Ella Harper: The Camel Girl

Ella Evans Harper, also known as ‘The Camel Girl,’ was born with an unusual medical condition that caused her knees to turn backward.

At the tender age of 12, Ella Harper joined the traveling sideshow scene. During this time of her life, she traveled around America from St. Louis to New Orleans. Sadly, Ella received a particularly harsh brand of attention from sideshow customers due to her condition.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

About Ella’s Early Years

Ella Harper came into the world on January 5, 1970, in Sumner County, Tennessee. She was born to William Harper and Minerva Ann Childress, who had five children. Ella had a twin brother who sadly passed away shortly after their birth.

She grew up on the family farm with her four siblings, none of whom had the same condition as her.

Why Was She Called ‘The Camel Girl’?

Ella Harper’s rare orthopedic condition is known as congenital genu recurvatum, a medical term for ‘curved knee’ where knees turn backward. For whatever reason, possibly stability or comfort, she also preferred to walk on all fours. Unfortunately, sideshows saw this as an opening to market Ella as being half camel. It led to her getting the name ‘The Camel Girl.’ This ‘part camel’ rumor would lead to a lot of the audience treating this young lady harshly.

Career

Ella Harper was the star of W.H. Harris’s Nickel Plate Circus. He wanted to show a diverse range of human oddities as was possible. Ella walked around on stage with a camel. Audiences would gawk and take in the similarities between them.

Photo credit: Alchetron

There isn’t extensive information available in the public domain about her life. From what is available, it’s easy to gather that her stint in the circus was not something she did out of enjoyment. Her time there was marred with humiliation and cruel words from gawkers. She was once described as “the most wonderful freak of nature since the creation of the world.”

On a positive note, a one week salary for Ella Harper was considerably higher than for most. She made a salary of $200, which would be about $5,000 today. She held out in the circus scene for four years, earning money before announcing her plans to quit performing in 1886.

The back of her pitch card read, “I have traveled considerably in the show business for the past four years. Now, this is 1886, and I intend to quit the show business and go to school and fit myself for another occupation.”

She disappeared after her retirement, living a very quiet and more private life, pursuing a different career and lifestyle. There are few records of her life after leaving the sideshow world, although most of it remains an untold story.

Based on census reports from Sumner County, Harper obtained a marriage license in 1905. Later that year, in June 1905, she married schoolteacher Robert L. Savely, who stayed with her until she died in 1921. They lived together with Ella’s mother and her niece.

Photo credit: Alchetron

Misfortune seemed to follow Ella, with one heartbreaking story after the next. Some of the significant tragedies in her life included her father dying in an untimely house fire. A short five years on, her brother Willie was listed as deceased.

There were also indications in Davidson County census reports about tragedy striking her biological and adopted children.

Her biological daughter Mabel Evans Savely passed away at six months old. Not long after, both Ella and husband Robert would mourn the loss of Jewel, their adopted daughter. The baby girl died at three months old.

Death

Ella died on December 19, 1921, after a battle with colon cancer. At the time of her passing, it showed that she had been working as a housekeeper in Davidson County.

She is buried in Spring Hill Cemetery on the Harper family plot. Ella’s grave is nestled between her family members and parents. After she died, records show her husband moved away, and her mother moved to a home for Masonic widows and orphans.

Conclusion

Ella’s life was marked by tragedy and the struggles she faced due to being born with a rare condition and unusual deformity. Her story is sad, and we can only hope it was better than what we can glean from census reports and circus pitch cards.

As one newspaper put it, Ella Harper was “nothing more than a pleasant-faced young woman whose knees turned backward instead of forward.”

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