Hiram Polk, Page One

Hiram Polk, Eastport, Maine, August 1911. Photo by Lewis Hine.

Hiram Pulk, 9 years old, cuts some in Seacoast Canning Co., Factory #1. "I aint very fast--only about five boxes a day. They pay five cents a box." Location: Eastport, Maine, August 1911, Lewis Hine.

Among the many thousands of child labor photographs taken by Lewis Hine, this one is fairly ordinary. It appears to be poorly lit, the boy’s face is not clear, and there is little detail. If I had not taken a special interest in Hine’s 53 Eastport photos, little Hiram might have remained ignored and forgotten. Like many of the boys and girls that Hine depicted in Eastport, he was a fish cutter, a job that required him to use a butcher knife, a risky situation that frequently led to cut hands and fingers. See some of my other Eastport stories for details about the conditions of child labor in the canneries.

Right away, I got lucky in my search. I found a family history website that listed some descendants of William and Mary Pulk, one of them a son named Hiram Pulk, who was born on August 19, 1874, in Eastport, Maine. He was married twice, first to Mary Trott, in 1895, and later to Jeanette Houston, in 1899. Hiram and Jeanette had a son, also Hiram, born December 12, 1901. Almost 10 years later, he would be photographed by Lewis Hine. By the time he was 12 years old, his life had been turned upside down.

In the book Vinalhaven Island (Maine), by the Vinalhaven Historical Society, there is a 1912 photograph of students at the White School, the public school on the island. Among those pictured is Hiram, only a year after Hine encountered him in Eastport.

Hiram Polk (right) , White School, Vinalhaven, ME, 1912. Courtesy of Vinalhaven Historical Society.

It is likely that his father, a fisherman, found work on the island, known for its fishing and canning industries. Unfortunately for the young boy, his father died on November 30, 1913, in Rockland, Maine; and his mother died in Eastport less than a year after, on September 14, 1914.

Hiram (now listed officially as Polk), married Lillian Parker on April 28, 1925. He was 23 years old, and she was only 15. They are listed in the 1930 census in Queens, New York, and have two children, three-year-old Mary, and one-year-old Hiram. I found the death record and obituary for Lillian, who died in Maine in 1984. That led me to daughter Mary (now Marshall), who lives in southern Maine. She was not sure of the date that her father died, but thought it was in Rhode Island in the 1950s. She was unable to find any photographs of him.

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