- Date: Early 1900s, when Joe was a little boy in Sidney, Nebraska
- By: Joseph “Joe” Sharmer, aged perhaps six to nine
- What: Pencil drawing on a small sheet of paper, signed, kept in an envelope from The Challenger, San Francisco, labelled by Ruby
- Condition: Complete
Click a picture to enlarge it.
THE DRAWING
Joseph
Sharmer
A little figure in a tall, floppy pointed cap, with round staring eyes, a wide mouth, a row of buttons down a round belly, long thin arms and legs, and pointed shoes.
THE ENVELOPE
A little brownie & signature of your father made when he was a little boy in Nebraska
Printed: The Challenger, San Francisco
Notes & context
A Brownie. The Brownies were the mischievous little elves of Palmer Cox’s picture books and magazine verses, enormously popular with American children from the 1880s into the early 1900s. Children everywhere copied them, with their pointed caps, round bodies and spindly legs. This is one of those copies.
When. Joe was born in Sidney, Nebraska, on 10 November 1897. His mother, Katie, died in 1907, and by the 1910 census he was living in Denver with his eldest sister Laura, the family’s Aunt Larry. A drawing made “when he was a little boy in Nebraska” therefore dates from about 1903–1907, while he was still at home in Sidney.
The signature. “Joseph Sharmer,” in a child’s careful hand, is the earliest signature on this site of the man who, thirty years later, signed his letters to Ruby simply “Joe.”
The envelope. The note on the envelope is in Ruby’s hand, written for one of their children (“your father”), so the drawing was kept safe through her. The envelope is stationery from The Challenger, the Union Pacific–Southern Pacific economy train between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area, which ran as the San Francisco Challenger from 1937 to 1947.
