Searching for Addie: The Story behind a Famous Photograph.

I first saw the picture of Addie in the summer of 2002 at the Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vermont. In the photo, she leans on her spinning frame, staring out at the camera, dressed in a filthy, spotted smock. Her one pocket is stuffed so full that it seems to be pulling the right strap of her dress off her narrow shoulder. Her left arm rests easily on the frame, but it is crooked, at a strange angle, as if perhaps a bone had been broken and was never set properly. Her hair is pulled up away from her face. Her bare feet, planted firmly, are slick with black grease. She seems to look directly at you, her eyes wide open and solemn, her expression resigned, a little wary. She is beautiful. Addie's picture was just one in an exhibit of child labor photographs taken by famed photographer Lewis Hine in northern New England. The note Hine had scribbled in his pocket notebook reads, Anemic little spinner in North Pownal Cotton Mill, 1910. Once I saw Addie's face, I never forgot it. I wrote a work of historical fiction, Counting On Grace, because of that photograph. Even though I created my main character, Grace Forcier, from my imagination, and she grew to be her very own person, I always wondered about Addle. In addition to the individual portraits Hine took that day, he had gathered the children together for group shots, and Addie appears in two of them. In both, she is pressed up against an older girl, who is wearing a white shirt, a grease-stained skirt, and heavy shoes. They do not look alike, but the way Addle is leaning on the girl's shoulder gives the impression they might be sisters. But who was Addie? A note from a child labor investigator named E. F. Brown, who visited the mill in February of 1910, listed her as Addie Laird. Apparently, the people in North Pownal, Vermont, were always puzzled by that name. Most of the workers in New England mills in the early 1900s had been recruited from Canada, and Laird is a Scottish name. Then in 1998, at the urging of North Pownal officials, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp of Addie's picture to commemorate child labor laws in its Celebrate the Century series. At that time, researchers at the Department of Labor admitted they could find no trace of Addie Laird anywhere. I decided to go looking for her myself. And here is what I found. Starting in 1790 and every decade thereafter, the United States has conducted a census of its citizens. I was told that the Conte Archives in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, has those records on microfiche. They are linked to a computer program called Ancestry.com, which allows you to type in a name, place, and date to narrow your search. (Ancestry.com can be used from home computers, for a yearly or monthly fee.) The broader your parameters for a search, the more likely the net will sweep up something interesting. So, I decided I would simply work with Addie's first name. But when I typed North Pownal, Vermont, 1910 into the computer program, nothing came up. What about her full first name? I tried Adeline. No luck. I had one more idea. Adelaide. Bingo! The computer screen directed me to an Adelaide with a slightly different spelling: Adalaid Harris, Bennington County, Vermont, Roll 1612, page 111, Sheet 12B. I found the designated roll and, with trembling fingers, fed it into the microfiche reader. Then I scrolled through page after page of names scrawled in flowery, faded handwriting until I found sheet 12B. There she was. On the 4th day of May, 1910, in Pownal, Vermont, a George E. Corey had recorded the names of two Card sisters: Anna, female, white, 14 years of age, single; and Addie, female, white, 12 years of age, single. Both were living with their grandmother, Mrs. Adalaid Harris, listed as head of household. I had found Addie. Her name never was Laird: it was Card. (In fact, the computer program should have popped her up based on the name Addie, but the individuals who input the data seem to have concentrated on the heads of households. …

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