The truth behind this 1920 wedding photo is sadder than anyone could imagine.
On October 3rd, 2024, Dr.
Rebecca Hayes stood in a cramped attic in Harland County, Kentucky, sorting through boxes of photographs and documents left behind by the recently deceased Evelyn Carson, who had passed away at age 97 with no living descendants.
>> [music] >> Rebecca worked as a historical researcher and estate appraiser, specializing in Appalachian family histories, and she had been hired by the county to assess the contents of the Carson House before it was sold to settle debts.
The attic was stifling despite the cool autumn weather outside.
Decades of accumulated possessions filled every corner.
[music] furniture with broken legs, boxes of motheaten clothing, stacks of newspapers from the 1950s, [music] and dozens of photograph albums documenting a century of family history.
Rebecca had been working for 3 days cataloging items and identifying anything that might have historical or monetary value.
Most of the photographs were typical for rural Kentucky [music] families of the early 20th century.
formal portraits taken at studios in town, snapshots of children playing in yards, images [music] of family gatherings and church events.
But one photograph tucked into a leather album dated 1920 immediately caught Rebecca’s attention.
The image showed a wedding scene, but not in a church or [music] formal venue.
Instead, it appeared to have been taken in someone’s home.
A modest parlor with plain wooden walls and simple furnishings visible in the background.
[music] A young bride stood in the center of the frame wearing a white dress that looked hastily made with uneven hemming and loose stitching visible even in the old photograph.
Her hair was arranged simply, [music] and she wore no veil or elaborate accessories.
Beside her stood a much older man in a dark suit, his face weathered and stern.
He appeared to be in his late 40s or early 50s, [music] while the bride looked extraordinarily young, perhaps 15 or 16 years old at most.
The age difference was [music] startling but not entirely unusual for rural Appalachian communities in 1920 where marriages between young girls and older men still occurred with some regularity.
What struck Rebecca most forcefully was the bride’s expression.
She had seen thousands of wedding photographs from this era, and brides typically displayed either solemn dignity or carefully composed happiness.
This girl’s face showed something entirely different.
[music] Raw terror mixed with resignation.
Her eyes wide and unfocused, her mouth set in a tight line that suggested she was fighting to maintain composure.
Rebecca carefully removed the photograph from the album and examined the back.
[music] Written in faded pencil was a notation.
Ruth Anne wedding day, March 15th, 1920.
Rebecca photographed the wedding image with her highresolution camera, intending to include it in her appraisal report as an example of early 20th century vernacular photography.
Back at her office that evening, she uploaded the image to her computer and began the process of digital enhancement, a standard procedure that allowed her to examine old photographs more closely and identify details that might not be visible to the naked eye.
She adjusted the contrast and brightness, bringing out details that had faded over the past 104 years.
The wooden walls of the parlor became clearer, showing the rough texture of unpainted boards.
The simple furnishings, a table, two chairs, a shelf with a few books, suggested a household of limited means.
A window in the background showed trees outside, indicating a rural setting.
Rebecca zoomed in on the bride’s face, examining her expression more closely.
The girl’s eyes held a quality that Rebecca had seen before in historical photographs, a kind of dissociation, as if the person being photographed was mentally removing themselves from the present moment.
Her skin appeared pale even through the sepia tones of the photograph, and there were dark circles under her eyes suggesting either illness or extreme exhaustion.
Then Rebecca zoomed in on the bride’s hands, which were clasped in front of her, holding a small bouquet of wild flowers.
At first glance, the positioning seemed natural enough.
Brides often posed with their hands folded.
But as Rebecca increased the magnification to 800%.
She noticed something that made her breath catch.
[music] Around the bride’s wrists, barely visible beneath the long sleeves of her dress, were thin lines that appeared darker than the surrounding fabric.
Rebecca adjusted the contrast [music] further, and the lines became more distinct.
They weren’t shadows or photographic artifacts.
They were cords, thin rope or twine binding the girl’s wrists together beneath [music] the bouquet.
Rebecca sat back in her chair, staring at the screen.
She told herself she must be mistaken, that she was seeing patterns that weren’t really there, but she had spent 15 years examining historical photographs, and she knew the difference between image artifacts and actual physical objects captured by the camera.
She zoomed in on the bride’s ankles, visible beneath the hem of her dress.
The same thin, dark lines appeared there, partially hidden by the drape of fabric, but unmistakable once Rebecca knew what she was looking for.
The bride’s ankles were bound together.
The rope tight enough to be clearly visible in the photograph.
This girl had been physically restrained during her own wedding ceremony.
[music] Someone had tied her hands and feet to prevent her from running.
And then they had photographed her that way, creating a permanent record of what could only be described as a forced marriage.
Rebecca spent a sleepless night thinking about the photograph.
By morning, she had made a decision.
She needed to understand who this girl was and what had happened to her.
The notation on the back had provided a name and date.
Ruth Anne, March 15th, 1920.
Rebecca returned to the Carson house and began searching systematically through the remaining boxes and albums, looking for any other references to Ruth Anne or any documents that might provide additional context.
In a trunk filled with old papers, Rebecca found a family Bible that had belonged to the Carson family.
The Bible contained a genealogy section where births, marriages, and deaths had been recorded in various hands over several generations.
>> [music] >> She found the entry she was looking for on a page dated 1920.
Ruth Anne Hutchkins, born April 2nd, 1904.
Married to Thomas William Carson, March 15th, 1920.
The dates confirmed what Rebecca had suspected from the photograph.
[music] Ruth Anne had been 15 years old, barely more than a child, when she was married.
Rebecca searched for Thomas William Carson’s birth date [music] and found it listed several pages earlier.
born November 18th, [music] 1867.
He had been 52 years old when he married Ruth Anne, a man old enough to be her grandfather.
Rebecca [music] continued searching and found a death certificate tucked into the Bible’s pages.
Ruth Anne Carson had died on August 3rd, 1928 at age 24.
The cause of death was listed as complications of childbirth.
She had been married for only 8 years before dying in what was likely her seventh or eighth pregnancy [music] given the typical patterns of rural Appalachian families during that period.
The Bible also listed children born to Ruth Anne and Thomas.
John Carson born 1921, [music] Mary Carson, born 1922.
Elizabeth Carson, born 1923.
[music] Thomas Carson Jr.
and born 1924, unnamed infant, still born 1925.
Robert Carson, born 1926.
[music] And finally, an unnamed infant, born 1928, which Rebecca assumed was the birth that had killed Ruth Anne.
Six pregnancies in 8 years, with the last one fatal.
Ruth Anne had spent her entire brief marriage either pregnant or recovering from childbirth, dying before she reached her 25th birthday.
Rebecca found one more document, a property deed dated March 1920, the same month as the wedding.
The deed showed that land owned by Andrew Hutchkins, [music] Ruth Anne’s father, Rebecca assumed, had been transferred to Thomas Carson for the sum of $200, with the notation [music] in consideration of marriage contract and settlement of debts.
The pieces were falling into place, creating a picture that was becoming increasingly disturbing.
Ruth Anne had been sold, there was no other word for it, [music] to Thomas Carson to settle her father’s debts.
and based on the ropes visible in the wedding photograph, she had not gone willingly.
Rebecca drove to the Harlem County Courthouse the next morning, requesting access to any public records related to Ruth Anne Hutchkins and Thomas Carson.
The county clerk, a woman in her 60s named Martha Green, was initially skeptical about providing access to records more than a century old, but Rebecca’s credentials as a historical researcher, and her explanation of the wedding photograph convinced her.
Martha led Rebecca to a basement storage room filled with filing cabinets and bound volumes containing marriage licenses, property records, and court [music] documents dating back to the county’s founding.
Most of this hasn’t been digitized, Martha explained.
We’ve been trying to get funding for a scanning project, but it’s slowgoing.
[music] You’re welcome to search through what’s here.
Rebecca found the marriage license for Ruth Anne Hutchkins and Thomas Carson dated March 10th, 1920, [music] 5 days before the wedding photograph was taken.
The license had been signed by Ruth [music] Anne, her father Andrew Hutchkins, and Thomas Carson.
Ruth Anne’s signature was shaky and irregular, as if written by [music] someone barely literate or under extreme duress.
More interestingly, Rebecca found a notation in the county sheriff’s log book dated March 12th, 1920, 3 days before the wedding.
The entry read, “Called to Hutchkins property on Grassy Creek [music] Road.
Andrew Hutchkins reported his daughter Ruth Anne missing.
Girl located at midnight attempting to walk to Harland Town.
Returned to father’s custody.
No charges [music] filed.
Ruth Anne had tried to run away.
She had made it far enough from her father’s property [music] to be reported missing, but the sheriff had brought her back and returned her to the father who was selling her into marriage.
Rebecca found another sheriff’s log entry dated March 14th, [music] 1920.
Second call to Hutchkins property.
Andrew Hutchkins reported daughter attempting to flee again.
Girl secured.
Hutchkins requested no further intervention.
Matter considered resolved.
The words secured sent chills down Rebecca’s spine.
Combined with the ropes visible in the wedding photograph taken the next day, it seemed clear that Ruth Anne had been physically restrained after her second escape attempt and kept tied up through the wedding ceremony itself.
Rebecca searched for any court records related to Ruth Anne or Thomas Carson in the years following the marriage.
She found nothing, no complaints, no petitions, no legal actions of any kind.
Whatever Ruth Anne had endured in her marriage, she had done so in silence with no intervention from law enforcement or the courts.
Finally, Rebecca found Ruth Anne’s death certificate in the county vital records.
Cause of death, hemorrhage following childbirth.
Attending physician, Dr.
James Morrison.
Place of death, Carson residence, Grassy Creek Road.
Rebecca tracked down descendants of Dr.
James Morrison through County Historical Society records.
Morrison had been one of only three physicians serving rural Harland County in the 1920s, traveling by horse and later by automobile to treat patients scattered across remote mountain valleys.
He had died in 1952, but his great-g grandanddaughter, Dr.
Helen Morrison, still lived in Harlem and maintained a family archive that included some of her great-grandfather’s medical records.
Helen was a retired pediatrician who had spent her career in Louisville before returning to Harland County.
She invited Rebecca to her home, a modern house on the outskirts of town, and brought out several boxes of materials that had belonged to her great-grandfather.
I’ve been meaning to donate these to the county historical society, [music] Helen explained.
But I keep putting it off.
Some of the cases he documented are quite disturbing.
The poverty, the lack of medical care, [music] the things people endured.
It’s important history, but it’s not easy to read.
Among Dr.
Morrison’s papers was a ledger where he had kept notes on his most challenging or [music] unusual cases.
Rebecca found an entry dated August 3rd, 1928, the day of Ruth Anne’s death.
Called to Carson residence at dawn.
Ruth Anne Carson, age 24, in labor with seventh child.
[music] Arrival found patient severely weakened, significant blood loss.
Signs of previous untreated injuries suggesting domestic violence.
Labor complicated by patients poor [music] physical condition and apparent malnutrition.
Infant delivered stillborn.
Patient hemorrhaged extensively.
Expired approximately a.m.
despite all efforts.
Husband Thomas Carson showed no emotion at wife’s [music] death.
Immediately inquired about disposing of body.
Disturbing [music] case.
This young woman should never have been subjected to so many pregnancies in such short succession.
Her body simply gave out.
I have delivered many babies in difficult circumstances, but this death was preventable and tragic.
The marriage itself was a crime, though legal under current statutes.
The doctor’s frank assessment confirmed what Rebecca had pieced together from other records.
Ruth Anne had been trapped in a marriage that had literally killed her.
Her body destroyed by repeated pregnancies and what the doctor had identified as ongoing physical abuse.
Helen read the entry over Rebecca’s shoulder and was quiet for a moment.
I remember my grandfather talking about cases like this when I was in medical school, she said finally.
Young girls married off to older men, treated like [music] property, worked and bred until they died.
It happened more often than anyone wants to acknowledge.
My great-grandfather tried to advocate for these women, but he was just one doctor in a huge rural area, [music] and the law was on the husband’s side.
Rebecca asked if there were any other records related to Ruth Anne Carson.
Helen searched through another box and found a letter dated 1931 written by Dr.
Morrison to the Kentucky State Medical Board.
The letter Helen found was five pages long, handwritten on Dr.
from Morrison’s office stationary.
It was dated October 1931, more than 3 years after Ruth Anne’s death.
In it, doctor Morrison detailed several cases he had encountered involving very young brides married to significantly older men, [music] arguing that the practice constituted a public health crisis that required legislative intervention.
The letter included Ruth Anne’s case as a primary example.
I delivered Ruth Anne Carson of seven pregnancies between 1921 and 1928, beginning when she was barely 17 years old.
Each pregnancy weakened her further.
I repeatedly advised the husband to allow his wife time to recover between births, but my medical recommendations were ignored.
When I attended her final labor, I found evidence of malnutrition, chronic anemia, and what I can only describe as systematic physical abuse.
This young woman died at 24, her body simply unable to sustain another pregnancy.
She was a child when she married, [music] forced into the union against her will to settle her father’s debts, a practice that, while legal, is morally reprehensible and medically catastrophic.
The letter went on to site four other similar cases from Dr.
Morrison’s practice, all involving girls between 14 and 16, married to men in their 40s or 50s, all suffering from the effects of early and repeated [music] pregnancies.
He concluded, “I am writing to urge the medical board to [music] advocate for legislation, establishing a minimum marriage age of 18 and requiring medical certification that prospective [music] brides are physically mature enough to safely bear children.
The current system allows families to effectively sell their daughters to settle debts and it results in preventable deaths that should shock the conscience of this commonwealth.
Helen showed Rebecca the response from the medical board filed with [music] the letter.
It was a single page formal and dismissive.
Your concerns have been noted.
However, marriage laws are matters of civil legislation rather than medical regulation.
The board cannot take action on this matter.
We suggest you direct your advocacy efforts to your state representatives.
Dr.
Morrison had tried to help and the system had ignored him.
[music] Rebecca asked Helen if her great-grandfather had continued his advocacy.
Helen nodded and pulled out a folder of newspaper clippings.
He wrote letters to newspapers, [music] testified before the state legislature twice, and joined with other rural doctors to petition for reforms.
Helen said Kentucky didn’t raise the marriage age to 16 until 1936, and even then, parental consent could override the age requirement.
It wasn’t until 2018 that Kentucky finally banned all marriages under age 17.
My great-grandfather didn’t live to see meaningful reform, but he kept trying until he died.
Rebecca photographed all of Dr.
Morrison’s documents related to Ruth Anne, including his medical notes, the letter to the medical board, [music] and the newspaper clippings documenting his advocacy work.
She was beginning to understand that Ruth Anne’s story wasn’t just a personal tragedy.
It was part of a systematic pattern of exploitation that had been legal, accepted, and defended by those who benefited from it.
Rebecca returned to the Carson House, determined to search more thoroughly for any personal documents that might have belonged to Ruth Anne herself.
She had found records created by others, officials, doctors, family members, but nothing in Ruth Anne’s own voice.
That changed when Rebecca moved a heavy trunk in the attic and discovered a loose floorboard beneath it.
Under the floorboard was a small metal box, rusted but intact.
Inside was a slim notebook with a cheap cardboard cover.
the kind sold at general stores for a few cents.
The pages were filled with writing in pencil.
[music] Much of it faded, but still legible.
The first entry was dated March 1st, 1920, 2 weeks before Ruth Anne’s wedding.
Papa says I have to marry Mr.
Carson.
He says we owe him money and this is the only way.
I told Papa I don’t want to marry him.
[music] He’s old and mean and he scares me.
Papa hit me and said I’m being selfish.
Mama won’t [music] look at me.
I have a boyfriend.
His name is Daniel.
He works in the mine.
We were going to get married when I turned 18.
Daniel says he’ll help me run away, but I don’t know where we would go.
The entries continued, [music] each one documenting Ruth Anne’s growing desperation.
March 8th.
Papa sold our land to Mr.
Carson.
[music] He says the wedding will be next week.
I told him I won’t do it.
He locked me in the barn [music] all night.
March 12th.
I ran away after dark.
I was trying to get to town to find Daniel.
The sheriff found me and brought me back.
Papa beat me with his belt.
He says if I try to run again, he’ll have me arrested for theft because I took food with me.
March 14th.
I tried to run again.
Papa caught me before I got to the road.
He tied my hands and feet with rope and locked me in my room.
He says, “I’ll stay tied until the wedding.
My wrists hurt so bad.
I can’t feel my feet anymore.
[music] Mama brought me water, but she won’t help me.” She just cries and leaves.
March 15th.
Today is my wedding day.
Papa untied my feet so I could walk to the parlor, but my hands are still tied.
He says if I make any trouble during the ceremony, he’ll tie my feet again.
The preacher is here.
Mr.
Carson is here.
I can see Daniel outside through the window, but he can’t help me.
Nobody can help me.
They’re taking my picture now with my hands still tied under the flowers.
I wish I was dead.
The entries after the wedding were sporadic and increasingly brief.
April 1920.
[music] I am married now.
Mr.
Carson won’t let me leave the house.
He locks the doors at night.
[music] He does things to me that hurt.
I hate him.
June 1920.
I think I’m going to have a baby.
I’m so scared.
I’m only 16.
The entries became less frequent as the years progressed, as if Ruth Anne had less time or energy to write.
Many [music] were just single sentences recording the births and deaths of her children.
The final entry was dated July 1928, 1 month before Ruth Anne’s death.
I’m pregnant again.
I’m so tired.
I don’t think I can do this anymore.
I want to see mama, but Mr.
Carson won’t let me visit.
If I die, I hope somebody [music] finds this and knows what happened to me.
My name was Ruth Anne Hutchkins, and I didn’t want any of this.
I wanted to marry Daniel and be happy.
Rebecca sat in the attic with the diary in her hands, [music] tears streaming down her face.
Ruth Anne had left this record deliberately, hoping someone would [music] find it and understand her story.
It had taken 96 years, [music] but Rebecca had found it.
Rebecca became obsessed with finding out what had happened to Daniel, the young man Ruth Anne had loved and hoped to marry.
The diary hadn’t included his last [music] name, but Rebecca had one crucial clue.
He had worked in the mines.
Harland County’s [music] coal mining industry had been extensive in the 1920s, and mining companies typically maintained employment records.
Rebecca contacted the Eastern Kentucky Coal Mining Museum and requested access to their employment records from the period.
After several days of searching through digitized records, she found him.
Daniel Pierce, employed by the Harland County Coal Corporation from 1918 to 1941, [music] working underground as a loader.
Census records showed that Daniel had been born in 1903, making him just a year older than Ruth Anne.
He had never married.
The 1930 census listed him as single, living in a boarding house near the mine.
The 1940 census showed the same.
He had worked in the mines for 23 years, living alone, [music] never starting a family.
Rebecca found Daniel’s death certificate dated March 1941.
He had died in a mine collapse at age 38.
Under next of kin, someone had written none.
Like Ruth Anne, he had died alone, but he had lived alone for 41 years.
His entire adult life spent without the girl he had loved and lost.
Through the county historical society, Rebecca found a collection of oral histories recorded in the 1970s with elderly residents who remembered the early mining days.
Among them was an interview with a man named Robert Tucker who had worked alongside Daniel Pierce in the mines.
The interviewer had asked Tucker about memorable co-workers and Tucker had mentioned Daniel.
There was a fellow named Daniel Pierce, quiet man.
good [music] worker.
He never married, never even looked at a woman that I saw.
Some of the boys used to tease him about it.
One time when he was drunk, only time I ever saw him drink.
He told us he’d been in love with a girl when he was young.
Said her father sold her to an old man to pay off debts and she got married when she was just 15 or 16.
Daniel said he’d tried to stop it but couldn’t.
Said he watched through a window while they married her, and he could see she’d been tied up like an animal.
He never got over it.
Said he couldn’t love anybody else after that.
He died in the 41 collapse.
Didn’t even try to get out when the roof started coming down.
Or that’s what the survivors said.
Just stood there and let it fall on him.
Rebecca listened to the recording three times.
Her heartbreaking for both Ruth Anne and Daniel.
They had loved each other, had planned a future together, [music] and had been destroyed by a system that treated young girls as property to be sold.
Ruth Anne had died at 24, her body [music] destroyed by forced childbearing.
Daniel had lived 17 more years, but he had been dead inside from the moment he watched Ruth Anne married off.
His death [music] in the mine collapse hadn’t been an accident.
It had been suicide, the final act of a man who had lost everything that mattered 21 years earlier.
Rebecca contacted Professor Michael Patterson, a legal historian at the University of Kentucky, who specialized in family law and marriage practices in Appalachian [music] communities.
She shared the wedding photograph, Ruth Anne’s diary, and the documents she had uncovered.
“Professor Patterson was both fascinated and horrified by what Rebecca had found.
“What happened to Ruth Anne was completely legal,” Patterson explained during their meeting at his office in Lexington.
Kentucky in 1920 had no minimum marriage age as long as parental consent was given.
Girls as young as 12 or 13 could be legally married if their parents agreed.
And the practice of using daughters to settle debts, what we would now recognize as human trafficking was socially accepted in many rural communities.
Patterson showed Rebecca statistics from the period.
In 1920, approximately 15% of marriages in Kentucky involved brides under age 16.
In rural mountain counties like Harlem, the percentage was even higher, perhaps as much as 25%.
Most of these marriages involved significant age differences with girls in their early teens married to men in their 40s or 50s.
The practice persisted because it served multiple functions.
Patterson continued, “Families in poverty could reduce the number of mouths to feed while also settling debts or gaining economic connections.
Older men who couldn’t attract wives their own age could purchase young brides and the legal system supported it.
Courts refused to intervene in family matters even when girls were clearly being coerced.
[music] Rebecca asked about the physical restraint visible in Ruth Anne’s wedding photograph.
Patterson grimaced.
That’s unusually blatant, but the underlying coercion was standard.
Most girls in these situations were threatened, beaten, or psychologically manipulated into compliance.
Ruth Anne’s father chose to use rope which created photographic evidence, but thousands of other girls were coerced through methods that left no visible marks.
Patterson helped Rebecca understand the legal context of Ruth Anne’s escape attempts.
When the sheriff returned her to her father’s custody, he was following standard legal practice.
Daughters were considered the property of their fathers until marriage, at which point they became [music] the property of their husbands.
Running away wasn’t recognized as a legitimate response to forced marriage.
It was treated [music] as disobedience or theft.
The diary you found is extraordinarily valuable.
Patterson said, “We have statistical evidence about child marriage in this period, but we rarely have firstperson [music] accounts from the girls themselves.
” Ruth Anne’s words give voice to an experience that thousands of girls endured, but few documented.
This is important historical evidence.
Rebecca asked if any of the people involved [music] in Ruth Anne’s forced marriage could have been prosecuted under current law.
Patterson considered the question carefully.
Under current Kentucky law, what happened to Ruth Anne would constitute [music] human trafficking, false imprisonment, rape, and potentially murder, given that the forced pregnancies killed her.
Her father, her husband, and even the sheriff who returned her could face serious criminal charges.
But in 1920, [music] none of it was illegal.
That’s what makes it so horrifying.
This wasn’t a crime.
It was normal.
On March 15th, 2025, exactly 105 years after Ruth Anne’s wedding, Dr.
Rebecca Hayes stood in the Appalachian Heritage Museum in Harlem County, preparing for the opening of an exhibition titled Ruth Anne’s Story: Child Marriage and Coercion in Rural Kentucky.
The centerpiece of the exhibition was the wedding photograph enlarged to [music] 4 feet tall, showing every detail of the ropes binding Ruth Anne’s wrists and ankles.
Rebecca had spent 4 months preparing the exhibition, working with museum staff, legal historians, and women’s rights advocates to create a presentation that honored Ruth Anne’s memory while educating visitors about the broader historical context.
The exhibition included the wedding photograph, pages from Ruth Anne’s diary reproduced with careful preservation of the original Dr.
Morrison’s medical notes and advocacy letters, the property deed showing her father’s debt settlement, sheriff’s logs documenting her escape attempts, and information about Daniel Pierce and his lifetime of grief.
The exhibition also included contemporary context.
Text panels explained that child marriage remained legal in many US states, though Kentucky had finally banned marriages under age 17 in 2018.
Statistics showed that between 2000 and 2018, more than 10,000 minors had been married in Kentucky alone, with similar patterns across the country.
The practice Ruth Anne had endured wasn’t just historical.
[music] It continued, though in different forms.
More than 300 people attended the opening, including descendants of Ruth Anne’s children, local historians, [music] women’s rights advocates, and journalists from across the state.
Dr.
Helen Morrison, who had provided her great-grandfather’s medical records, spoke about the doctors who had tried to challenge child marriage practices [music] and the systemic resistance they had faced.
A representative from the Kentucky Coalition Against Domestic Violence spoke about the connections between child marriage and domestic abuse, noting [music] that girls married as minors were significantly more likely to experience violence and [music] to die from pregnancy related complications, exactly as Ruth Anne had.
Most powerfully, several elderly women who had themselves been married as teenagers in the 1940s and 1950s [music] came forward to share their stories.
One woman, now 89, described being married at age 14 to a man of 42, bearing 11 children, and enduring decades of abuse before her husband’s death finally freed [music] her.
I saw that photograph of Ruth Anne tied up,” the woman said, tears streaming down her face.
And I thought, “That was me.
They didn’t need to tie me with rope because they tied me with shame and fear in the law.
But I was just as trapped as she [music] was.” The exhibition included a memorial section with Ruth Anne’s photograph, her birth and death dates, and a quote from her diary.
My name was Ruth Anne Hutchkins, and I didn’t want any of this.
Below it was information about Daniel Pierce, acknowledging his love for Ruth Anne and his lifetime of grief.
The final section of the exhibition addressed the question Rebecca knew visitors would ask.
Why tell this story now, 105 years later? The text [music] explained, “Ruth Anne’s story was buried for more than a century, hidden in an attic along with the photographic evidence of her coercion.
Her diary was concealed under floorboards, her suffering dismissed as private family business, her death treated as an unfortunate but unremarkable outcome of rural life.
We tell her story now because she deserves to be remembered.
Because the thousands of girls who endured similar fates deserve recognition and because child marriage continues today, requiring the same courage to challenge it that Dr.
Morrison showed in 1931 and that Ruth Anne showed in her desperate attempts to escape.
The ropes that bound Ruth Anne’s wrists and ankles are visible in a photograph from 1920.
The laws, customs, and economic systems that bound her were just as real, but far less visible.
By making them visible now, we honor her memory and work to ensure that no other girl suffers as she suffered.
Rebecca stood before the photograph one final time before the exhibition closed for the evening.
Ruth Anne looked back at her across 105 years.
A 15-year-old girl in a hastily made wedding dress.
Her hands and feet bound with rope.
Her face showing terror and desperation.
Her future already destroyed.
The photograph had survived.
The diary had survived.
And now, finally, [music] Ruth Anne’s voice would be heard, her story would be told, and her suffering would not be forgotten.
The ropes that bound her in that photograph had been invisible to everyone who had seen the image for more than a century.
But they were invisible no longer.
