1OO years ago today – The Resilient Mrs. Whipple

100 years ago today the following announcement appeared in Southwest Mail and The Weekly Post for the Whipple Studio in Nevada, Missouri.

The announcement seems pretty straightforward. However, the story of the female photographer who was running that Whipple Studio in Nevada, Missouri in 1924 is anything but straightforward.

Allow me to explain…

The Whipple Studio in Nevada, Missouri was started by the wife and husband team of Frank M. and Estelle Whipple.

Estelle Whipple had been a photographer long before she met Frank Whipple. She had run a photography studio with her first husband, A.L. Monroe, in Thorp, Wisconsin in the late 1880s.

When A.L. Monroe went off traveling with a male assistant in 1894, the studio is left entirely in the hands of Mrs. A.L. Monroe.

As it turned out, A.L. Monroe never did go back to Thorp. He abandoned his wife, leaving her permanently in charge of the Monroe studio in Thorp. Mrs. Monroe proceeded to run the Monroe studio for the next few years.

In fact, she’s running that studio in Thorp when Frank Whipple comes through town with his traveling stereopticon show in the late 1890s.

BTW, after her husband A.L. Monroe leaves, Mrs. Monroe — who up to that point used “Allie” as her first name — starts going by her middle name, Estelle. It’s under the name “Estelle Monroe” that she teams up with Frank Whipple. At first their partnership is purely professional when they become business partners. Later, their relationship turns romantic. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Whipple travel around for a while with their photography and stereopticon businesses, eventually settling down in Nevada, Missouri, circa 1900, where they open the Whipple Studio. Frank and Estelle Whipple then successfully run the Whipple Studio together for the next several years.

In fact, things go along quite straigtforwardly for a while for the married duo of Frank and Estelle Whipple.

Until 1907.

That’s the year Frank Whipple is shot by a patron during one of his stereopticon shows. Frank is shot in January 1907, and he eventually dies from his injuries..

That leaves Estelle Whipple a widow running the Whipple photography studio on her own.

Well … that’s eventually what happens.

After Frank’s death, you see, it emerges that Frank Whipple had another wife, a woman named Lily whom he had married … and deserted … years earlier.

And it turns out that Lily and Frank might never have gotten divorced before he married Estelle.

Lily Whipple — the first Mrs. Whipple — arrives in Nevada, Missouri shortly after Frank’s death. She claims that she is the true widow of Frank Whipple, and therefore she is the woman entitled to inherit Frank’s estate, including the Whipple photography studio.

However, Estelle is eventually able to prevail in court, arguing that she, not Frank, was the photographer who actually ran the Whipple photo studio. Therefore, Estelle makes the case she deserves to retain the studio business.

Lilly pushes back, but when the dust settles on all the court cases in 1907, Estelle has been awarded both the studio as well as the bulk of Frank’s estate. Lilly gets nothing. Now, the legal status of the marriage between Estelle and Frank Whipple is a bit murky, even after all the lawsuits are settled, but ultimately Estelle is also granted the right to keep using the name “Mrs. Estelle Whipple” .

[I should note that the murkiness of Frank and Estelle’s marital status is not entirely due to the question of whether or not Frank and Lily had gotten a divorce. As it turned out, Estelle Monroe Whipple (aka Allie Monroe) may or may not have ever been legally divorced from her first husband, A.L. Monroe. Estelle testifies in court that she had always assumed A.L. Monroe had gotten a legal divorce from her, since she knew that he had gotten remarried in 1899. She she testifies that she never actually checked, though, to make sure that A.L. Monroe had indeed obtained their divorce.]

Anyway, in the spring of 1907, Estelle Whipple begins to run the Whipple Studio by herself, under the name “Mrs. Estelle Whipple”.

A few years later, Estelle Whipple marries a photographer named Alvis L. (aka “A.L.” or “Dutch”) Scarbrough in 1913. The Scarbroughs run the Whipple Studio together – they never rebrand the studio to be their name.

Whew. What a saga, eh?

Just to recap, then, 100 years ago today the Whipple Studio in Nevada, Missouri is being by Mr. and Mrs. A.L. and Estelle Whipple Scarbrough.

But … the saga does not end there.

After A.L. Scarbrough dies suddenly in 1927, Estelle Scarbrough continues to run the Whipple Studio on her own.

Estelle herself dies suddenly in 1934 at the age of 68.

Just to recap again, Estelle Monroe Whipple Scarbrough was an early woman photographer who worked for nearly 40 years as a professional photographer, running studios either on her own or in partnership with one of her three husbands.

After all the family drama in this post, let me share a few more clips related to Estelle’s photographic career:

Since nothing about Mrs. Monroe Whipple Scarbrough’s story is straightforward, though, I’m going to end with one more bit of uncertainty. I found the following cabinet card posted by a user on ancestry.com. It is definitely from the Monroe studio in Thorp [sometimes spelled Thorpe], Wisconsin.

Now, recall that prior to June of 1894 that studio was run by Mr. and Mrs. Monroe. The person who posted this photo on ancestry.com says it is possible that the couple in the photo are actually A.L. and Allie Monroe themselves. Fun, eh? 🙂