Eunice was just 9 when she was married off to a 22-year-old man. Here's what her life looked like.

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Content warning: This story includes descriptions of child abuse that may be distressing to some readers.

In 1937, Eunice Winstead and Charlie Johns married in Sneedville, Tennessee.

Both families had no qualms about the marriage, saying Eunice and Charlie loved one another.

But for the Tennessee community, there was utter outrage - because at the time, Eunice was only nine years old, and Charlie was 22. 

Charlie falsified his now-wife's age in order to get a marriage license. At the time, there was no minimum marriage age in Tennessee and minors did not need parental permission - meaning the marriage was entirely legal then. But morally it was horrific. And the laws would soon reflect that. 

On the morning of their marriage, Eunice had told her dad that she was headed up the road to her married sister's house to get a doll that Charlie had given to her the previous Christmas. 

Instead, she met up with Charlie and the two walked several miles to ask a reverend to marry them. He lied on their marriage application - Eunice referred to as 18 years old rather than just nine. 

After the ceremony was completed, Eunice stopped at her sister's to pick up the doll and then went home.

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In the weeks after the marriage, media descended on their small town, Sneedville.

One journalist recounted seeing Eunice and Charlie together during an interview - Eunice visibly still a child, spending her time playing with her baby sister and her pet white rabbit. She wore three rings on her wedding finger as well. 

"I love Charlie," was all she said when the journalist enquired about her feelings towards the marriage. 

It was then revealed that Charlie had bought his wife "a nice, big doll for Christmas", before essentially backpedalling and saying Eunice "only played with it a few times".

"Eunice is interested in sewing and she is as smart as can be about cooking."

Eunice's then 33-year-old mum defended the marriage despite public condemnation in the community.

"The Bible says not to disturb those peacefully getting along, and I don't believe in going against the Bible," Eunice's mother Mrs Winstead firmly declared to The Milwaukee Sentinel. 

"If they love one another, then getting married is the thing to do."

It wasn't a surprising reaction when considering the marriage history of the women in the Winstead family. When Mrs Winstead was just 13, she married. Another of her daughters also later married at 13.

"Charlie is a good boy," Mrs Winstead said to the newspaper during their interview, reportedly beaming with pride.

"He's a hard worker. He bought 40 acres a few days ago so they could have a home. Of course, understand, I haven't brought my children up to marry what men has got but to marry for love."

As for Eunice's father, he simply said: "The marriage is all right with me. There's nothing you can do about it now."

Eunice Winstead and her husband Charlie Johns.

One could assume that for the time, these sorts of marriages were perhaps not held to account like they are today, both legally and morally. But considering the sheer amount of press coverage at the time - most of which was dripping in condemnation - it's clear that the Tennessee community were horrified by the union.

A year after the marriage, a piece in TIME magazine referred to it as "a national scandal", confirming that Tennessee hastily enacted a law prohibiting the marriage of persons under 14 in late 1937.

But what did Eunice's life look like after being married off just aged nine?

20 years after the marriage, Eunice and her husband Charlie did an interview with The Spokesman Review in 1957. 

She was then a 29-year-old woman, still married to Charlie and together they had seven children - the oldest a 14-year-old girl and the youngest a three-month-old son. 

That would mean she gave birth to her first child when she was only 14. 

Together they lived in a neat, white frame cottage in Tennessee and lived a comfortable life thanks to Charlie's inherited 150-acre farm - parts of the land that he went on to sell to mineral mining companies. 

The couple said that given all the local media attention they received when they first married, they decided to retreat away into the countryside. As they once said to press: "Folks, let us alone."

Over the years, the couple didn't say much about their relationship. While alive, Eunice's mother Mrs Winstead continued to defend the union after their local town was inundated with protests.

"Why can't they leave decent married folk alone?" she said to the Madera Tribune. "Ain't a man and a woman got a right to get married if they're in love? Eunice loves Charlie and Charlie loves Eunice, and taint (sic) nobody's business but theirs. Never in all my borned days did I see such a commotion and flusteration about two people getting hitched. Maybe Eunice is a mite young, but what of it?"

Perhaps the fault in Mrs Winstead argument would remain the fact that her daughter had not been a woman when she married, but instead a naïve child. 

As for Eunice having access to a proper education - she didn't.

She did return to school for a few days following her wedding, but quit when teachers punished her for "jumping about" the classroom. Her husband said to the Daily Illinois: "She ain't going to no school as long as I have my say about it."

Over the next decades they lived out the rest of their lives together at their cottage home, raising their large family and attending their local church. 

Charlie died on February 13, 1997 at the age of eighty-four. 

Eunice would live another nine years without her husband. By then a great-grandmother, she passed away on August 29, 2006, less than a month shy of her 79th birthday. 

Reflecting on the beginnings of the marriage, Gov. Gordon Browning of Tennessee said it was "nothing short of tragedy".

When the press interviewed Eunice in 1976, she said she had no regrets over marrying so young. 

But when asked about the worst part of doing so, she noted that it had brought an end to her education.

And indeed her childhood too. 

If this brings up any issues for you, contact Bravehearts, an organisation dedicated to the prevention and treatment of child sexual abuse, on 1800 272 831.

Image: History Files. 

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