There are two interesting twists to this story. First of all, many visitors to my website know that I have written two books about the history of North Adams, and that I have been visiting the city about once week for the past 13 years. It's about an hour's drive from my home. I have no previous ties to the community. I have made many friends there. Thus, it was quite a surprise to me that when I tracked down Joe Allard's youngest son, it turned out to be a friend, Rolland Allard, with whom I have had many conversations over breakfast at one of the North Adams coffee shops. He moved several years ago to Colorado, so it was good to reconnect. He was very touched by the Hine photo of his father.

The other twist to this story could be summed up by the question: "Which boy in the photo is Joe?" Hine claimed he was the boy on the left, but Rolland is sure his father is the boy who is sitting down (2^nd from the right). Joe Allard's name appears in the caption of another Hine photo (see below). It appears that Hine is referring to the boy standing with his arms folded. He looks like the same boy that Hine identifies as Joe in the top photo.

It was not uncommon for Hine to make mistakes in his identification of children. In some cases, he misspelled names so badly that there is no hope of figuring out the correct name. In other cases, he mentioned a name in the caption but did not point out which child had that name. And there are examples where he attributed a name to the wrong child. So it is entirely possible that Hine indentified the wrong boy as Joe Allard.

Whichever boy was Joe Allard, records clearly establish that he was 19 years old at the time of the photo. Rolland told me that his father was very short, only about 5' 4" as an adult. On his WWI draft registration, he is listed as "short." The boy Hine called Joe Allard looks much younger than 19 in the photo at the bottom. And in the other photo, he looks quite tall. The boy Rolland identifies as Joe looks like he could be 19 years old. I studied family photos Rolland sent me of Joe as an adult, several with many of his children. Joe and his family appear to resemble the boy Rolland says is his father, but it's not decisive. Then I asked myself, "Who am I to question his son?" Finally, I talked to a friend in North Adams, now 86 years old, who worked with several members of the Allard family back in the 1940s. He looked at the boy that Rolland identified as his father and told me that he looked just like Joe Alllard's son, also named Joe. So in this case, I think Hine made a mistake.