This cabinet card portrait features two adorable and identically dressed sisters posing for their portrait at the H. F. Askey studio in Elliott, Iowa. Note the girl’s puffy lacy bonnets. The girls are identified in an inscription on the reverse of the card as Marcella and Ina Hubbard. Marcella was born around 1892 and Ina was born around 1897. The 1900 US census reveals that the children were living in Sherman, Iowa with their parents Charles and Emma and three older siblings. Charles Hubbard worked as a businessman. The 1910 US census found the girls still living with their parents in Sherman. The only other child in the house was a younger sister. Charles was working as a “peddler” in the food business and Marcella had become a public school teacher. The photographer of this image was Henry Franklin Ashey. He was born in 1872 in Rock Grove, Illinois and died in 1959 in Grant, Iowa. He was married to Alice Dean Carroll in 1902 and the couple had four children. Askey was one of Iowa’s early photographers and at one time operated a studio in Red Oak, Iowa. When he left the photography business he became a farmer near Red Oak and Grant.
Marcella married Clarence Arthur DeWitt in 1913. She died in 1974 and was buried in Elliott, Iowa. Nothing further found on Ina.
Aren’t they lovely?