The lamest of clues yields the most satisfying payoff.
In spring 1923 Artena was in Omaha, Nebraska, breaking in her shoes. On Tuesday, May 8 the diary notes a pleasant evening spent in a church member's home, a conversation with "Elva", and a ride home in "Mrs. Epperly's car." A routine little visit, another evening, and yet another "pleasant conversation" (I think Artena was an extrovert). Nothing more.
With history, there's always more. Artena makes very little mention of her struggles with hearing loss, which worsened over the course of her journey. But she frequently misheard words and, as a result, misspelled them. For example: it took serious digging to determine that a "Sister Garlett" was Alice Grace Garlick. This happened a lot. (A spotty education is also to blame—diary marginalia indicates a "joak on Sister Steinagel".)
Recently I looked through the scrapbook of another Western States missionary and its many photos devoted to the glorious people of 1920s Nebraska. It was mostly salt-of-the-earth, older women with weathered faces, posing proudly in their long dresses and looking very 19th century.
"But a smaller photo also caught my eye, mostly because the younger, dark-haired girl stared coolly back at the camera. Below the girl's wary expression, 'Epperle' was scratched into the black cardstock."
I was instantly convinced the scrapbook's Epperle was Artena's Epperly and that I was staring at the photo of someone Artena knew (or at least she was staring back at me). Now you can stare at each other, too:
It's all true. Except her name wasn't Elva Epperl(y)e, it was Alva Eipperle (drat those misspellings!). Isn't her fur-collared coat glorious? I think she was a prospect, which would explain "the conversation" and the referral to her mother as "Mrs. Epperly" instead of "Sister". Also, her father had been recently indicted for operating a liquor still. (Huzza! No wonder they owned fur coats and a car.)
When I went to FamilySearch to post Alva's photo, an even bigger surprise lay waiting. In 1928, Alva Eipperle married Ray A. Brust. Dinner at Sister Brust's was the first invite Artena received in Omaha. And now we know that Artena's investigator married Sister Brust's son five years after she and Artena's evening conversation. As Artena says in her diary, "the Mormons have the pep!"
More coincidence: A few months before Alva and Ray's 1928 union, Ray's brother Gerald Dwight married Alva's sister, Edna Marie. Double weddings for the Eipperles and Brusts. Huzza, huzza! I don't know why an old, hidden story like this down-home double romance matters. It just does, and for reasons that point back to Artena.
I wish I could tell her the happy ending.
Postscript...
As has become increasingly common over the course of this project, Artena eventually shared a sad commonality with Alva Eipperle: early widowhood. Not from war. Ray Brust was killed in an "auto-truck mishap" at age 43. I was sorry to see it.
When you're a history detective sweating blood for a story, its sorrowful ending becomes doubly so.
Photos from Family Search; Still Notice from Omaha Daily Bee, 13 Nov 1920; Auto-Truck Mishap from Ashland Gazette, 6 Oct 1949.
Clippings via Newspapers.com
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