ELLA HARPER:- THE CAMEL GIRL

ELLA HARPER:- The Camel Girl

Humans are the most valuable and precious creation by god. but sometimes god create something unrealistic and unbelievable creatures but ELLA HARPER was not an animal or beast she was an ordinary girl like other girls. she had a pair of hand and legs, one mouth and one nose.

So, question arises " Why we call her The Camel Girl?"

So let's start her memoir by knowing her some basic information.

ELLA HARPER was born on 5 January 1870 in Hendersonville, Tennessee. She was known professionally as the camel girl, was born with a very rare orthopedic condition that caused her knees to bend backwards, called congenital genu recurvatum. Her preference to walk on all fours resulted in her nickname "Camel Girl" . In 1886 she was featured as the star in W.H. Harris's Nickel Plate Circus, appearing in newspaper wherever the circus visited. The back of her pitch card reads:

I am called the camel girl because my knees turn backwards. I can walk best on my hands and feet as you see me in the picture. I have traveled considerably in the show business for the past four years and now, this is 1886 and I intend to quit the show business and go to school and fit myself for another occupation.

It appears that Ella did indeed move on to other ventures, and her $200 a week salary likely opened many doors for her. For quite some time no further information was available on Ella following 1886, but recently a genealogist managed to not only trace Ella's family tree, but also provide some information regarding her life after sideshow.

On 28 June 1905 Ella Harper married a man named Robert L. Savely. Savely was a school teacher and later a bookkeeper for a photo supplies company. A 1910 census shows Ella and her husband living in Nashville, Tennessee with Ella's mother and it also revealed that Ella and her husband had adopted a 3 month old child, but that the child passed away only 18 days later.

We also now know that Ella died of colon cancer on 19 December 1921 in Nashville, Tennessee and that she buried at Spring Hill Cemetery in Nashville. A simple gravestone marks her plot, but she is surrounded by family.