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MORNINGS ON MAPLE STREET VOLUME TWO |
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Martin Markey, Jeremiah Moore & Napoleon Camire, Page Five |
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Boys working in Amoskeag Mills,
Manchester, N.H. Smallest boy is Napoleon Cammery, 194 Merrimac St. Been in mill 1 year. Next boy is Jerry Moore, 352 Chestnut
St. Martin Markey, 33 State St. Location: Manchester, New Hampshire, May 1909, Lewis Hine.
"He had a workshop. He liked to make things with wood,
like bookcases and chairs and a couch. He could make anything with wood." -Theresa Greenleaf, daughter of Napoleon
Camire
Lewis Hine carried a pocket notebook so he could jot down
the names of his subjects, and other information he was able to get from them. Those notes were passed on to the National
Child Labor Committee and became the basis for the captions. Sometimes those notes were not easily readable and mistakes were
made in the transcriptions. Like most English-speaking Americans at the time, Hine had trouble with foreign names, especially
those of French Canadians. That is illustrated here. He spelled the boy's name Cammery, when in fact, it was Camire. That's
no surprise. The French-Canadian pronunciation would have sounded like "Cam-ear-ay." So when I searched for Napoleon
on Ancestry.com, I used the Soundex method, which lists all names that look or sound like Cammery. Napoleon Joseph Camire was born in Weedon, Quebec, Canada on August 19, 1894, the
oldest of at least nine children of Napoleon Camire and Rose (Rousseau) Camire, who married about 1893. In the 1900 census,
he is living with his mother and two brothers, who are boarding with his paternal grandmother in Manchester. His father may
have been working in Canada at the time. In 1910, a year after he was photographed, he was living with both parents, in Manchester.
His father was a weaver, and Napoleon was a cleaner at the cotton mill. He was not listed in the 1920 census, probably because he was serving in the Army at that time. In the 1930 census,
he was listed as a weaver, living in Pembroke, New Hampshire, with his wife, the former Virginie Rondeau, and five children.
Soon after, he moved to the Lewiston, Maine area, and worked in various textile mills until he retired. His last residence
was in Auburn. He passed away on June 25, 1967, at the age of 72. According to his obituary, he was survived by his wife,
three daughters, six sons, 31 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Virginie Camire died in 1991. Edited interview with Theresa Greenleaf (TG), daughter of Napoleon Camire. Interview conducted by Joe Manning
(JM) on June 30, 2010. JM:
Were you surprised by the photograph? TG:
Yes, I sure was. It's a very good picture of him. He sure looks like my father. JM: Were you surprised he was working at the Amoskeag Mill at that age? TG: Yes. I thought he was still in Canada then. He never said
anything about working as a boy. JM:
When were you born? TG: I
was born in Goffstown, New Hampshire in 1926. We were living in Manchester then. My father was working in the mills. JM: How many children did your parents
have? TG: They had 10. The
last two were twins. One of them died. I was the third child. JM: What was your father doing for a living at the time you were born? TG: I remember him as always being a weaver. He worked at the
Bates Mill, the Liberty Mill and the Androscoggin Mill in Lewiston. He was a carpenter, too, for a contractor. He built houses.
He did that while he was still working in the mills. JM: When did your parents get married? TG: They got married on November 12, 1922, at St. Mary's Church in Quincy, Massachusetts. He was
working there, and that's where he met my mother. Her name was Virginia Rondeau. JM: Did she work when you were growing up? TG: No, not with 10 kids, one after another. JM: When did your parents move to Maine? TG: I think I was seven years old, so maybe about 1933. JM: Did he own his home? TG: Yes, starting about three years after we moved to Maine. JM: What was your father like? TG: He was a quiet man. He liked to have a few beers with the
boys. But he was a good father. JM:
Did he have time to spend with his family, or was he working all the time? TG: Oh, he was home a lot. JM: What did he like to do when he wasn't working? TG: He had a workshop. He liked to make things with wood, like bookcases and chairs and a couch.
He could make anything with wood. JM:
When you spent time with him, what did you like to do with him? TG: We didn't do too much, because we always had to stay around the house and help with things.
JM: Have you lived all your
life in Maine? TG: Yes, except
for living in New Hampshire till I was about seven years old. JM: Where was your father living when he passed away? TG: In Auburn. JM:
Your father's picture is one of over 5,000 photos taken by Lewis Hine, and they were part of the effort to get child labor
laws passed. So your father was used as an example of child labor. And now, his photograph is in the Library of Congress.
What do you think about that? TG:
To me, if a kid is busy, and they're not going to school, they might just as well work, instead of running in the street.
JM: Do you know how far
he got in school? TG: He
probably quit about the time the picture was taken, I guess. Maybe even earlier. JM: Could he read and write? TG: Oh, yes, he could do that. JM: Did he ever talk about being in Canada, or about being a boy and a young man? TG: No. I just thought he grew up in Canada.
I do know that he served in World War I. JM:
What did he die from? TG:
He had a heart attack. He had three of them altogether. He was sick about three years. He was 72.
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