Miscellaneous

  • Collecting,  Miscellaneous,  Thomas Gray Haile subcollection

    Good and True and Truthful

    Thomas Gray Haile subcollection, overview Time to switch to a new set of postcards! The Haile cards. These, too, date from around 1907-1908, with some later cards. Nevertheless, the Haile cards differ in many respects from the Katheryn McMahon album. The Haile cards don’t constitute a coherent album collection. Oh, they were in an old postcard album when I got them . . . but mixed in with other unrelated cards. In short what I’ll be focusing on for the next month or two (or three) is a sub-collection: cards that at some point became part of some one’s collection. Was that someone one person? I don’t know. Were they…

  • Health,  Holidays & Birthdays,  Katheryn McMahon Newton Album,  Miscellaneous,  Social

    Birthdays, Happy Faculties, and Dental Fillings

    Katheryn McMahon Newton album, post 2, cards 2 & 3 I selected a birth announcement postcard to open this blog. Coincidentally, the first two postcards in this album are for Katheryn’s birthday. Which one? Unknown, as of yet, but we do know the day: 15 January. So I’m posting this blog entry a little less than two weeks before the date. Both cards are from Fred Newton, who dated and posted them on the 15th of 1908 in full expectation that they would arrive that same day. This was quite possible in the early 20th century, when the mail was sometimes delivered several times a day in cities. Perhaps not…

  • Miscellaneous

    How Many Pages in a Postcard Book?

    At some point in the early twentieth century, someone sent Miss Bertha Hazelton of Mooreland, Indiana, a Postcard Book. For some people, the phrase “postcard book” conjures up an image of a book of postcards: the kind of thing for sale at many tourist attractions that holds eight, twelve, sixteen, or more souvenir postcards. This isn’t that kind of postcard book. As you can see, it is quite literally a postcard featuring a small book. In person, the card appears quite flat. If it were put through a modern mechanical mail sorter, it might survive–so long as it went through the right way. The wrong way would risk tearing off…

  • Collecting,  Miscellaneous,  Real Photo Post Cards,  Vitals

    Remembered Love: Death and Real Photo Post Cards (RPPC)

    First post – birth; second post – marriage (proposal); so, yes, this third post is about death. More specifically, it’s about sharing news of death. Yet in sending this card, Angus M. Baker memorialized his late wife Rosa E. Merly/Merley/Mesley Baker–and tells us quite a bit about life, death, and postcards. Let’s start with the card itself. Angus Baker provided his wife’s vital dates: birth, marriage, and death. Rosa married at age 28 and died seven years later. He doesn’t tell us what she died of, merely that it was “[a]fter a short illness.” This information survives by way of a Real Photo Post Card (RPPC) which presumably shows Rosa…

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