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Teddy Roosevelt was a pointer, too, and a serial hat doffer.

Although my own immigrant family had no visual record of our journey from Eastern Europe in the late 19th century, I’d always found inspiration in the photographer Lewis Hine, whose work in the early 1900s capturing Ellis Island and images of child labor that had stunned a nation with scenes meant to be hidden — breaker boys in the coal fields, doffer girls in America’s spinning mills, newsies, oyster shuckers.

“I was orphaned young. I’m used to it. I suppose this mill is as much home as I can claim. I started here as a doffer when I was ten. So I’ve fifteen years here. But only a scant handful of Julys.”

“Brigid says her little sister is a doffer and she’s no bigger than me.”

“No. I want you should let me be a doffer.”