Old Postcards

 

     

I confess: I cannot help myself from browsing through the boxes of old postcards that I may encounter at a thrift shop. Case in point, the two above.  Both had writing on the reverse side........... old German. Which of course I could not read. So I took them with me to RootsTech in March and requested help on B-1 in the FamilySearch Library.

The card on the left was addressed to "Fraulein Luise Koller, Frankfurt a Main, Niederrad." It was from "Heinrich." Was Heinrich the handsome suitor of Luise? Or was that a commercial photo? 

The one on the right REALLY intrigued me. Was this a real person in real clothes or a costumed funny? This card, dated 1919, was from Erik Lund to "the family Moller in Vestergade." Erik says he is "sending to you my picture." Wonder what they thought! 

So teaches Wikipedia: "A postcard is a rectangular piece of thick paper, sent without an envelope and for a lower fee. Production of postcards blossomed in the late 19th and each 20th centuries and an easy and quick way for individuals to communicate. The study and collecting of postcards is termed deltiology. (Remember that when you're invited to be on Jeopardy.) 

Do you have any old postcards in your collected personal family history archive?

Ancestors from Vastervik, Sweden?

 Found these old postcards in a basket in a thrift store...... and had to "rescue" them to try and find a better home for them than a thrift store basket! They are yours if you want them...... do you have ancestors from Vastervik, Sweden??  Email me: Donna243@gmail.com

Picture Postcards

 

Don't most of us have old picture postcards included with our ancestors' memorabilia? We have a lovely batch from 1911 when great-grandmother Ethel visited Yellowstone (traveling in horse-drawn carriages and wearing long dresses and huge hate). 

The first known printed picture postcard, with an image on one side, was created in France in 1870 at Camp Conlie by Leon Besmardeau (1829-1914). Conlie was a training camp for soldiers in the Franco-Prussian War. Below is an image of that card:

 

I learned much about picture postcards from a webinar by Katherine Hamilton-Smith, the St. Clair County (Illinois) Gen Soc in early 2024. 

"The years 1890 to 1915 were the Golden Age of postcards; they were an absolute craze," she explained. "Everybody collected them and would show them off to family and guests. Everybody who could afford them, bought them." 

There were so many types of picture postcards!  Auto courts, Motels, Restaurants, Gas Stations, Churches, travel destinations, fashion, trains, cars, airplanes and ships, places, disasters (tornados, fires, shipwrecks) and commemorative events (opening of Panama Canal). Anything and everything might show up as a picture on a postcard during that Golden Age. Entrepreneurs quickly saw an opportunity to make money and would take a photo of a place and then make and sell those postcards. 

Hamilton-Smith further explained that "postcards were a visual documenting history of a place in time...... not of people but of places." 

Today people collect specific postcards for other reasons than connections to their family history. 

Do you have any old family-sent or collected picture postcards??

Merry Christmas

Christmas postcard from my uncle Ralph Hansen to my grandmother Anna Hansen in 1918. Ralph's sisters Frances and Carrie were in Minnesota going to college. Interesting note on this penny postcard, it took two one cent stamps to mail it in 1918. One of the tax increases the government used to help pay for WWI. Notice how plain this card is, the fancier postcards were mostly from Germany, but Germany quit exporting post cards when the war started.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from the EWGS Blog

 Thanksgiving Card from my Aunt Carrie

to my grandmother Anna Hansen