Background
Bertha Maude Horack Shambaugh was born on February 12, 1871, in Belle Plaine, Iowa, United States. She moved to Iowa City in 1880 with her Czech-born parents, Frank J. and Katharine (Mosnat) Horack, and two younger brothers.
Bertha Maude Horack Shambaugh
Benjamin Franklin Shambaugh
(Bertha Maude Horack Shambaugh in this book explained the ...)
Bertha Maude Horack Shambaugh in this book explained the distinctive religious basis of the communal society, profiled leaders, and reported on Amana history, government, industry, and religion.
1908
Bertha Maude Horack Shambaugh was born on February 12, 1871, in Belle Plaine, Iowa, United States. She moved to Iowa City in 1880 with her Czech-born parents, Frank J. and Katharine (Mosnat) Horack, and two younger brothers.
Bertha Maude Shambaugh attended public schools and inherited "artistic tastes and fondness for music from her father", while her mother exposed her to literary classics. She enjoyed outdoor life, was inspired by scientist Bohumil Shimek to study nature and became president of the local Agassiz Association. She refined her skills as an artist by sketching plant specimens, and soon her illustrations and stories appeared in the Illustrated Youth and Age, the Interior, the Midland Monthly, and other magazines.
A major shift in her interests occurred in the fall of 1888 when Bertha Maude Shambaugh was given a camera. Among the first amateurs to experiment with dry-plate photography, she employed a keen pictorial sense, focusing her camera on aspects of life previously unrecorded and documenting ordinary lives. Expressive images reveal intimate details about the culture she was part of and invoke a spirit of the times, serving as visual artifacts.
A daring 20-year-old in 1890-1891, Bertha Maude Shambaugh took more than 100 photographs in the Amana Colonies - "glimpses of the Old Amana that is fast disappearing." Her photographs show houses, gardens, street scenes, woolen mills, an apothecary shop, bakery, kitchen, and church, along with school activities, craftsmen, and communal kitchen workers. "The Knitting Lesson" is perhaps her most enduring image.
Her interest in botany led her to the State University of Iowa to study under Thomas Macbride.
From 1893 until her marriage in 1897, Bertha Maude Shambaugh chaired Iowa City High School’s biology department. But then, as she later wrote, "My interest in Benjamin’s work and in the development of the State Historical Society of Iowa drew me into the field of State and Local history."
In 1895 Bertha Maude Shambaugh was hired to undertake a study, published as Some of the Economic and Industrial Phases of the Amana Society in the Ninth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the State of Iowa in 1901. An essay on the Amanas appeared in the Midland Monthly in 1896, followed by an article in the World Today in October 1902, featuring her photographs. Extensive research included field trips to interview residents and gain access to private records and church archives. Her 1908 book, Amana: Community of True Inspiration, published by the State Historical Society of Iowa, established her as an authority on a culture not then familiar to outsiders. Bertha Maude Shambaugh explained the distinctive religious basis of the communal society, profiled leaders, and reported on Amana history, government, industry, and religion.
Bertha Maude Shambaugh maintained an active social life as a member of the N.N.club, American Association of University Women, Iowa Federation of Women’s Clubs, Iowa Press and Author’s Club, University Club, and the Triangle Club; as an adviser to student groups; and as a Sunday school teacher at the Unitarian Church.
Bertha Maude Shambaugh married Benjamin Shambaugh on August 11, 1897, after first meeting him at one of his lectures about the history of Iowa City.
