Lewis Hine photos lead writer to stories of cannery children

A Massachusetts writer has been devoting himself to discovering and printing the life stories of the subjects of Lewis Hine's investigative photographs for the National Child Labor Committee from 1908 to 1924. Since he started The Lewis Hine Project, Joe Manning has included information about many youngsters who were photographed by Hine in 1911 when they were working in Eastport sardine canneries.

Calling his introduction to Lewis Hine's child labor portraits as "serendipity," Manning says his close friend Elizabeth Winthrop wrote a fictional book based on the compelling picture of a Vermont mill girl who had been photographed by Hine. "She told me it would be a wonderful postscript to find out what happened to her, and that sounded exciting," he recalls. Eleven days later he had discovered her real name, Addie Card, and that she lived to be 94 years old. When he located some of Addie's relatives and told them about the photograph, "They were stunned."

"I said to myself, 'Why can't I do the same thing for others that I did for Addie?'" says Manning. "And I've been successful with 150 children from 32 states and the District of Columbia. It's been pretty much a cross section of different types of employment, different sexes and ethnicities. In 95% of my successes, their children didn't know the picture of their mother or father was in the Library of Congress. It's very emotional for them."

Finding the 53 photographs of Hine's Eastport subjects "compelling," Manning has so far discovered and posted information about 12 of the young cannery workers on his Lewis Hine Project website. "One of the most interesting stories there was of Elsie Shaw, a six-year-old cartoner, a waif of a girl, whose granddaughter Pamela I tracked down in Arizona. Pamela had been raised by Elsie, and her role model was her grandmother."

"Pamela has wonderfully animated stories about Elsie, and I was happy to learn that Elsie had lived to be 89 years old," adds Manning. "And when I told her that Hine quoted Elsie's father as saying, 'My daughter sings and dances vaudeville,' Pam broke down and cried. Her grandmother used to say she was in vaudeville, but Pam thought it was a story. She said that learning that the story was true 'was the most important thing that's happened in my life.'"

Another of the Eastport girls photographed by Hine was Phoebe Thomas, described as "an eight-year-old Syrian girl," and a series of four pictures tugged at Manning's heartstrings.

"He took pictures of Phoebe carrying a large knife and going home after having an accident and cutting the end of her thumb off, posing with a bandaged thumb and then going back to work with the same knife," says Manning. "I searched off and on for Phoebe's story for three years and found out that this little girl grew up and that her niece said she had beautiful hands."

Manning discovered that Phoebe's parents, Charles and Mabel Thomas, were born Masaad Tannous Abu-Rishdan and Shamsha "Frangi" Mitlig, Lebanese immigrants who married when Mabel was only 13 years old. Phoebe was the oldest of their nine children, and she was born in Saint John, N.B., where Charles made his living as a peddler and merchant for a few years. They lived in Eastport from at least 1910 to 1920, where Charles operated a general store and continued work as a trader. They moved to Macon, Ga., and eventually settled in Boston, which is where Charles and Mabel died.

Phoebe, also known as Mary, married an Italian-born auto mechanic and widower, Peter Bodi, in about 1949. "Peter and Phoebe lived in Dedham, Mass., but were married for only about two years, since Peter died on November 15, 1951," reports Manning. "They had no children. Phoebe did not remarry and died on December 2, 1969, at the age of 66."

After interviewing Phoebe's niece, Barbara Geagan, and Barbara's husband Tom in September 2009, Manning learned that Phoebe "was slow," never went to school and spent 36 years ironing bed linens for a Boston hotel. But most importantly he found out that "she was adored by her family."

"She was very social, very likeable," Barbara Geagan told Manning. "Everybody loved Phoebe." Added Tom, "She liked me because, when she came to our house for dinner, I would make sure she had a glass of wine. She would try to butter me up for a second glass. We used to tease her about that."

As for the set of Hine photos, Phoebe's niece says, "Well, it's good that Phoebe ended up being a poster child for the attempt to pass child labor laws, but you have to remember that this was not illegal then. So for these people, they didn't see anything wrong with it."

To read more about Phoebe Thomas and other Lewis Hine Project subjects, visit Joe Manning's website <www.sevensteeples.com/lewishine.html>.

One century ago in Robbinston

Manning has recently added to Phoebe Thomas' story a portion of Stephen Robbins' 1976 interview with Robbins' grandmother Minerva (Sharman) Gray, who worked at the Sea Coast Packing Company in Robbinston during the summers of 1912, 1913 and 1914 when she was a teenager.

A family history buff, Steve Robbins says he grew up listening to Minerva's stories. "She and my grandfather lived in Wesley, and my parents and I lived in Vassalboro. It was a three-hour drive when we went for a visit, but we went often, except in winter. Any time we'd go visit, my grandmother would reminisce and tell stories."

Many of the interviews were captured on a little cassette tape recorder and "a lot of time, I'd just take notes. She was more self-conscious when the recorder was going," says Robbins. "So over the years, between our conversations and correspondence, I collected her life story and put it online, and that's where I assume Joe [Manning] found my interview. He e-mailed me last year and asked if he could post the part about her work at Sea Coast. He told me I'd done excellent research, so I was pleased to give him permission to use that stage of her life."

Among the memories Minerva shared of her cannery employment were her recollections that "the cans used to be sealed by hand. After that, they got machines that would seal. There in the Seacoast factory they had four machines. I guess they put in a chain belt that run along to the machine. A girl worked on one side and another faced her on the other side. And this chain belt was going along. One girl would feed in the sardine can, and the other girl would put the covers on. There was links in this chain C spaces a can would set in C and then it was chained across on another chain. But they couldn't do it fast enough to keep every one of them full. They'd perhaps get two and skip two or three, then put in two or three more."

Speaking of her uncle, Will Nash, who worked in the shipping room, Minerva remembered, "Those kinds of cans had a lip on the corner of them that tipped up against the can, and you had to have a key to open it. Well I think instead of counting a hundred keys, to go in with that case of a hundred cans, I think he had a pair of scales there. He'd weigh out so many, and dump it right in. They'd go down all among the cans. And then he'd nail them up."

Minerva passed away in December 2000 at age 104. "She told me she never expected to live past 85," recalls Robbins. "Back when 1999 turned into 2000, she said she could remember when 1899 turned to 1900 when she was about four years old. She remembered her mother standing on a chair, changing the calendar on the wall and saying, 'No more 1800s.'"

Robbins' interviews with his grandmother, as well as his grandfather Roger Gray, can be found at <http://familytreemaker.geneology.com:80/users/r/o/b/Stephen-L-Robbins/FILE/0019page.html>.