Postcards From The Past
My maternal grandmother, Hattie, collected picture postcards. She had a whole drawer full of them, some dating back to before 1900. When she died in 1953, those postcards went into a box which sat in closets, under beds, and in various dark corners for 40 years. A few were damaged by water when a basement flooded, but most survived to be found and treasured.
And shared.
Main Street Bridge, Dayton, OH;
early 20th Century
Hattie was born in 1882, the youngest of fifteen children with an age spread of thirty years. She probably never met her oldest siblings, who stayed in Indiana when her father moved to Illinois—a brother married there and stayed the rest of his life—another move, to Kansas—some more stayed. Hattie was born during a brief residence in Arkansas—back to Kansas, and finally to Oklahoma, when Hattie was only 10. Her father died there a few years later, but her mother stayed on until 1915. Hattie began collecting postcards while she was in Oklahoma; the earliest ones are postmarked in the first few years of the twentieth century.
There are postcards addressed to Hattie and other relatives from her older sister too. Luella picked them up in her travels, to Colorado, to Oregon, finally to Idaho, in 1913, sending many back to Oklahoma. The ones she sent to Hattie, those she picked up as souveniers of her travels, and the many she received from family and friends eventually ended up in Hattie's collection.
About half the postcards are holiday greetings of various sorts. One of Hattie's half-sisters, Katie, was proud of her husband's Irish ancestry (And hers? The family is believed to be Scots-Irish) and she sent St. Patrick's Day greetings to her mother, to Hattie, and to Luella every year from 1909 to 1918. And of course there were many Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and Easter greetings exchanged.
Hattie Holmes
Luella Holmes
Many of the postcards bear messages from relatives, from friends. Several are love letters. Hattie's future husband, Clarence, courted her with postcards, both comic and tender. Some bear bad news—a sister had major surgery, a brother lost his job, a friend died. Saddest of all is the one that tells of Clarence's death in Florida, that Hattie is bringing her aged mother and her infant daughter to Idaho to take refuge with Luella.
For some reason, the cards became scarcer about 1919, then tapered off to one or two a year. A few got added now and then by Hattie's daughter and her husband and by traveling friends. But there were no more from her sisters and brothers, although most of them lived many years more. Hattie was a contentious woman, and never forgot a slight. She refused to keep in touch with herhusband's parents after his death, and nobody ever knew the exact reasons why. Perhaps she fought with other relatives too, and that's why the postcards didn't come any more.
Contentious or not, Hattie left a priceless legacy. Her postcards opened new doors in family history for her descendants. And many more of them, scattered here and there on the World Wide Web, are still showing folks what the world looked like a century ago.
P.S. If your ancestors traveled through, stopped off a spell, or settled in Kansas, you'll find The Kansas Collection fascinating. It includes a history of Kansas published in 1883, stories, photographs, and a myriad of other interesting historical information about Kansas.