Miss Emma Harper sent this portrait photo postcard to her friend Mamie Cypers at the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in May of 1914. This would have been a few months before 18-year-old Emma’s marriage to Clarence Van Auken in Davenport.
We assume it is an image of Emma herself, perhaps taken on the occasion of her engagement.
The card was postmarked in Grinnell, Iowa. It is not clear why Emma was there at the time. Perhaps she was working as a household servant, as she had in Wilton Township four years earlier, in 1910 (at age 14), according to the US Census.
If Emma had left the Orphans’ Home by 1910, and Mamie had arrived in 1906, the two would have been there together for a maximum of four years. During that time, Emma would have been 11-14 years old and Mamie 8-11.
Emma and her siblings arrived at the Home from Story County sometime after her their father Isaiah Harper’s death in 1895, probably not until after 1900. She, Nettie, and James Harper were all there in 1905, according to the Iowa state census for that year:
Mamie (May Frances) Harper and three of her siblings were sent to the Orphans’ Home under difficult circumstances:
Mamie would go on to marry three times, first to Russell Whitaker in 1918, with whom she had a son, Harold; then Helge Jennisch in 1924, and Fred Detlef Claussen in 1933. She died in Davenport in 1938 and is buried at Mt. Calvary.
Emma also had one child, Harriet, with Van Auken. The couple divorced by 1930 and she married Elmer Owens in 1934. She died in 1976 and is buried at the Rock Island National Cemetery.
We are fortunate to have received this and a few other photo postcards “from the purged files of the Annie Wittenmyer Home” via one of our most dedicated volunteers, to whom they were given sometime in the 1970s. We will research these as well!
