A man named Homer Peel kisses his wife, Geneva Peel, in 1937. She was just ten years old, and an oprhan. Peel lied to authorities initially and told them Geneva was twelve… child marriage had just been made illegal in the state of Tennessee — but Homer Peel claimed he had “saved” Geneva from the poor house, and that to annul the marriage would be to return her to a state of poverty.
The picture above is Homer kissing Geneva after a judge agreed them his reasoning, refusing to undo the marriage and returning Geneva to her husband, twenty-four years older than her. He had reportedly “promised her a pretty new hat” for her loyaly. It was quite common in the 1930s for children to marry… they would typically marry men considerably older than them. It wasn’t until 1937 that a law prohibiting it came into existence, and even then, the practice continued. The photograph is jarring and unsettling for numerous reasons.
Homer and Geneva Peel entually stayed together until 1975, when they got divorced. Homer died in 1991 and Geneva lived on until 2017, dying at 92. The couple had six daughters and a son together, and eighteen grandchildren.