Rosamund (Rosa) Goerke immigrated to the United States from Prussia in 1876 at the age of twenty. On September 11, 1878, she married Theodore F. Braun, a prosperous assayer and business associate of her brother Paul, in Pueblo, Colorado. In October 1880, after the birth of their first child and while pregnant with their second, Rosa traveled to Germany to visit friends and relatives. She returned to the United States in June 1881. In May 1884, Theodore Braun died, leaving Rosa, only twenty-eight, a widow with three children.
She ran a boarding house in Pueblo until her marriage to Ory Thomas Davis on November 21, 1888, in Walsenburg, in southeastern Colorado. During the summer of 1889, she opened a photo studio called the Home Gallery.
After their son was born that fall, her husband took over the studio.
The Davis marriage was troubled. By September 1892, Rosa was using her former husband’s last name as she pursued a business selling a facial formula called Gloria water. When the divorce case came before a judge, Rosa stated that Davis had threatened to kill her and that she was afraid of him. In December 1892, the divorce was granted, with Rosa receiving custody of all four children.
In 1895, Rosa married F. William Rieke. The 1910 federal census lists Rosa as working on a fruit farm in California, and sharing a home with her son and daughter. She died on September 2, 1920, in St. Helena, California.
Does anyone have any photos by Rosa Davis? A future blog post will follow up on her ex-husband’s success as a photographer.
Fun fact: Her brother Paul operated a photo studio in Manitou Springs, Colorado, in the 1890s.