Sweet Sixteen?

This is Clara Rossow at 16 years of age, according to the hand-written caption. Does she look sweet? — I think she looks determined.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

Assuming the caption is correct, this photo probably dates to circa 1906. I say probably because sources vary as to her birthdate, but the majority place it in 1890 or 1891.

She was one of the children of Augusta (Stolp) Rossow. The earliest census in which I can find her, the 1910 Census, gives her birthplace as Indiana. In subsequent censuses she claims to have been born at sea, on the Atlantic Ocean. It's a good story, but I don't think it's true.

That 1910 census shows her living with her siblings on Lake Street in Hobart. (As Minnie Rossow Harms tells us in As It Was Told to Me, the Rossow kids found that they got along better with their stepfather, William Carey, if they didn't live in his house, so they got their own.) Clara was working as a telephone operator. Sometime between 1910 and 1920 she married Thomas Davies, according to the family — I can't find an official record of the marriage on-line, but the 1920 Census records the two of them as married. It seems there were no children. When Clara died in 1976, the background information on her death certificate came from a niece who did not know Clara's parents' names.


By the way, we have seen that painted backdrop a couple of times already.