Lacy & Savannah Ballard

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On the Library of Congress website, there are 45 child labor photos taken in Gastonia in 1908, about half of which identify children who were working at the Loray Mill. At one time, it was the largest cotton mill under one roof in the United States (six stories and 600,000 square feet). The other photos identify children at other mills, or in cases such as this one, a specific mill is not named. For obvious reasons, Hine would not have been welcome in the mills and other workplaces, although he often found ways to do it. Only one of the Loray mill photos shows children working inside the mill. For several photos that he took of children on their lunch hour, Hine notes, "The Superintendent was much disturbed over the photos."

I find this picture very precious. The girls have that typical dour look associated with photographs in this era. They might not have even known what a camera was. By the time they are toddlers, children today have seen countless photos of other children smiling and mugging for the camera, so they know what to do when we point it at them. Hine would have wanted us to believe that Lacy and Savannah had nothing much to smile about, and it's easy to make that conclusion, given the context.

The caption, as recorded by the Library of Congress, does not give the last name of the children. I tried to find two sisters named Lacy and Savannah living together in the North Carolina census, but that didn't happen. But I did find 12-year-old Lacy Taylor in the 1910 Gastonia census, living with 11-year-old sister Densey Taylor. I spent several weeks trying to track down descendants of Lacy Taylor (married name Rhinehart), eventually contacting a son. But he convinced me I had the wrong Lacy. He had never heard of sister Savannah, and he said the Lacy in the photo looked nothing like his late mother. So I suspended the search, planning to return to it in a few months, but it would be more than a year before I did.

In August of 2008, I searched for the girls on Google and found that the Hine photo was also posted on the website of the National Archives, which displays only a few child labor photos. At the beginning of the otherwise identical caption, I was stunned to read, "Lacy (12 years old) and Savannah (11 years old) Ballard. I wondered where they found the last name, and if it was correct.

I immediately searched all the Ballards in the 1910 Gastonia census and found two sisters, 14-year-old Lues and 12-year-old Suda. I also found the same family in the 1900 census, living in Sherril's Ford, Catawba County, North Carolina. In that listing, the two sisters were listed as Lucy and Sadie. Then I found 32-year-old Savannah Rimmer, married and living in Mountain Creek, North Carolina, in the 1930 census. Next, I found the North Carolina death certificate for Sudie Savannah Rimmer, maiden name Ballard. Within hours, I found her daughter, Beatrice Gross, called her and sent her the photo. At last, I had the correct family.

Curious about which mill the girls were working at, I went back to the 1910 census, two years after the photo was taken, and the Ballards were listed as living at 401 N. Pine Street. That was several miles from the mill village around the Loray Mill, so it is not clear what mill they worked at. According to a recent posting on Realtor.com, the former Ballard residence still exists, was built in 1904, and is a one-story, two-family house.

According to their death records, Lucy Lacy Ballard was born on March 17, 1896; and Sudie Savannah Ballard was born on April 26, 1897. Their parents were Edward Ballard and Meter Moss. They were married about 1892, and had at least 10 children, two of which died before 1910. Edward was a mill hand and a carder at the cotton mill. Records indicate that the little boy in the photograph was Lonnie Little Ballard. He was born in 1905, and died in 1984, at the age of 79. Edward died in 1955, at the age of 83; and wife Meter died in 1945, at the age of 69.