On the far right is my great grandmother Julia, at about 1910. This picture is not as clear as my others as I had to scan in a copy that my grandmother gave me about twenty years ago. The original photo is hopefully with Julia's photo album, now with another branch of the family.

I looked closely at this picture and a few others taken at the same time with the same group as I was scanning them in and noticed for the first time that Julia is wearing what looks to be a wedding ring. I called my mother who has her ring and although we can't be sure it is the only ring she ever wore - so pretty much it must be her wedding ring. (They didn't have money for jewelry.) That puts the date of these pictures around 1910 (she got married in February). And that fits for her age which would be 19-20. But I didn't know who the other women were - my grandmother said they were friends, but all of them dressed the same way; it always made me wonder.

And then I got wicked lucky.

I have been going through the census records looking for lost relatives, figuring out death dates when I got into the 1910 census and found Julia and her husband Tom (my great grandfather) the summer after they were married. They lived with her mother, three half sisters and a boarder. (Her stepfather had apparently died as her mother is a "widow".) For Julia's occupation (and her teenage sister) it states "clothing". That's when I realized she worked in a mill - a textile mill. And this series of pictures, taken before her first child is born in 1912, are Julia and her co-workers.

I have not read Katharine Weber's Triangle but always meant to - the connection to New Yorkers from that period and socioeconomic background made it an obvious choice for me. But now I realize that my family did that for a living - they worked in that world. It's moments like these that I really wish my grandmother was alive. We don't remember her ever talking about what Julia did for a living before her children were born, although she did always say her mother worked. (We know at one point she owned a candy shop but mostly she worked as the super in apartment buildings so she could get free rent in exchange.) No one recalls her ever saying that Julia worked in the textile mills but it could be that we just didn't ask; like a million other things it seems, I just didn't think to ask about this.

But there she is, a young woman, newly married, ready to take on the world. She's a working girl in the big city; she could be anything, all of them could. They have dreams these girls, lots of them. I know how the story ended for Julia but I wonder about the rest. I can't help but wonder if they found their happily ever afters. I just hoped they didn't work for Triangle and if they did, they were the lucky ones.