Erenne La Prise, a doffer, apparently 13 year[s] old, doffing at his machine in Spring Village Mill. Said he had been working a year and a half. Location: Winchendon, Massachusetts, September 1911, Lewis Hine.

Lewis Hine and his large Graflex camera would not have been welcome in the mills, since his objective was to show underage children working. At that time, Massachusetts law prohibited this type of employment for children under age 14, though it was infrequently enforced. In this case, Hine underestimated the boy's age by two years.

Hine was sometimes able to get away with taking these photos by posing as an industrial photographer. He would tell the person in charge that he wanted to take pictures of the machines, but then he would request that a child stand next to the machine to give a sense of scale, to show how large the machine was. Of the 40 photos he took in Winchendon, he was able to take seven inside the mills.

I couldn't find Erenne in the 1910 US census in Winchendon, or anywhere else in the country. Nor could I find any subsequent marriage or death records for him in the Winchendon town clerk's office. I decided to try using various spellings of the first and last name. It was tedious, going through one dead end after another in the census. Just when I was about to throw in the towel, something interesting turned up.

In the 1930 census in Lisbon, Maine, I found Esene Laprise, born in 1896, living with a wife and son. I backtracked to the 1920 Maine census and found him again. This time, his first name was spelled Erenne. With this new information, I tracked him down.

He wound up in Connecticut, where he died in 1972. Within a few days, I found his obituary in a Connecticut newspaper. Among the listed survivors was a son, Marc, who has since died, and a sister, Georgianna Lapointe, of Winchendon, who is no longer living either. But I found Lapointe in the 1930 census, living with her husband and 13 children. Then I found the obituary of Anthony LaPointe, one of Georgianna's sons, who died in Worcester in 1996. Among his survivors was a sister, Rita Saveall, of Winchendon. Her name was familiar, because she's the curator of the Winchendon Historical Society. I had met her on one of my early visits to the town.

She was surprised to see the photo of her Uncle Irenee, but she did not have much contact with him over the years, so I continued searching for more descendants. I finally obtained the obituary for Irenee's son, Marc, and that led me to Marc's daughter, Marguerite (Marge) Insco, who lives in Illinois. She knew much more about her grandfather Irenee.

Starting with Canada genealogical records, I confirmed that Joseph Irenee Laprise (first and middle names reversed in later records) was born in Quebec on March 1, 1896, to Jean Baptiste Laprise and Virginia (Bernier) Laprise, who married in 1876. About 10 months after Irenee was born, his father died, leaving his wife with at least eight children. About 1900, the family crossed the border and settled in Winchendon. Shortly after, Virginia married August Cloutier, who had several children from a previous marriage. In the 1910 census, they have nine children in the home, including Irenee (incorrectly listed as Rouse Cloutier), and two from the new marriage. August and the seven oldest children, including Irenee, work at the Springs Mill.

Virginia died before 1920, because August is listed as a widow in the 1920 census. By that time, Irenee is living in Lisbon, Maine, with his wife, Lucienne, whom he married about 1918. Both work in a cotton mill. In 1930, they are still in Lisbon, living with Lucienne's parents, and they still work in the cotton mill. They have one child, Marcel (later called Marc), eight years old. In 1940, they moved to New Britain, Connecticut, according to Irenee's obituary.

Irenee Laprise died on March 7, 1972, at the age of 76. Lucienne died in 2002, at the age of 101. Son Marc died in California in 1995, at the age of 73.