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A supply of the necessary?
E.C. Patton album, cards 8-11 Still early days in this album, but some interesting cards so far (images and/or messages). Four more cards for today. I’m not sure of the sender, whether their signature is the bottom center scrawl or the letters on the right side. The message comes through clear enough, however. “Thanks for Oregon’s capitol we’ll need one (perhaps?) suppose you heard about the Political Graft trying to remove ours to Berkeley. Ha! Lots of excitement here now. I’m patiently waiting for that letter” [unclear] to E.C. Patton, 2 March 1907 The reference to the letter suggests these two may send each other cards (and perhaps both collect)…
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A complete line of holiday goods!
E.C. Patton album, cards 4-7 First up of today’s cards–one that could serve as a trade card. The sender managed to combine quite a few purposes in this! It’s an announcement of a sales call, a sample of the firm’s work, and an advertisement. Behrendt evidently made quite a run of these cards to serve as introductions. At least one of his sales force (presumptively male given the “Our Mr.”) got a stamp made with his name to save writing it everywhere. Although that doesn’t mean that S.L. Kayser wrote the card–perhaps the firm had clerks with good handwriting for that part. Certainly the few written words on the card…
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When is the new year again?
Due to this and that, I cannot promise how often I’ll be able to post between now and the end of the year. But here’s taste of what we’ll be working through whenever I am able to post (and I do promise to try to mark Thursdays) because I’m looking forward to this: E.C. Patton’s album. There may be some similarities between Patton and McMahon Newton. I strongly suspect Patton was white, as Newton likely was. They may have come from similar upper middling classes. Both albums contain cards mostly postmarked in the early 19th century (naturally, since that’s mostly what I collect). BUT . . . let’s start with…
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Graduation, Valentines, Photos, and Ephemera
This is a hold-over post. I will return to sharing cards as I work through albums. But life is requiring attention elsewhere, so here’s a little something else (postcard-related I promise you!) first. People put more than postcards in postcard albums. Sometimes the inclusions are sufficiently random that one can’t do more than guess at the why (such as leaves, perhaps to flatten them or as souvenirs of places?). Other times, the materials are more numerous and/or speak to aspects of a person’s life and times. Or, perhaps, how they viewed the album. Consider this album, Someone pasted various gift labels and other items in–quite as though it were a…