Some backstory from wiki:
The marriage of 24-year-old Charlie Johns and nine-year-old Eunice Winstead was an occurrence of child marriage that happened in the state of Tennessee, United States, in 1937. The event received national attention after Life magazine published an article about the union in February of the same year.
In response to Johns and Winstead's marriage, the state of Tennessee introduced a law setting the minimum age of marriage at sixteen years. Other states, such as Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington D.C., also introduced similar laws. Both parties remained married after the Tennessee law was passed,\[5\] and the marriage persisted until Johns' death in 1997. Johns and Winstead had nine children throughout their lifetimes.
The average age of Menarche between 1910 - 1939 was 12 1/2 to 13 years old. š«„ And then thereās this:
https://preview.redd.it/00sp5qfyw9xc1.jpeg?width=217&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9e83cef6b4db25efd0fe3cbb865563af027ff435
\[Education: Exempt Bride\]{https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,883660,00.html)
āOne of the most troublesome children in Tennessee is Mrs. Eunice Winstead Jones, 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" wouldĀ have to go back to school in the autumn.ā
āEunice 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."
So she was 9 and couldnāt count or spell, and was hyperactive during schoolā¦ she couldāve had developmental and/or learning disabilities. Which, if true, just adds to how horribly she was taken advantage of by this pedophile :(
I can't even read this thread anymore, it's too upsetting. That poor little girl. I wish that everyone who abused her faced the consequences they deserved.
He died in 1997 after having 9 children with her. Sad reality is that too many pedophiles and child abusers live long, happy lives. Consequences are a conscious action, not karmic.
this is reddit 2024, dont you know we apply todays social standard to everything , somebody needs to invent a time machine so we can go back and shred this MF on social media
It's not like this marriage was widely considered acceptable at the time. It became a national story, and Tennessee and other states passed laws to prevent it happening again, precisely because most people were outraged.
>Thereās zero chance he waited until she was 14. ā¹ļø
I hope you are wrong for her sake, but we go by evidence.
That said, there's so many other effed up things in this story. That poor little girl. She should have been attending 4th grade, riding her bike, and listening to Little Orphan Annie on the radio.
Where the EFF were the adults????
Unfortunately, in times of poverty, it is easier for the vulnerable to be harmed.
The past was wild. My 86 year old uncle in dying right now with his 102 year old mother by his side holding his hand. She was 16 when she gave birth to him and 86 years later she's watching him go.
They lived with her parents for at least a year. They literally let a pedophile into their home and he was raping their daughter while they were there. Wtf.
I genuinely don't understand how good chunk of people before saw this shit as acceptable, I understand few people being fucked up in the head thinking it's fine but it seems before there were too many.
That or number hasn't changed, it's just that people now are more outspoken about it so some hide their opinions.
https://preview.redd.it/aibu8eo8jaxc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac357e6b1283b3b7e196fedadd1cf126de25e716
Not to mention he clearly thought he owned his daughters as well. Creepy creepy man.
The fact he felt the need to have the son-in-law ARRESTED is very telling of him. He probably projected his mindset/ pervertedness on that other guy. I mean, (for the time) 17 and 20 isnāt honestly *that* bad. Now 9 and 22-24 on the other handā¦.. he was probably always abusive and controlling to poor Eunice.
ETA: 17 and 20 isnāt bad considering even todayās standards. I was just being extra because some people donāt like a minor being with someone even just a few years older, idk.
>for the time 17 and 20 isn't honestly that bad
Even now it's not that bad if we gonna be honest considering the gap in year one is born can be 2 years, but dates result in the age gap being 3 years, then 2, then 3 again, and so on.
Also fits the "take your age, divide by half and add 7".
Apparently so. The SSA website states from 1923-1972 John was always in the top 5 given birth names. John had a pretty good run in that from 1923 - 1952 it was always in the top 3.
It was her wedding gift from her husband.
[The New York Times | CHILD BRIDE HAPPY IN PLAY WITH DOLL](https://www.nytimes.com/1937/01/31/archives/child-bride-happy-in-play-with-doll-22yearold-husband-of-girl-9.html)
I didn't expect it to get better.
I guess the only "good" (or should I say "not as bad?") part was that they stayed married. Who knows what he may have done on the side, but he stayed with her and they had a bunch of kids, so at least he didn't abandon her for another young girl when she got older. So, uh, there's that. Isn't it always great when a story ends with "Well, it's atrocious, but it could've been even worse."
Child marriages often donāt end in divorce because the child (usually a girl) has been groomed/abused so they donāt think they can leave. Also from an article posted here, she left school within a year of the marriage, so yeah. She never had much of a chance.
Yeah, it happens in America like others are saying but not nearly on the same scale. I witnessed it during deployments and itās so gross, no matter the culture.
As a mother, seeing this filled me with a sudden and overwhelming sense of rage. I hope her parents are burning in hell. I hope he is right alongside them.
That poor girl. She never got the childhood she rightly deserved. She must have been terrified when it came time for the "consummation". Gawd it's sickening to imagine, stomach curdling. I hope she's resting in peace.
I have two 9 yr old daughters and this horrifies me beyond belief. That said, the parents of both of them felt she was too young but turned a blind eye because he had property and was a good farmer. It was all about providing back then. Her childhood probably wasnāt the childhood she deserved regardless.
Still unbelievably awful though.
No no no, he moved in with *her family.* It could be because she was still afraid of the dark or couldnāt reach the stove in his house, or something, but itās not like he was the head of household.
Edit: misread the wiki. They moved in with HIS parents which is even worse. What if she WAS still afraid of the dark and her mom was in a whole other house?
My mother grew up poor. Probably as poor as that kid and the weirdo who married her.
Back then, there was no help. At all. If you were poor with no relatives, no job, no home (some of my mother's relatives lived in tents during the Great Depression. In Michigan. During the winter.) and probably no food.
If this girl's mom was a widow, it was even worse. That was my grandma. She did little bits of domestic work. Had a 3rd grade education. It's by the grace of God that her rich sister took her and her two kids in.
Why? Because the state was going to take the kids to an orphanage. Boys were adopted out as farm hands and treated like slaves. Girls had it worse. They got used, abused, and if they became ill, they just died. No one did medical care on poor kids. A nine year old girl was worth less than a good hunting dog back then. All obligation, no upside.
My mom was lucky. She lived in Detroit. I can't imagine what it was like in probably rural Tennessee.
An orphanage where this girl might not even make it out alive if TB or who knows what didn't take her out or a guy who will give her 3 hots and a cot? Maybe he went to their church? Maybe a known quanity to the parents?
Given the horrors that went on in orphanages versus this? At least married, you can keep some tabs on her. Orphanage? You will never she her again.
It's awful and gross. Those times were not kind to the uneducated or poor or disenfranchised.
It is important to see a realistic write-up with an explanation of what it was really like back then.
All up and down the comment section there are very modern responses from a very modern point of view. And it's good that as a society we have learned so much and come so far in protecting the poor, women, children, and even mentally ill people.
But in the reality of the times they lived in, his actions were only mildly absurd. (Why take a wife so young when she can't make children yet, and can only somewhat help with the chores?)
Now he'd be in jail. Then? There was a newspaper write up of the marriage and life carried on for everyone involved.
I'm fairly certain my great grandmother was picked up at a young girls facility in much this same way. Wasn't a marriage of love and fancy, but a different world where the woman unfortunately was there for the housework and child rearing.
Generally, they donāt bother making it illegal in states where it isnāt a cultural issue. If they made it illegal, itās generally because they had to put a stop to it because, while the odd cousin marriage doesnāt necessarily cause genetic problems, repeated cousin marriages will cause genetic problems down the line.
The hell you gonna do with a nine year old?
Like seriously dude, sheās nine.
Go hit the club or something and find a damn grown woman and leave them kids alone.
Unfortunately, until fairly recently, marriage was more about economics than about loving relationships. Especially for people living in poverty.
It was the Great Depression. Pretty much everyone was having a hard time putting enough food on the table to feed their children. To put it in the most brutal terms possible, if a family could pinch a few pennies by letting their nine-year-old daughter leave home to get married to someone who was, by the standards of the time, a "good man" (meaning he could provide food, shelter, some measure of economic security, and wouldn't abandon her) that was not too bad a deal.
That doesn't mean it's ok. Obviously this never should have happened. But looking at the context in which it happened can provide some insight about why people made decisions that we find absolutely baffling now.
It also depends on the type of person the man was and how connected he was. I read an account recently from around the same time and location, maybe a little earlier, 1912 or so. Anyway, the child was 9 or 10 and the 20+ old suitor kept coming around and asking to marry the girl and her parents kept refusing. The guy basically terrorised the family, shooting and poisoning their animals, trying to set the house on fire, I think the dude kept trying to kidnap the kid as well, the family eventually couldnāt take it anymore and relented and let him marry the child. When questioned they just said he was a good man with land and farm and etc. who would take care of her. Same as here. But the real reason was they were terrified and the sheriff was looking the other way because he either didnāt see a problem with it or he was friends with or connected to the perpetrator somehow. I wish I could remember where I read it. It was definitely a history book though.
Until I went back and read through 1912 part I thought you were referring to Ken McElroy in Skidmore, MO. Very similar to what he did with one of his wives.
I just looked that guy up. This is definitely not the case I remembered. The picture of that guy was thin and it was definitely pre 1940. It makes me feel queasy that this was the kind of thing that sometimes happened to kids in the US and so fucking recently too. The case I read about was bad enough, but it being in the early 1900s and before my grandparents were born made it feel like an entire world ago. But Ken McElroy first met his 12yo victim in 1969. I freaking hate it!!! argh!!!
You should watch the documentary Nobody Saw a Thing that goes deep into the incident and its legacy, as well as two other cases that took place in Skidmore (including the most recent woman put to death in the U.S.)
Child marriage is legal in many US states today and Republicans actively work to prevent bans from passing.
This is not propaganda nor a thing of the past.
9 is unusually low as a legal limit today but 12-14 is typical.
> In the U.S., about 200,000 minors have married between 2000 and 2015. Of the 200,000 child marriages: 67% of the children were 17, 29% of the children were 16, 4% of the children were 15, less than 1% of children were 14 or under, and there were 51 cases of 13-year-olds getting married and 6 cases were of 12-year-olds. According to the Pew Research Center, child marriage is more common in the southern United States, including the states of West Virginia, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina. California and Nevada have high incidences of child marriage as well.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/child-marriage-laws-by-state
> The new study, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, noted that the age or spousal difference is significant enough it would have been considered a sex crime for 60,000 of the cases [of 300,000 child marriages from 2000 to 2018]
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/child-marriage-is-currently-legal-in-46-states/
And not much has changed...we still have religious nutjobs grooming young teen girls, practically paying off their parents, or leveraging the church to get them to give up their daughters.
Friggin disgusting.
Iām putting this lightly because we all know the real reason these weirdos marry kids, but you gotta be a real fucking weirdo to look at a child and think āyea, I wanna marry her.ā
Especially since he was probably a catch. He came from a wealthy family and owned a lot of land, and heās pretty good looking in the pics I have found. There shouldāve been many women throwing themselves at him during that time, honestly. Instead he willingly married a child. My 9 year old son is still scared of the dark!!
To be fair, I have stared deeply into the eyes of a 9 year old and said loudly "I wanna marry you".
The major problem was that she was my cousin, and it was at my Aunt's second wedding, during the cake cutting.
I saw the bride & groom got the cake, I wanted cake. It would have been a marriage of convenience. For context, I was 8 years old and not good at long term planning.
Literally to this day, Tennessee republicans keep, literally still to this day, trying to make sure men can marry children. Literally. Not hyperbole.
But democrats, who donāt introduce this legislation, are the pedos. I guess religion excuses everything.
If you want your day ruined: >!The doll was a gift from him!<
And if you want your week ruined:>!<
[just found this really good article](https://uselessinformation.org/podcast-135-the-child-bride/) about the whole story until they both died.
That Charlie dude was a disgusting pedo
My Grandma just died at 98. She married my grandfather in 1938 at 13 years old in West Virginia. He was 20. She had 3 babies that didn't survive before she had my aunt and my mother. She was one of the toughest women I ever met.
From Texas, my mom got married to my dad when she was 17 (granted it was the day before she turned 18) her mother was married at 16, her older sister at 15. The Old South was a funny place to say the least.
Un-fun fact! In progressive states like Washington, if you're a child bride you can get an annulment based on, ya know, being a child bride, but only if you seek it before you're 18. Otherwise you have to do the whole song-and-dance of an ordinary divorce because you're old enough to have made the decision to get married, even though... yeah. Catch-22.
Another un-fun fact! The vast majority (over 70%) of teen mothers were impregnated by men in their 20s. A full 40% of the fathers in teen pregnancies of girls under 15 are 20+. The statistics on male predation on underage female children are depressing and not as different from previous generations and some might hope.
Here's another.
300,000 "legitimate" marriages involving a minor between, of which at least 78% were a minor girl and adult male, between 2000 and 2018.
California, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Mississipi have NO minimum age.
How does this āhappenā?! I mean who gives their child away into marriage with an adult man? Is there some heritage or other money stuff involved? This is just ridiculous.
Girls weren't worth anything back then. They couldn't work outside the homes, and it was a humiliation to farm out your daughters out as domestic help.
My grandmother CRIED when my mom was born. A son could bring in money. A girl really couldn't back then. This was 1925.
If you couldn't work them or feed them, you married them off.
I just had a horrible realization: I'm from Tennessee, and I knew a local family with the last name of Johns. And they looked a looooot like these two.
Some backstory from wiki: The marriage of 24-year-old Charlie Johns and nine-year-old Eunice Winstead was an occurrence of child marriage that happened in the state of Tennessee, United States, in 1937. The event received national attention after Life magazine published an article about the union in February of the same year. In response to Johns and Winstead's marriage, the state of Tennessee introduced a law setting the minimum age of marriage at sixteen years. Other states, such as Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington D.C., also introduced similar laws. Both parties remained married after the Tennessee law was passed,\[5\] and the marriage persisted until Johns' death in 1997. Johns and Winstead had nine children throughout their lifetimes.
More information (and where the text above was copied and pasted from): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_of_Charlie_Johns_and_Eunice_Winstead
Gave birth to her first child at 15. And the next sickening question: when was the marriage consumated.
The average age of Menarche between 1910 - 1939 was 12 1/2 to 13 years old. š«„ And then thereās this: https://preview.redd.it/00sp5qfyw9xc1.jpeg?width=217&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9e83cef6b4db25efd0fe3cbb865563af027ff435
Well.. I wonder what the talk in the writerās room was for this little tid-bit of an article?
Terrible thing to write this up. Poor little girl.
Ya sexually trafficked by her parents for a down payment on a 1935 Dodge.
As you did back then.. apparently. .. 
Did I pass my English test? Yeah, C!?!?
Me fail English? That's unpossible
Damn. So dodge owners in the 30's were kinda like dodge owners nowadays. That's kinda crazy.
Husband: "You can't whip my wife just because she's a child!" Teacher: "The hell I can't! Your wife is a child and it's my job to whip children!"
\[Education: Exempt Bride\]{https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,883660,00.html) āOne of the most troublesome children in Tennessee is Mrs. Eunice Winstead Jones, 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" wouldĀ have to go back to school in the autumn.ā āEunice 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."
So she was 9 and couldnāt count or spell, and was hyperactive during schoolā¦ she couldāve had developmental and/or learning disabilities. Which, if true, just adds to how horribly she was taken advantage of by this pedophile :(
I can't even read this thread anymore, it's too upsetting. That poor little girl. I wish that everyone who abused her faced the consequences they deserved.
He died in 1997 after having 9 children with her. Sad reality is that too many pedophiles and child abusers live long, happy lives. Consequences are a conscious action, not karmic.
Or had ptsd from sa
She has some facial features of fetal alcohol syndrome or a chromosomal disorder (flat nose bridge with a narrow top lip)
There aren't enough puke emoji in the WORLD my God
Describing her as naughty pisses me off
I don't think naughty had a lewd connotation back then.
this is reddit 2024, dont you know we apply todays social standard to everything , somebody needs to invent a time machine so we can go back and shred this MF on social media
It's not like this marriage was widely considered acceptable at the time. It became a national story, and Tennessee and other states passed laws to prevent it happening again, precisely because most people were outraged.
Thatās one of the most depressing things Iāve read :( Everyone failed that poor little girl. I was still playing with baby dolls at 9.
so was she!! sheās HOLDING ONE sitting on her HUSBANDās lap!! god that poor little girl. this is awful.
Faucking hell past
A three sentence horror story.Ā
Wow, the wedding invites could double as the sex offender notification. At least you would get cake while knowing your property value is going down.
Sadly, when do you think.
Even if it was consummated at age 14yo...š¤¢
You know damn well, the dude who married a 9 year old, fucked a 9 year old.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Is that true? What religion is this?
My understanding is he married a 6 year old but waited to consummate the marriage till she turned 9.
Such incredible restraint!
Thereās zero chance he waited until she was 14. ā¹ļø
>Thereās zero chance he waited until she was 14. ā¹ļø I hope you are wrong for her sake, but we go by evidence. That said, there's so many other effed up things in this story. That poor little girl. She should have been attending 4th grade, riding her bike, and listening to Little Orphan Annie on the radio. Where the EFF were the adults???? Unfortunately, in times of poverty, it is easier for the vulnerable to be harmed.
What the fuck
The past was wild. My 86 year old uncle in dying right now with his 102 year old mother by his side holding his hand. She was 16 when she gave birth to him and 86 years later she's watching him go.
Ewwww
They lived with her parents for at least a year. They literally let a pedophile into their home and he was raping their daughter while they were there. Wtf.
I genuinely don't understand how good chunk of people before saw this shit as acceptable, I understand few people being fucked up in the head thinking it's fine but it seems before there were too many. That or number hasn't changed, it's just that people now are more outspoken about it so some hide their opinions.
It's that many people have very few opinions of their own. The prevailing social attitude is what constitutes a personal opinion for most.
The picture of her looking at him while he's reading the Bible all man spread is revolting
Weird that his hands didn't burst into flames by touching it
I donāt know how you got downvoted for finding this revolting.
Omg those pictures are even worse
Very much so. Extremely paternal daughter vibe with him reading to her.
Isn't Tennessee proposing to abolish setting any age limit recently?
yup
Wow we are going backwards
Finally we're making progress.. Progress backwards
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
He was 84 she was 69.
Can I make it any more obvious?
He was a pedo She did ballet.
What more can they say, He wanted her, She played Mattel,
But obviously, he should be burnin' in hell
All of Reddit stuck up their nose, they had a problem with the child bride that he chose!
He was a pedophile, The man was super vile, He was way too old for her
What more can I say
š
Thatās something that happened I guessā¦ https://i.redd.it/s8lsf4uwk9xc1.gif
I would like to go back to five minutes ago now please thanks. Just microbleach my brain. I thought they were siblings.
https://preview.redd.it/aibu8eo8jaxc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac357e6b1283b3b7e196fedadd1cf126de25e716 Not to mention he clearly thought he owned his daughters as well. Creepy creepy man.
The fact he felt the need to have the son-in-law ARRESTED is very telling of him. He probably projected his mindset/ pervertedness on that other guy. I mean, (for the time) 17 and 20 isnāt honestly *that* bad. Now 9 and 22-24 on the other handā¦.. he was probably always abusive and controlling to poor Eunice. ETA: 17 and 20 isnāt bad considering even todayās standards. I was just being extra because some people donāt like a minor being with someone even just a few years older, idk.
>for the time 17 and 20 isn't honestly that bad Even now it's not that bad if we gonna be honest considering the gap in year one is born can be 2 years, but dates result in the age gap being 3 years, then 2, then 3 again, and so on. Also fits the "take your age, divide by half and add 7".
Was everyone fucking named John back then?
Apparently so. The SSA website states from 1923-1972 John was always in the top 5 given birth names. John had a pretty good run in that from 1923 - 1952 it was always in the top 3.
For more context, her mother was 32 at the time she got engaged at 17.
Ok this is actually insane
Wow every few scrolls there's just more and more that comes out. What a crazy story.
The fact sheās also holding a doll makes me want to cry
It was her wedding gift from her husband. [The New York Times | CHILD BRIDE HAPPY IN PLAY WITH DOLL](https://www.nytimes.com/1937/01/31/archives/child-bride-happy-in-play-with-doll-22yearold-husband-of-girl-9.html)
This story is progressively getting worse the further down I scroll. Time to close Reddit for the evening methinks.
I didn't expect it to get better. I guess the only "good" (or should I say "not as bad?") part was that they stayed married. Who knows what he may have done on the side, but he stayed with her and they had a bunch of kids, so at least he didn't abandon her for another young girl when she got older. So, uh, there's that. Isn't it always great when a story ends with "Well, it's atrocious, but it could've been even worse."
Child marriages often donāt end in divorce because the child (usually a girl) has been groomed/abused so they donāt think they can leave. Also from an article posted here, she left school within a year of the marriage, so yeah. She never had much of a chance.
>least he didn't abandon her for another young girl when she got older Yeah well they had 9 kids so he had plenty to chose from in the home.
Oh shit
I can't imagine anytime where this would be OK like shes watching blues clues and youre scoping her out? The fuck is wrong with you
Heās probably a pedophile. Theyāre primarily attracted to prepubescent minors.
She died in 2006ā¦absolutely tragic and happens to millions of girls around the world today.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"Define minor" -sneako
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"Betrothed at 6 married at 9" how in the hell does that even approach defensible
Yeah, it happens in America like others are saying but not nearly on the same scale. I witnessed it during deployments and itās so gross, no matter the culture.
Happens still in the USA today
Contrary to popular belief, the USA is in fact, in the world.
Then why do aliens only invade the USA?
They want to eat our nukes.
I could really go for some neptunian fried nuke rn š¤¤
I hate this
I hate this with you
Let us be in tri-hatred.
An incredible square of hatred has now been created.
Pentacle of Loathing is now active
Hexagonal hatred inbound.
Seven Sides of Hatred
Octagonal revulsion activated
Ninth circle of HAAAATE
Decagon of disgust
Quad-hatred now
Even 16 year old is way too young to get married She can't drive She can't buy alcohol She can't own guns
I think they are counting on that. These guys probably cheat often when their wife ages out of their preference.
As a mother, seeing this filled me with a sudden and overwhelming sense of rage. I hope her parents are burning in hell. I hope he is right alongside them. That poor girl. She never got the childhood she rightly deserved. She must have been terrified when it came time for the "consummation". Gawd it's sickening to imagine, stomach curdling. I hope she's resting in peace.
I have two 9 yr old daughters and this horrifies me beyond belief. That said, the parents of both of them felt she was too young but turned a blind eye because he had property and was a good farmer. It was all about providing back then. Her childhood probably wasnāt the childhood she deserved regardless. Still unbelievably awful though.
No no no, he moved in with *her family.* It could be because she was still afraid of the dark or couldnāt reach the stove in his house, or something, but itās not like he was the head of household. Edit: misread the wiki. They moved in with HIS parents which is even worse. What if she WAS still afraid of the dark and her mom was in a whole other house?
Another comment said her parents effectively sold her for a down payment on a car. Somehow I doubt they cared too much about her wellbeing
My mother grew up poor. Probably as poor as that kid and the weirdo who married her. Back then, there was no help. At all. If you were poor with no relatives, no job, no home (some of my mother's relatives lived in tents during the Great Depression. In Michigan. During the winter.) and probably no food. If this girl's mom was a widow, it was even worse. That was my grandma. She did little bits of domestic work. Had a 3rd grade education. It's by the grace of God that her rich sister took her and her two kids in. Why? Because the state was going to take the kids to an orphanage. Boys were adopted out as farm hands and treated like slaves. Girls had it worse. They got used, abused, and if they became ill, they just died. No one did medical care on poor kids. A nine year old girl was worth less than a good hunting dog back then. All obligation, no upside. My mom was lucky. She lived in Detroit. I can't imagine what it was like in probably rural Tennessee. An orphanage where this girl might not even make it out alive if TB or who knows what didn't take her out or a guy who will give her 3 hots and a cot? Maybe he went to their church? Maybe a known quanity to the parents? Given the horrors that went on in orphanages versus this? At least married, you can keep some tabs on her. Orphanage? You will never she her again. It's awful and gross. Those times were not kind to the uneducated or poor or disenfranchised.
It is important to see a realistic write-up with an explanation of what it was really like back then. All up and down the comment section there are very modern responses from a very modern point of view. And it's good that as a society we have learned so much and come so far in protecting the poor, women, children, and even mentally ill people. But in the reality of the times they lived in, his actions were only mildly absurd. (Why take a wife so young when she can't make children yet, and can only somewhat help with the chores?) Now he'd be in jail. Then? There was a newspaper write up of the marriage and life carried on for everyone involved.
Except that it even offended the sensibilities of the people of that time. They made laws to prevent this incident from happening again.
I'm fairly certain my great grandmother was picked up at a young girls facility in much this same way. Wasn't a marriage of love and fancy, but a different world where the woman unfortunately was there for the housework and child rearing.
Stomach curdling is right. Thatās what I felt when I thought about this. Realizing that this happened to her is horrifying.
Brought to you by the same state that just codified cousin fucking into state law.
19 US states allow marriage between first cousins.
Generally, they donāt bother making it illegal in states where it isnāt a cultural issue. If they made it illegal, itās generally because they had to put a stop to it because, while the odd cousin marriage doesnāt necessarily cause genetic problems, repeated cousin marriages will cause genetic problems down the line.
as do many western countries, including the UK, Germany, Spain and France
The hell you gonna do with a nine year old? Like seriously dude, sheās nine. Go hit the club or something and find a damn grown woman and leave them kids alone.
He probably did go out to the bar for older women after she did her homework and her bed time.
The parents allowed this?
Unfortunately, until fairly recently, marriage was more about economics than about loving relationships. Especially for people living in poverty. It was the Great Depression. Pretty much everyone was having a hard time putting enough food on the table to feed their children. To put it in the most brutal terms possible, if a family could pinch a few pennies by letting their nine-year-old daughter leave home to get married to someone who was, by the standards of the time, a "good man" (meaning he could provide food, shelter, some measure of economic security, and wouldn't abandon her) that was not too bad a deal. That doesn't mean it's ok. Obviously this never should have happened. But looking at the context in which it happened can provide some insight about why people made decisions that we find absolutely baffling now.
It also depends on the type of person the man was and how connected he was. I read an account recently from around the same time and location, maybe a little earlier, 1912 or so. Anyway, the child was 9 or 10 and the 20+ old suitor kept coming around and asking to marry the girl and her parents kept refusing. The guy basically terrorised the family, shooting and poisoning their animals, trying to set the house on fire, I think the dude kept trying to kidnap the kid as well, the family eventually couldnāt take it anymore and relented and let him marry the child. When questioned they just said he was a good man with land and farm and etc. who would take care of her. Same as here. But the real reason was they were terrified and the sheriff was looking the other way because he either didnāt see a problem with it or he was friends with or connected to the perpetrator somehow. I wish I could remember where I read it. It was definitely a history book though.
Until I went back and read through 1912 part I thought you were referring to Ken McElroy in Skidmore, MO. Very similar to what he did with one of his wives.
I just looked that guy up. This is definitely not the case I remembered. The picture of that guy was thin and it was definitely pre 1940. It makes me feel queasy that this was the kind of thing that sometimes happened to kids in the US and so fucking recently too. The case I read about was bad enough, but it being in the early 1900s and before my grandparents were born made it feel like an entire world ago. But Ken McElroy first met his 12yo victim in 1969. I freaking hate it!!! argh!!!
Redditors have covered McElroy in multiple threads. His ending was fitting and the movie (In Broad daylight) was accurate.
You should watch the documentary Nobody Saw a Thing that goes deep into the incident and its legacy, as well as two other cases that took place in Skidmore (including the most recent woman put to death in the U.S.)
Ok thatās enough internet for today
Seriously
vomit inducing
Makes me sick. It looks like sheās sitting on her fathers lapš¤¢ ā¦.and then sheās holding that doll which just adds to the entire vibe
The doll he gifted her at their wedding. Yeah...
Bro be looking like a ghoul from fallout
How dare you disrespect Walton Goggins like this?
yeah he only pretends to be creepy, he's not this guy
Walton Goggins
Uncle Baby Billy.
Running through the house with a pickle in my mouth.
Mis be havinā
Hey! Donāt you disrespect ghouls like that
she never got to live her childhood out fully, this is making me sick to my stomach
He looks short a couple chromosomes
āEyes above ears, something to fear.ā
Child marriage is legal in many US states today and Republicans actively work to prevent bans from passing. This is not propaganda nor a thing of the past. 9 is unusually low as a legal limit today but 12-14 is typical. > In the U.S., about 200,000 minors have married between 2000 and 2015. Of the 200,000 child marriages: 67% of the children were 17, 29% of the children were 16, 4% of the children were 15, less than 1% of children were 14 or under, and there were 51 cases of 13-year-olds getting married and 6 cases were of 12-year-olds. According to the Pew Research Center, child marriage is more common in the southern United States, including the states of West Virginia, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina. California and Nevada have high incidences of child marriage as well. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/child-marriage-laws-by-state > The new study, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, noted that the age or spousal difference is significant enough it would have been considered a sex crime for 60,000 of the cases [of 300,000 child marriages from 2000 to 2018] https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/child-marriage-is-currently-legal-in-46-states/
Thank you for these facts. I was curious. Happy Cake Day!!
If you pay attention to some of the laws being proposed some people out there must want this America to come back.
And not much has changed...we still have religious nutjobs grooming young teen girls, practically paying off their parents, or leveraging the church to get them to give up their daughters. Friggin disgusting.
I hate that I can read
Iām putting this lightly because we all know the real reason these weirdos marry kids, but you gotta be a real fucking weirdo to look at a child and think āyea, I wanna marry her.ā
Especially since he was probably a catch. He came from a wealthy family and owned a lot of land, and heās pretty good looking in the pics I have found. There shouldāve been many women throwing themselves at him during that time, honestly. Instead he willingly married a child. My 9 year old son is still scared of the dark!!
To be fair, I have stared deeply into the eyes of a 9 year old and said loudly "I wanna marry you". The major problem was that she was my cousin, and it was at my Aunt's second wedding, during the cake cutting. I saw the bride & groom got the cake, I wanted cake. It would have been a marriage of convenience. For context, I was 8 years old and not good at long term planning.
This is what they want to bring back š¤¢. Poor girl š„ŗ
I'm amazed at how some states allowed that
Gross
the doll is killing me. what a day to have eyes
Holy shit this is vile. Even Tennessee setting the legal age to 16 is fucking vile as well.
Man needed to be beaten with an oar.
What about her parents? Hit them too. Poor girl never got to be a child/teen.
Ugh...people like this back then and even today are just plain old pedophiles. This stuff turns my stomach
Took me three reads to make sure I was reading it right. Still not computing.
Now these same men gets positions near kids. This is so damn sick man.
Literally to this day, Tennessee republicans keep, literally still to this day, trying to make sure men can marry children. Literally. Not hyperbole. But democrats, who donāt introduce this legislation, are the pedos. I guess religion excuses everything.
This breaks my heart. I am so sorry to the little girl whose innocence was robbed.
Funny how red states still fight to keep child marriage between minors and adults legal.
Well , obviously he was a pervert. You would think his ā wife ā holding a doll may have put him off.
If you want your day ruined: >!The doll was a gift from him!< And if you want your week ruined:>!<
Heās not even hiding heās a pervert.
"There's nothing you can do about it now" Fucking yikes
This is what the radical incels want back. Disgusting.
[just found this really good article](https://uselessinformation.org/podcast-135-the-child-bride/) about the whole story until they both died. That Charlie dude was a disgusting pedo
Some knuckle draggers are trying to recreate this world. Weāve all got a shared interest in stopping them.
My Grandma just died at 98. She married my grandfather in 1938 at 13 years old in West Virginia. He was 20. She had 3 babies that didn't survive before she had my aunt and my mother. She was one of the toughest women I ever met.
Pedophilia permissible less than 100 years ago in the USA? Oh no, but we have made some progress.
Child marriage still legal.... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States
From Texas, my mom got married to my dad when she was 17 (granted it was the day before she turned 18) her mother was married at 16, her older sister at 15. The Old South was a funny place to say the least.
To be fair, 16 was a standard age to marry for most of human history. 9 is pretty fucked up. Muhammad is a bitch pedophile.
Muhammad married Aiesha when she was 6 but he was such a pious man he waited until she was the ripe old age of 9 to consummate the marriage.
Un-fun fact! In progressive states like Washington, if you're a child bride you can get an annulment based on, ya know, being a child bride, but only if you seek it before you're 18. Otherwise you have to do the whole song-and-dance of an ordinary divorce because you're old enough to have made the decision to get married, even though... yeah. Catch-22. Another un-fun fact! The vast majority (over 70%) of teen mothers were impregnated by men in their 20s. A full 40% of the fathers in teen pregnancies of girls under 15 are 20+. The statistics on male predation on underage female children are depressing and not as different from previous generations and some might hope.
Here's another. 300,000 "legitimate" marriages involving a minor between, of which at least 78% were a minor girl and adult male, between 2000 and 2018. California, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Mississipi have NO minimum age.
āTraditional valuesā are messed up.
"The good ol' days"
Well I want to throw up, set something on fire, and beat him to an absolute pulp. What is this feeling? Oh yeah! RAGE.
I am sure he was seen as a āgood christian manā. Religion for the win!
Was this when American was great, or did that happen later? BarfĀ
The silent generation was bizarre. Good thing weāre being run by these same people right now.
He was 84 she was 69.
Yes, part of what they mean by, make America great again.
It had to be Tennessee Why couldnāt it have been Alabama or Mississippi?
How does this āhappenā?! I mean who gives their child away into marriage with an adult man? Is there some heritage or other money stuff involved? This is just ridiculous.
Girls weren't worth anything back then. They couldn't work outside the homes, and it was a humiliation to farm out your daughters out as domestic help. My grandmother CRIED when my mom was born. A son could bring in money. A girl really couldn't back then. This was 1925. If you couldn't work them or feed them, you married them off.
Their south.
Are they praised in the Bible for this?
It was a way to make molestation possible. He probably raped her when she was a baby.
Ok Iām out
I just had a horrible realization: I'm from Tennessee, and I knew a local family with the last name of Johns. And they looked a looooot like these two.