When this photo was taken, Joe was no more than nine years old. At the time, the child labor laws in West Virginia allowed the employment of children 12 and over, with no limitation on hours. So it is likely that Joe’s parents lied about his age and the employer was complicit. As documented by the National Child Labor Committee investigators such as Charles Chute, the boys in the glass factories were subjected to intense heat and unrelenting high-pressure physical activity that often resulted in dehydration and dangerous exposure to glass dust.

The Monongah Glass Company started in Fairmont in 1902. It produced pressed and blown glassware, and was one of the first glass companies to use machinery for mass production. By 1928, they were one of largest glass factories in the United States. That year, they were purchased by the Hocking Glass Company.

Researching this family was difficult. There are many spellings of Beafore in government records. It’s useless to search the surname in Google and other search engines, because they default to the word “before” in their results.” No matter what angle I tried, I could not find him in the census until 1920.

Joe Beafore was born in West Virginia about 1899, the son of Anthony (or Tony) and Katherine Beafore, both born in Italy. In 1920, he was working as a coal miner, and was married to Mamie (Lucas) less than a year. On their marriage record, they were both 21 years old and living in the Marion County town of Grant. In 1930, they were still living in Grant and already had six children. He was listed as unemployed. There are no further records of him on the Internet, not even his death record.

I was able to find a grandson, Anthony Beafore, simply by calling numerous Beafore households listed in the Fairmont phone directory. Mr. Beafore was surprised about the photo and pleased that I mailed him a copy. But he remembered nothing much about him, having been only four years old when Joe Beafore passed away. He told me that his grandfather had 13 children and worked in the Watson Mine in Fairmont all of his adult life, finally dying of a heart attack in 1956, while on the job. The Social Security Death Index shows that his wife Mamie died in 1985. Anthony took the photo to Joe’s only surviving child, now 85 years old, but he showed no interest, and didn’t want to talk about it.

Less than a year before the Hine photo was taken, there were a series of explosions at a coal mine in the nearby town of Monongah. According to one newspaper report: “The explosions ripped through the mines, causing the earth to shake as far as eight miles away, shattering buildings and pavement, hurling people and horses violently to the ground, and knocking streetcars off their rails.”

Three-hundred and sixty-two men and boys died. It remains the worst mine disaster in the history of the United States. In 1916, another mine explosion, in Fairmont, killed 10 workers. And in 1925, another accident in the same mine killed 33 workers.

Unfortunately, my efforts turned up very little information about Joe’s life and what he was like, but he must have already been one tough young man when Lewis Hine photographed him 100 years ago.