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 at the top 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 lower one 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?
My grandfather was born in Brooklyn in 1900, and lived there until he was 18. I have postcards his mother wrote back and forth to his music teacher, the person she worked for, and even one telling family that her baby had died. No pictures on these postcards.
In my grandmother’s post card collection is one I’ve always enjoyed. It’s a message from her mother to an older sister living in a town about 3 train stops away. It says they’ve butchred the pig and come pick up your share. In the early 1900s, when the card was sent, there were 3 mail deliveries a day and the family “chatted” frequently.
I love old post cards too.
And I collect digital images like the second one, of people in costumes.
I have one very interesting thin WOOD postcard that is 3-1/2 x 5 inches. It was sent by my uncle Richard Weddle to my great-grandmother Marie Rosalie Cornioley Whippey (his grandmother) March 4, 1938. The post office actually stamped it and it has a 3 cent stamp with a pink coloring titled “Landing of the Swedes and Finns”. He purchased it at the Old Curiosity Shop in Seattle.