Lewis Hine had a knack for finding a sympathetic face, and for coaxing a child to look directly into the camera. How can we not care about this boy? When I saw the photo, I dropped everything and went to work. But I ran into trouble right away. There was no Donald (or Donnie) Cole listed in the Birmingham area in the 1910 census. The only possible Cole family had a 12-year-old boy listed as Lammer Cole, along with his mother, father, and seven siblings. The 1920 and 1930 census didn't turn up anything very helpful either.

I often consult the online Hine child labor collection at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. They have the original negatives and caption cards. Sometimes, information on this site is slightly different from that of the Library of Congress collection. So I searched the Avondale photos and found the same picture, but the caption was only, "Our ‘baby doffer,' they call him. Lonnie is his name." I thought, "So maybe he was Lonnie, not Donnie."

Back to the census, I found a Lonnie Cole in Alabama in 1930, with about the same birth year, the same father and two of the same siblings as the Lammer Cole I had found in the 1910 census. Then I found the same Lonnie in the list of WWI draft registrations, then Lonnie's Social Security death record. He died in Birmingham in 1975. I requested his obituary from the Birmingham Public Library.

After finding his sister Velma in the 1920 census, married to Homer Holcombe, I found her death record and her obituary online. Among her survivors was her daughter, Dorothy Cheatham, of Florida. I mailed her the photo. A few days later, she called back, telling me how thrilled she was to see the photo of her Uncle Lon.

Lonnie Frank Cole was born in Cullman County, Alabama, on March 7, 1899. His parents were John Frank Cole (known as Frank) and Lola (or Lora). They were from Georgia and had married in 1893. Frank was a farmer. In the 1910 census, Frank wife's is now Rachel (later identified as Grace), and there are four more children in the house. They married about 1904, so we can guess that Lonnie's mother Lola may have died. Frank is a well driller, and none of the children are listed as working.

Lonnie doesn't appear in the 1920 census, but his father and stepmother do. Frank is still a well driller. In the 1930 census, Lonnie is back home, working for his father as a well driller. Lonnie passed away in Birmingham on his birthday, March 7, 1975, at the age of 76. He never married.