Tennessee Child Bride
In January 1937, a 22-year-old man named Charlie Johns married his neighbor, a 9-year-old girl named Eunice Winstead, in Sneedville, Hancock County. The marriage ceremony was led by a Baptist preacher named Walter Lamb. To keep her wedding a secret, Eunice told her parents she was just going out to get a doll.. At that time, the law in Tennessee allowed children to get married.
Johns modified Winstead’s recorded age to obtain their marriage license. During this period, Tennessee law did not specify a minimum legal age for marriage. Although both mothers initially regarded Eunice as too young to marry, they ultimately decided to approve the marriage. By 1938, the couple was living with Johns parents. Winstead had her first child in 1942,
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About ten days after they got married, the press found out and reported it in many American news outlets like The Times, Life, and The New York Times. Their marriage even inspired the 1938 movie Child Bride. people all over the country started talking about whether child marriage should be allowed and how to protect children’s rights.
The attention from the media led some states to create new marriage laws to help keep young children safe, making it illegal for children to get married. Following Johns and Winstead’s marriage, Tennessee set the minimum marriage age at sixteen, a policy later adopted by several other jurisdictions. The couple stayed married and had nine children.
Johns died in 1997. Winstead passed away in 2006.
Tennessee Code Annotated section 36–3–105 states that it is unlawful for individuals to get married who are not at least 16 years of age. That is actually older than it used to be. The law used to say that if you were 15 years old, you could get married as long as you had parental consent to the marriage. Tennessee Code Annotated section 36–3–106 now states that if anyone wants to get married who is under the age of 18, they have to get parental consent to the marriage by their parent or legal guardian.
