People often ask me how I select which photos to research. Well, there are a lot of factors, but a unique name is a big help, and you can't miss with Simon Birdsong. I saw this photo one morning and found Simon in the Social Security Death Index immediately. He died in Roanoke Rapids in 1993. I emailed the local library and requested his obituary, and two hours later, they emailed it back. He was survived by one child, a daughter named Jean Tomes, of Roanoke Rapids. I found her phone number and called her. She was stunned. I emailed her the photo. The next day, Ms. Tomes replied:

"You won't believe how much excitement your telephone call has generated within the Birdsong family. Phone calls and emails have been going back and forth like crazy."

I was able to determine that Simon was working at the Rosemary Manufacturing Company, the first significant textile mill in Roanoke Rapids. According to Halifax County: economic and social: a laboratory study in the Rural Social Science Department of the University of North Carolina, by Sidney B. Allen (1920):

"The Rosemary Manufacturing Company operates the largest cotton damask mill in the world. From their 45,000 spindles and 1,200 looms there comes more than a third of the product which adorns the tables of America's dining rooms. Millions of yards of table cloth, and hundreds of thousands of dozens of napkins and pattern cloths are produced yearly."

"The Rosemary Manufacturing Company began to operate in 1901 with 3,000 spindles and 50 looms, making only one grade of goods, of medium quality. The plant has steadily grown in size, and the quality of the product has steadily improved. Today the plant manufactures fifty styles of damask."

"The plant has a modern and completely-equipped machine shop, a supply house, two steam electric turbine power plants, and two large warehouses for the storage of thousands of bales of cotton. The machine shop is the largest in this section of the state. It employs more than 25 skilled mechanics, and the shop equipment is valued at more than $15,000. It is one of the best-equipped cotton mill machine shops in the South. The plant operates entirely from its own power, generated by its two turbine power plants."

"Between 1,000 and 1,100 operatives are employed in the mills of this company, and their condition speaks highly for the unselfish interest that the company takes in its employees."

"In the village, which is owned by the company, there are nearly 300 single, and about 90 double, houses. They are well-ventilated and modernly equipped. They are rented to operatives at a very low rate."

Despite this favorable description of the mill, when Simon was photographed, probably in front of his mill village house, he had just turned 11 years old a month earlier, well below the child labor law minimum of 14, and that's what mattered to Hine.

According to census records and family genealogy reports, Simon Louis Birdsong was born in Gumberry, North Carolina, on Oct 1, 1903, the son of Charlie Emmett Birdsong and Lelia Jane Cooke. In 1910, the family was living in Seabord, NC, where the father was a farmer. He died two years later, and in 1920, Simon lived with his mother in Roanoke Rapids. Both of them worked in the cotton mill. He married Martha Loraine Bridger on June 25, 1930. At that time, they were living in Hopewell, Virginia.

Simon passed away on April 25, 1993, and wife Loraine passed away on September 29, 1996, both of them in Roanoke Rapids. Their daughter Jean tells us more on the next page.