You're about to make the acquaintance of a most remarkable woman who, as you'll see, deserves a far more prominent place in Covina history than the mere footnotes she's been relegated to in the past...
As has often been the case, my initial inspiration for an article started with a postcard. This particular specimen first attracted my interest because of the handwritten inscription indicating the house owned by Mr. Clapp, the druggist, from whose store came this antique medicine bottle, the subject of one of my earliest posts here.
View looking southwest along the west side of the 200 block of North Second Street, Covina, c.1908. "Rose" mailed this hand-colored Rieder postcard from Lordsburg (La Verne) on January 2, 1908. Click image to view an enlargement.
The Clapps were an important family in early Covina, and I'll have more to say about them later, but the actual main character in my present story is Mrs. Clapp's mother—Mrs. Italia Cook—who lived in the big house at far right.
The published histories barely mention Italia, but she was easily the most propertied and most philanthropic woman in Covina at the turn of the last century, and now here, at long last, this pioneer-era force of nature is going to get the full recognition she's due.
