************************** 

"Good opportunity for intelligent girls to make a good living at easy work. The Elk Cotton Mill will begin work between the first and tenth of March and wants about 25 women and girls to work in the factory. A sprightly girl of 13 or 14 years of age can learn in a week to make from 50 to 75 cents per day. Widows with large families of girls preferred." -Advertisement (1900) reprinted in Touring the Middle Tennessee Backroads, by Robert Brandt, © 1995, John F. Blair, publisher

According to Tennessee: A Guide to the State, published in 1939 by the Federal Writers' Project, the state's child labor law, amended in 1901, and still in effect in 1910, stated that it was unlawful to employ a child less than 14 years of age in workshops, mines or factories. Under the previous law, children less than 12 were prohibited from working. The Elk Cotton Mill opened in Fayetteville in 1900, so at the time of the above advertisement, it was legal to hire children as young as 12.

At that time, it was common for textile mills to hire girls and young women as spinners and weavers, partly because their hands were smaller than those of boys and men, which made them well suited for the nature of the work. And girls were not expected or encouraged to finish school, but rather to work and help their mothers take care of the home, and to marry young.

Most families lived in villages where the presence of the factory dominated their lives. They worked there, played there, went to church and school there (if a school was provided), and bought their groceries at the company store. Young children saw their sisters and brothers go the mill every day and probably looked forward to getting their chance to earn money and feel like they were growing up.

That created an ideal environment for recruiting children for jobs that required the least amount of skill and paid the lowest wages. Often, small children would hang around the mills and "help" their mother or siblings, either because they wanted to learn, or because they would have otherwise been left unsupervised for periods of time. Little Fannie, as Hine called her, was a typical example.

I was captivated by Fannie's confident pose, and surprised how well-dressed she and her sister appeared to be. But I was disappointed that her last name was not given. Nevertheless, I started searching for her. I found only one possible Fannie in Fayetteville in the 1910 census. Her last name was given as Swening (or Swinney), and the mother reported that she had given birth to 18 children, 13 who were still living, and 11 who were in the household. The father and six of the children were working in a cotton mill. I was sure this was the right family.

I found Fannie again in the 1920 census, this time living on a farm in the village of Georgia, in Limestone County, Alabama. The father was listed as a widow. In the Social Security Death index, I found a Fannie S. Henderson, born in 1903, who died in Fayetteville in 1996. I obtained her obituary from the Fayetteville Library, and it identified her as Fannie Sweeney Henderson. Eventually, I tracked down and interviewed Peggy Smith, Fannie's niece, who lives in Fayetteville. She had already seen the photograph.