Fort Payne Telephone Operators
By Amie Martin
In the 1900s, telephones began to make their way into homes and businesses—this created a growing demand for phone service jobs, especially for telephone operators. Women made up most of this sector of the workforce for several reasons. The companies observed that women were generally more courteous to callers, and women’s labor was cheap compared to men’s. Specifically, women were paid from one-half to one-quarter of a man’s salary.
Operators even served with the military. Women of the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit, American bilingual female switchboard operators in World War I, were known colloquially known as Hello Girls and were not formally recognized for their military service until 1978.
Today we have a cell phone on our person at almost all times; it is hard for younger generations to imagine that there was a time when a “landline” phone was in most homes. In the 1900s, not every family had a phone; however, they were usually reserved for higher income family homes and cities. As years passed, more and more families began to get telephones.
In the 40s, there were only 510 telephones in total in Fort Payne. The telephone numbers looked very different then: 110-J or 58 are examples. You could pick up the receiver and tell a real person on the other end, “I want the Martin residence,” and in the small town of Fort Payne, the operator would sometimes tell you, “They are not home.” Folks had a personal, small-town relationship with their operators. Everyone knew them, at least by their voice.
The first telephone service in Fort Payne was owned and operated by Cumberland Telephone and Telegraph Company, located in the McGee Building on First Street. In 1900 they had only 37 subscribers.
In 1904, Southern Bell purchased the company, and the subscribers had increased to 66, according to the Historical Record of Exchanges of South Central Bell. Maggie Pendergrass is said to have been the very first operator for the Fort Payne office.
The first chief operator, Maude Hicks, lived in a one-room apartment near the telephone office, located on the Sawyer Building’s second floor. When the office expanded, she moved to the DeKalb Hotel, which was located nearby. In 1918 when the hotel burned, she lost all of her belongings. It is said that she let her belongings burn rather than leave her post as chief operator.