboring Adams on August 29 and 30, and then headed for Winchendon, Mass. The Chalifoux family might have taken note of the two front page stories in the North Adams Transcript, which appeared earlier that month. Certainly, everyone would have been talking about it.

According to the articles, the Hoosac Mills Corporation, owners of the Eclipse Mill, where young Arthur worked, and the nearby Beaver Mill, where Arthur's half-brother, Thomas Chalifoux, was an engineer, announced plans for a million dollar addition to the Eclipse. To help finance their plans, the company intended to abandon the Beaver Mill, removing its machinery and equipment to the new Eclipse plant. This may explain why the following year's city directory listed Thomas's employer as the local Richmond Hotel. He was probably laid off from the Beaver.

Arthur had turned 14 years old about a week before Hine photographed him, making him a legal employee for the first time, according to the Massachusetts child labor law. It is likely that he started working in the mill several years before, since the family recalls him stating many times that he had to quit school at a very young age in order go to work full time.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Arthur's neighborhood was almost entirely populated by first and second-generation French-Canadian immigrants. Most adults spoke French at home, while their children quickly picked up English in school or on the street.

Arthur was born in North Adams on August 19, 1897, to Theophile Chalifoux and his second wife, Rose De Lima Leclerc. They had been married in Quebec in 1893, after Theophile's first wife, Rose De Lima Lecuyer passed away. The first marriage had produced a son, Maximillien Thomas Chalifoux, born in 1874. He was known commonly as Thomas.

In 1901, Theophile's second wife died, leaving Arthur (only four years old) and two siblings without their mother. She was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in St. Joseph's Cemetery in North Adams. Arthur moved in with his half-brother Thomas, who was 23 years his senior. Theophile married for a third time later that year, to Elmire Faille. He would have been about 54 years old at the time.

Arthur lived with Thomas at 319 Beaver Street, one of a row of small apartments near the Beaver Mill. In 1911, they moved to 3 Rand Street, a two-story house which was likely a duplex. Both places are still standing. The Beaver Street apartment house appears unchanged, but the Rand Street house is now a single-family residence, and has been renumbered 45 Rand St. It is about a half a mile from downtown, and is just off Union Street, which is Route 2 (also called the Mohawk Trail).

It is not known what kind of relationship Arthur had with his absent father, but a 1906 article in the Transcript states that Theophile was sentenced to 60 days in prison for not paying child support. Around 1915, Thomas and family moved to Holyoke, Mass, widely known as a center of the paper industry, which provided career jobs for both Thomas and Arthur. In 1922, Arthur married Oliva Ladouceur. They had three children. Arthur's father, Theophile, died in Quebec in 1937, at the age of 90. It is not known if Arthur ever saw him after he moved to Holyoke. Thomas lived to be 97 years old. Arthur died in 1991, at the age of 93. His wife, Oliva, died in 1987, at the age of 84.

Through a series of death records and obituaries, I found one of Arthur's grandsons, David Cronkright, who lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts. See my interview with him, along with some pictures, on the following pages.