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October 1913. Cuero, Texas. John Huggins. Said he is 14 years old and has been doffing for eight months in the Guadalupe Valley Cotton Mills. Gets a dollar a day now. Before he came here, he worked in the cotton mill at West, Texas, for five or six years. Said boys work in the Cuero mill under age. "They don't even bother to ask your age. Didn't ask mine. Easy 'nuff to git a job." The mills were not running on account of floods this week. I found only one other boy under age. "Spider" Estes said he is 14 years old and been doffing here one year. View full size. Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.
I think it's useful to point out that a majority of the ones with whom I have been successful are the ones who left a searchable trail, such as the ones who lived long enough to get a Social Security number, so that they appear in the SS Death Index. Those who are the hardest to find are the ones who died young, didn't get married, or were so poor and transient that they seldom appeared in official records.
Joe Manning, thanks for all your research. An unusual number of the people you have researched seem to have lived to a very ripe old age!
This is Joe Manning, of the Lewis Hine Project. According to an assortment of government records, John Thomas Huggins was born July 6, 1900, in Texas.
In the 1910 census, he is living in McLennan County, TX, with his widowed mother and several siblings. Mother and the older children work at a cotton mill. In the 1920 census, John is married to Mattie, and has a baby son, Raymond. They are living in McLennan County, and both John and Mattie work at a cotton mill. In the 1930 census, John is divorced, lives with his mother in McLennan County, and works as a candy salesman. He died in Limestone County, Texas, on January 12, 1992, at the age of 91. His son Raymond died in 1990, in McLennan County. I have requested John's obit.
This guy's expression is haunting.
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