Nannie Doss - First Marriage

First Marriage

Doss was first married at age 16, to Charley Braggs. They had met at the Linen Thread factory where they both worked, and with her father's approval they married after 4 months of dating. He was the only son of a never-married mother, who insisted on continuing to live with her son after he married. Doss later wrote

I married, as my father wished, in 1921 to a boy I only knowed about four or five months who had no family, only a mother who was unwed and who had taken over my life completely when we were married. She never seen anything wrong with what he done, but she would take spells. She would not let my own mother stay all night...

Braggs' mother took up a lot of his attention, and she often limited Nannie's activities. The marriage produced 4 daughters from 1923 to 1927. The stressed-out young mother started drinking, and her casual smoking habit became a heavy addiction. Both unhappy partners suspected each other--correctly--of infidelity, and Braggs often disappeared for days on end. In early 1927, they lost their 2 middle girls to suspected food poisoning; suspecting that Nannie had killed them, Braggs took firstborn daughter Melvina and fled, leaving newborn Florine behind. Soon after, Braggs' mother died and Nannie took a job in a cotton mill to support Florine and herself.

Braggs brought Melvina back in the summer of 1928; with them was a divorcee with her own child. Braggs and Nannie soon divorced and Nannie took her 2 girls back to her mother's home. He always maintained he left her because he was frightened of her.