Esther Nelson Karn

Esther Nelson Karn (August 1860 – April 13, 1936) was an American poet and business owner, based in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Early life Esther (or Hester) Nelson was born in New Philadelphia, Ohio, and raised in DeKalb County, Indiana, the daughter of Hugh Nelson and Lucinda Davis Nelson. She trained to teach at Hicksville High School. She also attended courses at the Detroit School of Journalism and the De Silva School of Oratory in Fort Wayne.

Career Nelson taught briefly before she married. After she married, she worked as a bookkeeper, and wrote poetry. She gave public readings of her poems, sometimes with musical accompaniment, and was a member of the Order of Bookfellows, a Chicago-based writers' organization. She also wrote song lyrics. During World War I, she wrote topical lyrics about defeating the Kaiser.

In widowhood after 1904, and after her brother and business partner died in the Spanish flu pandemic in 1919, she continued to run the family's piano store and sheet music business in Fort Wayne, into the early 1930s.

Publications

Snow-Flakes (1900) Violets (1904) Lure of the Wilds (1925)

Personal life In 1882, Esther Nelson married Samuel A. Karn, who was a sales representative for a musical instrument manufacturer. Her husband died in 1904.