Though the Great Depression had ended, poverty ground on for many Wilson County families in the early 1940s. Like boys of the era, who regularly left home to seek better opportunities, girls were drawn by rumors of good money to be made in big cities further North. Many lucked into good positions, but others, as vulnerable runaways, were drawn into sexual exploitation.

Wilson Daily Times, 23 November 1942.

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• Ethel Robbins
• Eula Parnell — Parnell appears in the 1940 census in a Factory Street household in which no one was employed.
• Ida Mae Reville