ANNE ELLIS - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 02/19/1930 - HFSID 280694

ANNE ELLIS
Author Anne Ellis wrote this short note about "A lovely afternoon" on her personalized stationery in 1930 to Audrey Ovington, daughter of Earle Ovington, the first airmail pilot.
Autograph note signed "Anne Ellis" in purple ink. 1 page, 5¾x6¾, on Ellis' personalized stationery from Glendale, Arizona. Feb. 19, 1930. In full: "A lovely afternoon with Audrey Ovington Sincerely". AUDREY OVINGTON was thedaughter of EARLE OVINGTON (1879-1936), who became the first airmail pilot on Sept. 23, 1911, when he carried a load of mail 5 ½ miles over Long Island in New York. She also operated the Cold Spring Tavern in Santa Barbara, California, one the first restaurants to serve ranch dressing. If you ever think you have it hard, try reading the autobiographies of ANNE ELLIS (1875-1938). Ellis wrote three memoirs - The Life of an Ordinary Woman, Plain Anne Ellis and Sunshine Preferred - of her poverty and grief-stricken life that she nevertheless managed to endure and even overcome. Her father deserted her family while she was just a child and her mother died when she was 18, leaving her to raise her six siblings in Bonanza, Colorado. Her first husband George Fleming was an unsuccessful miner who was killed in a mining accident, and her second husband Henry Ellis died after surgery. To support herself, she ran a bakery and a boardinghouse and worked as a cook in mining camps and for sheep shearers and construction crews. Yet she overcame these tragedies and difficulties to become four-time Treasurer of Saguache County in Colorado and to put her own children through college. Lightly toned and creased. Adhesive and mounting residue on verso with show-through (does not touch signature). Random ink stains. Folded once and unfolded. Otherwise in fine condition.