The University of Iowa Libraries

Arrangement: One folder, shelved in SCVF.

Access: The papers are open for research.

Use: Copyright has been retained by the donor.

Acquisition: Thereminiscence (donor no. 586) was donatedby June Van Haaften, in 1999.

Preferred Citation: Mabel Korver Van Haaften memoir, Iowa Women's Archives, The University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City.

Repository:	Iowa Women's Archives
Address:	100 Main Library University of Iowa Libraries Iowa City, IA 52242
Phone:	319-335-5068
Curator:	Kären Mason
Email:	lib-women@uiowa.edu
Website:	http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa

Mabel Korver was born to Dutch immigrant parents in 1901 and raised on a farm near Leighton, Iowa with her three sisters. Her parents rented farms until 1919, when they bought a farm that they then lived on for more than twenty years. Mabel Korver married Arie Van Haaften in 1928; they raised four children and farmed near Leighton, retiring to that town in 1964.

The Mabel Korver Van Haaften papers consist of a photocopy of a handwritten reminiscence that measures one linear inch. The twenty-five page reminiscence gives detailed information about childhood on a Dutch immigrant farm. It describes her mother's housewifely attention to sewing and care for clothing, the family's simple meals and arrangements to butcher, cook, and preserve foods on this farm without electricity or running water. It also describes the warm care shown by her father in teaching her to read on cold winter days and building a path across fields and streams for her to walk to school. She describes her father's first car, bought in 1914; her school days; hired help; and their move to their own farm in1917. She ends the childhood reminiscence with a description of her fortieth wedding anniversary in 1968.

This collection is indexed under the following subject terms.

Personal Names:
Van Haaften, Mabel Korver, 1901-1989

Dates:
1980-1989

Topics:
Dutch American women
Rural families
Rural girls
Rural women
Rural conditions
Immigrant families
Farm life
Family life
Sewing
Cooking
Canning and preserving
Rural schools
Wedding anniversaries
Nineteen hundreds (Decade)
Nineteen tens

Occupations:
Homemakers
Farmers

Geographic Names:
United States -- Iowa -- Leighton

Genre/Form of Materials:
Memoirs

Browse:
Rural and Farm Women
Autobiographical Resources: Diaries, Memoirs and Oral Histories