EMIL NELVING ELMORE MINN Will He Find His Uncle Emil?

Postcard from Emil Nelving to Emil Oldenburg
Elmore, Minnesota to Waterloo, Iowa
Postmark December 9, 1910

Postmark: Dec 9 1910
Elmore Minn.

Addressee: Mr. Emil Oldenburg
Waterloo, Iowa

Dear Uncle,

I am going to Hampen Ia this weak and I thot I would come and see you I coming from Hampen Monday so if you got to come to met me I would be very glad because I dont no if I can find you.

Emil Nelving

We must assume that Emil Nelving was actually going to Hampton, Iowa, to see his Uncle Emil Oldenburg because there is no Hampen, Hampden, or Hampdon.  Even then, though Emil didn't know exactly where his namesake uncle lived, there was a greater problem since the postal service needed to find Uncle Emil also because the addres was incomplete.  All that can be concluded is that Nephew Emil knew that Uncle Emil lived in the vicinity of Waterloo, Iowa.

The estimated time to drive the 154.4 miles in 2012 from Elmore to Waterloo is just under three hours. I wonder how long it took in 1910.  There was train service from Omaha, Nebraska to Elmore, where the train turned around and went back to Omaha.  If this service existed in 1910, and Waterloo was been on the train route or nearby, then Nephew Emil may have used this mode of travel.

Let us hope that the two eventually found each other.  If I found Iowa jokes funny, I might write the last sentences as follows. let us hope that the two eventually found each other somewhere among the Iowa cornstalks. Ya, shure!

The town of Elmore is on the border of Minnesota going into Iowa.  The most current population census reports that just under 700 souls occupy this space in Faribault County.  First named Dobson, it is thought that the name was changed to honor one Judge A.E. Elmore, though there is no documentation that the Honorable Elmore ever visited the town that honored him.  There is a brief, interesting history of Elmore written by Kathy Gill by CLICKING HERE.

Real Photo Postcard of Unidentified Home

Unfortunately for me, this real photo postcard had substantial soil on the photograph side, which though for the most part successfully removed, in the process I also damaged the image.  The house and yard may have belong to the Nelving family, but without a family member identifying its ownership we will never know.

Prepared by Mary Katherine May of QualityMusicandBooks.com.