Hugo Umhoefer, Page One

L-R: Hugo, Clara, Martha & Isabella Umhoefer (unrelated girl at right), July 1915, Menomonee Falls.

"The National Child Labor Committee has set itself this great task. It is a militant and a constructive organization. It seeks to put an end to the national disgrace of child mistreatment, and at the same time to promote every enterprise that looks toward a wiser and more efficient education of our youth. It has already taken thousands of children out of the mills. It is now concentrating its attention upon the larger task that remains, that of securing freedom and better conditions for the children who labor on the farms. The most progressive farm organizations heartily favor this beneficent undertaking, but the active co-operation of our entire citizenry is demanded if the work shall be carried to a successful conclusion." -Felix Adler, The American Child, Volume 3, National Child Labor Committee, 1921

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Despite having been born and raised in Wisconsin (Oshkosh), Lewis Hine took only 11 photographs of child laborers in the state. Ten were of children working on beet farms; the other one was of members of the Umhoefer family who, it turns out, lived on their parents' dairy farm.

Hine took many pictures of children, some as young as four and five, that were seasonal pickers on fruit and vegetable farms. They often moved with their families from place to place, following the crops from south to north. But other photographs were of children working on farms owned or rented by their parents, an altogether different situation which seems benign in comparison, and often provokes skeptics who question the validity of referring to it as child labor. Felix Adler's comment above might help to explain Hine's motives.

Menomonee Falls is 20 miles northwest of Milwaukee, and has a population of about 30,000. It is the home of the corporate headquarters of Kohl's, a national chain of department stores. In the first half of the 20^th century, it was one of hundreds of towns in Wisconsin that were dominated by dairy and crop farms. Anyone who pays attention to license plates knows that Wisconsin is known as Dairyland. About a month before the Umhoefer children posed for Hine, their parents might have read the following article, which appeared in the Menomonee Falls News.

I looked in the census and found Joe Umhoefer and his family living in Menomonee Falls in 1920. Based on the ages of the children, I was able to figure out that the boy in the photograph was Hugo. I found his death record, obtained his obituary, and contacted one of his sons, Ronald Umhoefer. He was familiar with the picture. He sent me a copy of his family history, which was compiled by Gary Umhoefer.

Benedikt Umhoefer, his wife Margaretha and their three boys, Joseph, Theodor and Gregor, sailed from their homeland in Bavaria to New York City in 1848. Almost immediately after they landed, they headed to Milwaukee.

In the 1840s, Wisconsin was one of the end points on the northern route leading from New York City. As that port increasingly dominated in terms of immigrant arrivals, so did the number of potential Wisconsinites increase. But there were a number of other reasons for choosing Wisconsin: promotional publications, land prices, earlier German immigration, suffrage laws and low taxes.

The Umhoefer's journey would likely have taken them on a steamboat up the Hudson River, on a train or canal trip to Buffalo, and on a steamboat ride on the Great Lakes. The family would have traveled about 10 days, right after experiencing their grueling trip across the ocean. They settled near Menomonee Falls, where they established a farm. Nine years later, in 1857, son Gregor married Anna Marie Eichen, whose family had emigrated from Cologne. Gregor was already living in a log house he built in 1856, which sat on 80 acres of land.

One of their children, Joseph, who was born in 1862, spent his whole life farming the homestead. He married Catherine Claas in 1891. They had nine children, among them the four children Lewis Hine photographed: Isabella (born 1900), Clara (1902), Hugo (1904), and Martha (1905). When father Joseph died in 1927, their mother continued to operate the farm, with help from the sons, until she died in 1945, when Hugo took it over and farmed it until the 1960s.