¶ 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.