Ellen Clapsaddle

She is said to have been a shy and delicate child who displayed artistic ability and was highly encouraged by her parents to develop her skills in art.

[citation needed] Her illustrations were often used in advertising and on porcelain goods, calendars, paper fans, trade and greeting cards.

Clapsaddle spent some years in Germany, funded by the International Art Publishing Company, and then returned to New York well before her mother's death in 1905.

[citation needed] Nevertheless, confidence in the boom and high return in profits led her and her partners to invest heavily in the years that followed in several Germany engraving and publishing firms.

Many German factories suffered total destruction from bombings and all of Clapsaddle's original artwork of the period is believed lost.

News of her safe arrival was posted in her hometown newspaper, the Richfield Springs Mercury, July 29, 1915: "People generally will be interested in knowing that the artist, Miss Ellen Clapsaddle, who is a native of this place, has returned from Berlin, where she has spent several years, and has notified her friends of her safe arrival in New York.

[citation needed] On April 9, 1920, Clapsaddle, who spent the winter months in New York City, moved to her home in the Chase House on Lake Street.

[7] In 1930 she was living as a lodger in Manhattan, at 125 East 30th St. according to the U. S. Census[8] In January 1932, she was admitted to the Peabody Home for Aged and Indigent Women on Pelham Parkway in New York City.

[9] Clapsaddle's greatest success was in the development of her artwork into single-faced cards that could be kept as souvenirs or mailed as postcards and she specialized in designing illustrations specifically for that purpose.

Artistic designs had become highly prized particularly during the peak of production of the "golden age of souvenir postcards" (1898–1915) for their great marketing possibilities.

[citation needed] One of her 1910 card designs, Midnight Angel, was chosen by the United States Postal Service for the 1995 traditional Christmas Stamp.