{"id":3750,"date":"2025-11-28T21:00:50","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T01:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/?p=3750"},"modified":"2025-11-27T11:31:59","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T15:31:59","slug":"homer-and-geneva-the-child-bride-marriage-that-tested-tennessee-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/?p=3750","title":{"rendered":"Homer and Geneva:  The Child Bride Marriage That Tested Tennessee Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MAJbcx59ffE?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In 1937, a 32-year-old man from Monroe County, Tennessee married an 11-year-old girl, becoming the first person charged under the state\u2019s recently enacted child bride law, passed in the wake of another child-bride marriage in Hancock County. <\/p>\n<p>The marriage of Homer Peels to Geneva Hamby became a national scandal, a media storm, and, believe it or not, a marriage that lasted nearly 40 years. This week on our YouTube channel, we tell the story of Homer and Geneva Peels, another one of the Stories of Appalachia.<\/p>\n<p>Click the &#8220;subscribe&#8221; button to follow us over on YouTube!<\/p>\n<p>(Monroe County Courthouse picture by Brian Stansberry)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1937, a 32-year-old man from Monroe County, Tennessee married an 11-year-old girl, becoming the first person charged under the state\u2019s recently enacted child bride law, passed in the wake of another child-bride marriage in Hancock County. The marriage of Homer Peels to Geneva Hamby became a national scandal, a media storm, and, believe it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[58,11,96,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-court","category-crime","category-culture","category-the-great-depression"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6TX4A-Yu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3751,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3750\/revisions\/3751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storiesofappalachia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}