Tag: <span>postcard</span>

Glad Easter Greetings – 1912

Yet another postcard in this series of Maher postcards.  This one brings “Glad Easter Greetings” and has a design on the front featuring a fluffy yellow chick sitting in a hammock of pink flowers that’s held up by two pussy willow branches.  Clovers sprout up underneath the hammock and a city scene is in the far background.  On an image search, I did find an old ebay auction with the exact same postcard.

This postcard is addressed to Lee Maher, and is postmarked 4 April 1912.  Lee would’ve been 8 when he received this.  Here’s the message:
“Hello Lee, how are you.  Do you go to school.  Summer will soon be here then you can play ball.  Tell your mamma to write.  From Uncle James.”
Uncle James Maher on Lee’s father’s side would’ve only been born a year before Lee, so I guess it’s possible he wrote this, maybe with the assistance of an adult.  Not entirely sold on that being the case, but it’s possible!

 

A Happy Birthday – 1909


Another in the set of Maher Postcards, this one has a design on the front featuring pink and red roses with gilded accents and a message that reads “A Happy Birthday” in red ink.  A delicately gilded heart that looks like a small mirror sits just left of center.

Addressed to Lee Maher, and missing a stamp, this postcard is from his aunt Stella, his mother’s sister.  The writer is wishing him a happy 6th birthday and since part of the cancellation stamp is unclear, that helps tremendously to show this was sent 27 December 1909 (Lee was born 27 December 1903).  Here’s the message:
“Hello Lee, So today you are 6 years old, soon to be a man.  What did Santa bring you for Christmas.  Goodbye, from your Aunt Stella.”
The only identifying marks on the back is that it’s Serie 1600b and printed in Germany.  A quick image search didn’t turn up any duplicates using those details.

Many Happy Returns of the Day – 1911

This is another in the series of “Maher Postcards” that are explained in this post.  The front of this card shows purple irises surrounding a birthday message, transcribed below.

Many Happy Returns of the Day
May your days from now be brighter
May your load grow ever lighter
May this birthday be the first of days
When ill luck flies away, and good luck stays.

The card is addressed to Mrs. Bernard Maher, the former Miss Hattie Braniff, born 28 May 1886 in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.  The sender is Catherine Maher, her mother-in-law, who wrote out the address putting little hearts at the front of each letter in her name and in “Buffalo” and “NY” which is just too charming.  The postmark date is 26 May 1911, so it likely arrived on Hattie’s 25th birthday which is fantastic timing and close to this post date, albeit over a hundred years earlier.  The one cent Benjamin Franklin stamp is still affixed.  The message reads, “Hello Hattie, how are and all the rest.  We are all well here at present, tell Bernard Aunt Annie Garrity is getting married to a Bernard Duigon of Hastings.  Wishing you a happy birthday.”

The Annie Garrity mentioned in the message is Annie McCann (1865-1936) who married Catherine’s brother, William.  William passed away in 1904, so the news being passed on is that Annie, Catherine’s sister-in-law, is marrying a second time.  It’s great that she was able to slip in a little bit of family news along with the birthday greetings as it helps to cement exactly who we’re talking about here!

Easter Greetings from 1910

Timely, given the upcoming holiday!  I found an interesting set of postcards in my one grandmother’s box of correspondence which included this postcard.  It doesn’t appear to be sent by or received by anyone related to us, and while I did at one point connect to a living relative of the recipient, we weren’t able to figure out how on earth grandma came into possession of these postcards.  Patton, Pennsylvania isn’t far from where she lived, but the recipient was in Buffalo, New York, so it’s all a little confusing.  Either way, it’s an interesting postcard, over 100 years old.  The front has an image of a blue egg filled with pink flowers and two little yellow chicks, with gilded decoration on the egg and a message that says, “Easter Greetings.”

The back is postmarked Patton, PA, Feb 25, 1910 at 3am, and is sent to Master Lee Maher at 113 Aldrick Ave, Buffalo, NY.  Immediately, I hit the census records for 1910 since looking up an address should be pretty easy.  I did find a Lee Maher at 103 Aldrick Ave, living with his parents, Bernard and Hattie and younger brothers, James and William.

The message on the postcard says, “Hello Lee.  How are you and James and Baby.  When are you coming to Grandma’s, I would like to see you.  Is the Easter Bunnie coming to your house.  From Aunt Sara.”

The message lines up with the census record that shows a James and an 8 month old child (William) as of the census date in April, so that checks out pretty well!  Aunt Sara is probably Bernard’s sister Sara who was still living at home in Patton, PA on the 1910 census.  Lee appears to have passed away in 1966 in New Jersey (born 1903).

As far as the postcard itself, the only identifying marks on it are “Made in Germany” and “Serie 742” printed on the back, and in a quick search, I wasn’t able to turn up one exactly like it, though it’s definitely in the same style as postcards of the time.  You can see from the back of the postcard, it’s also a pretty heavily embossed design.

Old Postcard – .. and send me home

Grandpa sent dozens of postcards to grandma while he was away with the Army Air Force, and it was neat to watch them go from being addressed to Miss and then Mrs after they got married.  This one was sent July 22, 1942 from Foster Field, Texas and there’s no stamp because postage was (and still is, in some places) free for the military.  Grandpa just wrote “Free” over the stamp box and it got straight to grandma, no problem.  I’m only posting the front of the card, not the back with the message since that feels a little too personal, but the back indicates the postcard was published by “Southern Card Co., Sa. Antonio, Texas.”  It’s a pretty funny postcard and seems to have a number of variations I saw on a quick google search.  The postcard has an image of a donkey and says, “I’m Out On a H.. of a time! When I can’t stand, tie this to my buttonhole, steal my pocketbook, wind my watch, and sponge my clothes, tie this tag to my [ass] and send me home.” There’s a space for name/address, then at the bottom, “Keep this out of the newspapers, and tell my wife it was an old stomach trouble.”

Postcard with a donkey that says, "I'm Out On a H.. of a time!  When I can't stand, tie this to my buttonhole, steal my pocketbook, wind my watch, and sponge my clothes, tie this tag to my (image of donkey) and send me home."  There's a space for name/address, then at the bottom, "Keep this out of the newspapers, and tell my wife it was an old stomach trouble."

Mothers’ Day Postcard

Every once in a while, I remember I have something in the genealogical stash that lines up with the holiday at hand!  This postcard was found in a box of grandma’s things in a set of postcards that didn’t belong to her or any family member.  I honestly have no idea how she came across them!  I had contacted someone via Ancestry.com who was related to the person most of these were sent to, and neither of us could make a link.  Anyway, today’s postcard was in that set and I only found it online one other place, so I thought I’d share it today.  The front is printed in tones of blue with “Mothers’ Day” at the top, a photo of a woman, and carnations framing a poem that is as follows:

To Honor Our Mothers
Just one such kindly face,
A heart so filled with grace;
Gift of the One above,
A mother, and her love.

The back says it’s No. 212, price $1 per 100 by Meigs pub. co., Indianapolis, Ind.  Made in the U.S.A.  Someone wrote in pen what appears to say, “Compliments of the Epworth League 1934” – the Epworth League being a Methodist association for young adults that existed under that name from 1889-1939.  Grandma was Methodist, so it’s possible this was actually hers or her mother’s, or that the link between her family and the family mentioned in the postcards lies in a connection made through the church.  As far as who that woman on the postcard is, it doesn’t appear to be of Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mothers’ Day, and I couldn’t find anything more about who she might be even after doing a Google Image search and trying to find the author of the poem.  If you happen to know, definitely drop me a comment!!

Sepia Saturday 243: Running away, Escaping the Crowds, Beaches, Steam Train, Aquarium

When I saw the prompt photo for this week’s Sepia Saturday, my mind immediately went to an old postcard in the collection because it had a very similar feel to it, even if the man in my photo isn’t running away.  I’ve posted the front and back of the postcard which has a stamp, but no cancellation or message on the back of the postcard.  I have to imagine that someone meant to send it, but never quite got around to it.  The stamp is dated to 1954, which helps date the postcard as well.  With a town name like, “Coalport,” in Pennsylvania, you can be sure that the main industry was coal.  The majority of my family that comes from that area were coal miners.  I posted another old photo of family members who were coal miners here, if you’re interested.  Awful jobs, terrible conditions, and perhaps at times, they wanted to run away from it all.  As far as the orientation of the photo, on the far left side of the photo, about dead center horizontally, there’s a church.  The church is the one in the Google Street View just below the postcard.  I know I’ve driven down that street before when out visiting family, so I’ll have to see if I can go back out and set up a photo similar to the postcard and do some comparison!

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