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This January 1937 photo from Sneedville, Tennessee, shows Charlie Johns, age 22, and his wife Eunice Johns, age 9. The new husband and wife planned to build a cabin, and, as Charlie Johns phrased it, “go to housekeepin’.” The couple illustrate the cultural relativity of life stages, which we sometimes mistake as fixed. The marriage lasted and the couple had 7 children, 5 boys and 2 girls. Charlie died in 1997 aged 83 and Eunice in 2006 aged 78. The two were buried in the Johns’ family cemetery. | |
| Young Brides | ||
| In the US in 1930 there were 4,241 married girls under 15. | ||
The Johns
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TIME, Feb 8, 1937 In Summit, N. J., when Police Sergeant Patrick J. Kelly collapsed at his desk eight men were required to lift his 429-lb. 6-ft.-11-in. bulk into an ambulance. At the hospital Policeman Kelly, who has frequently expressed a desire to reach 500 lb., was advised against overeating. In Homerville, Ga., 24-year-old Garage Proprietor William ⅝ Smith explained that his father had given him the name ⅝ to avoid mail mixups.
Miscellany: Kelly
“TIME brings all things.”
⅝ Smith
In Sneedville, Tenn., lanky Hill-Billy Charlie Johns, 22, married blue-eyed third-grader Eunice Winstead, 9. Reverend Walter Lamb said he had performed the ceremony on a lonely road when they accosted him, told him that “if I didn’t marry them some one else would.” For a wedding present the groom gave the bride a doll. Said Eunice’s mother, who had another daughter married at 13 and is herself a grandmother at 33: “I haven’t brought up my children to marry what men has got, but to marry for love.” Said Tennessee’s Governor Gordon Browning, upon finding the State powerless to annul the marriage: “It’s nothing short of tragedy!”
In Marseille, France, Jean Guery defended a client so movingly that the judges broke into tears, then sentenced him to three years in jail when they discovered he was not a lawyer.
TIME, Feb 15, 1937
Religion: What God Hath Joined
¶ In Salt Lake City, last week, pupils of East High School formed an “Association Okehing Child Marriage All Over the U.S.”
¶ In Wichita, Kans., Viola McFeeters, 13, was sued for divorce by Raymond McFeeters who married her a year ago when she escaped from a girls’ industrial school.
¶ In Columbus, Ohio, spindle-legged, undernourished Isabel Carter, 13, was revealed to be the bride of three weeks of Harry Monroe, 37, a paralytic. Her parents were considering annulment action.
¶ In Washington, D. C., the American Youth Commission declared that a survey made in Maryland showed that, of 6,642 young women questioned, one had been married at 10, one at 11, two at 12, 12 at 13, 36 at 14. Census records of 1930 listed 4,241 U.S. married women under 15, with ten States recognizing the old Anglo-U.S. common law marriage ages: 12 for females, 14 for males.
These facts came to light and U.S. preachers, welfare workers and lawmakers beat their breasts last week because, on a backwoods road near Treadway, Tenn., a hillbilly parson named Walter Lamb had joined in wedlock Hillbilly Charlie Johns, 22, and Eunice Winstead, 9 (TIME, Feb. 8). Newshawks sought out Parson Lamb, a husky, red-headed Baptist living with his wife in a two-room cabin in Hancock County, only county in Tennessee which has no telephones, no telegraph, not a foot of paved highway. Said Preacher Lamb, who for some years has lived only a mile away from the Winstead family: “I didn’t know she was so young. Nine’s a little early. Anyway, they had a license and she told me she was old enough to know her own mind.... It’s hard to get bread and meat in this section, so I thought so long as some other one was going to marry them, I might as well do it. I just told them to join hands and stand in the middle of the road. It was outdoors. I didn’t even take my hat off. I just stood in the middle of the road, said the marriage ceremony, and it was over. I don’t charge anything for marrying people, but they gave me a dollar, which was all right, considering they got value received, I guess.”
“Winsteads marry young,” said Mrs. Lamb, cracking hickory nuts by her fireside.
In his cabin where he had taken his elfin, impubic bride “so’s I can raise her up right,” gangling Groom Johns declined $500 for newsreel poses, oiled his shotgun, muttered about “furriners” coming into the mountains, exploded: “They’re a-sayin’ they’re goin’ to take Eunice away from me. They’re a-sayin’ the law-makin’ men in Nashville is makin’ a law sayin’ my marriage ain’t legal. They’ve scared Eunice to death talkin’ about sendin’ her to reform school. I’m that pestered I can’t plant my tobacco crop nor git no work done. All I know is they ain’t goin’ to take Eunice away ’thout it’s over my dead body.” Eunice’s mother – a grandmother at 33 – explained that a neighboring family had “put the peep” on her 16-year-old son Herbie who wished to marry Clarey Johns, 24, that “Charlie was afeered we would do the same on Eunice.” But, said she, “This thing is all right with God. I know. A man who has God’s word married my daughter.... They don’t actually live as man and wife. Why, she’s still my child, just my little baby. He treats her just like always, except they sleep in the same room now.” Said Father Winstead: “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder. I wouldn’t put my soul in danger of hell fire to bust up the marriage of a couple of young ’uns that love each other.”
Said Father Johns: “These two youngsters sort of put one over on the old folks.”
As Tennessee officials discovered after hunting for legal means to void the marriage, the youngsters had put one over on the State. Since the parents approved, nothing could be done about it. Hastily drafted and passed by the State Senate was a bill setting the marriageable age for Tennessee females at 14.
Meanwhile in New York State, law enforcers were aroused over a young couple who had been illegally married since Jan. 15 – Stanley Backus, 18, and Leona Roshia Backus, 12. Armed with a marriage license giving Leona’s age as 18, and with their parents’ approval, the couple had been married in Carthage by a Methodist named Rev. William K. Bradshaw who, like every one else concerned, was deceived by the bride’s appearance. She weighs 112 lb., looks mature in grown-up frocks. Last week a medical examination showed her to be pregnant, and according to the County Prosecutor, Groom Backus confessed to having seduced her. He was arrested for second-degree rape. Said Mrs. Backus, posing for photographs in apparent enjoyment of home life on her husband’s $25-a-week salary: “People ought to mind their own business.” Three days later Leona’s father was jailed, accused of fraud in obtaining the birth certificate on which her marriage license was based.
TIME, May 31, 1937
Milestones
Married. Clara Johns, 24, elder sister of Charlie Johns, the Sneedville, Tenn., hillbilly who four months ago married Third-Grader Eunice Winstead, 9 (TIME, Feb. 8); and Herbert Winstead, 17, Eunice’s elder brother; at New Hope, Tenn.
TIME, Aug 23, 1937
Education: Exempt Bride
One of the most troublesome children in Tennessee is Mrs. Eunice Johns, 9. When her marriage last winter to a lank, 23-year-old hillbilly named Charlie Johns provoked a national scandal (TIME, Feb. 15), Tennessee hastily enacted a law prohibiting the marriage of persons under 14. Last week Eunice Johns caused Tennessee to change another law, when in Nashville State Educational Commissioner William Arthur Bass ruled that neither Eunice nor any other “married children” would have to go back to school in the autumn.
Eunice left her school in Sneedville this spring when Teacher Wade Ferguson switched her for “jumping around.” What Teacher Ferguson had to contend with was revealed last week by Eunice’s father-in-law, Nick Johns, who turned up in Treadway to inquire about the possibilities of an annulment. He snorted: “She can’t learn nothin’ in school and she can’t learn nothin’ at home. I tried to learn her at home, but she don’t even know her ABC’s. She can’t count to 25 and she don’t know the day of the month or week.”
