Historical Portrait
Rosie Moey Yuen
Archive record
Public-domain historical portrait of Rosie Moey Yuen from 1913, who later became a professional stage dancer with her husband Yow Joe.
About this photograph
This 1913 portrait shows Rosie Moey Yuen, who would go on to perform as a professional stage dancer with her husband Yow Joe.
The photograph comes from the Tulare County Library's local history collection. Tulare County sits in California's San Joaquin Valley, a farming region that grew rapidly in the late nineteenth century around irrigated agriculture. The library's collection documents ordinary residents, families, schools and businesses rather than public figures.
The record gives no information about the photographer or the studio where this portrait was made. Many studio portraits from this period served a practical purpose for immigrant families, made either at home to leave with relatives or shortly after arrival to send back as proof of safe passage and employment. Between roughly 1880 and 1920 some twenty million people came to the United States, most from southern and eastern Europe.
The photograph reached this archive through California Revealed, a statewide programme that digitises materials from California libraries, archives, museums and historical societies. Items carrying that tag come from many separate local institutions, so the tag indicates where digitisation took place rather than where the photograph itself was taken.
Compiled from the catalogue record and reference notes on the formats and events involved. The archive record above is the primary source.
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