Corsets

I found this ad yesterday from 1899. The Kalamazoo Corset Company has an interesting history. So does Mattie! More about her later.

Mattie Cooper Lynch Bloom Evans was born September 11, 1860 in Cotton Mills, Texas (obit). She was the daughter of Wilson Cooper and Henrietta Bell Cooper. She was a very successful woman and for many years had a popular millinery business in Caddo. Her first husband, barber and businessman R. T. Lynch was murdered in his shop in 1903. In 1909 she married Peter Bloom, Caddo’s blacksmith. He divorced her in 1912. In 1928 she married W. R. Evans, owner of the Evans Variety Store. He died in 1933. Mattie died in 1941, just short of 81 years old.