An explanatory note related to my acquisition of this paper hoard is found at the beginning of the companion article:
Reading Other People's Mail After 90 Years
Gather friends and connections may know about my obsession with old paper.
Old memorabilia is haunting. One can quickly become obsessed by the small clues about forgotten lives that can be discovered in vintage postcards.
Here are some Thanksgiving messages from more than 90 years ago.
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Miss Emma Jaehnke
612-33 St.
Milwaukee
Wis
Postmarked Oshkosh, Wisconsin
November 29, 1911
Dear sister: Haven't heard
From you for some time.
Hope you are well, and
would like to hear from
you soon. Wishing you
a happy Thanksgiving.
I remain your loving
Sister Hedwig
(Sister Hedwig has the neatest hand-writing script of all the Thanksgiving correspondents. She uses a very fine pen with black ink. the capital "E" of Emma is a work of art.)
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Dorothy Drefahl
Star B. Route 6
Milwaukee, Wisc.
Postmarked Milwaukee, Wisconsin
November 24, 1914
From Walter Kloth
(The address and simple inscription is written very carefully in pencil.)
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Mr and Mrs. Harry Wayman and family
Scheneacus, N.Y.
R.D. # 2
Postmarked New York, N.Y.
November 23, 1927
Best Wishes for a
Happy Thanksgiving.
Grandma has her hair bobbed.
I think she looks pretty.
Love to all.
Mildred
(The message is written in light ink with a free-flowing hand diagonally acrosss the back of the card.)
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"Grandma has her hair bobbed. I think she looks pretty"
I love this phrase.
(It could be the first line of a country/western song)
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Comments: 57
Which caused Grampa to sob
Didn't that fine woman know that
long tresses were his to hold
early in the evening
through the long night cold
now grampa needs to find
a long haired woman not so bold.
Tonia, I am thrilled t find other that love these old cards.
Kate, I have no alternative -I am scanning the address.
Poor Clara! Ten children, and she died sometime within five years of the birth of the last one.
Little Dorothy was only five years old when she recieved this Thanksgiving card.
Walter added no comment to the card, and the handwriting is so plain and "studied" that I imagined him to be someone who did not write much.
His hand, however, is extremely legible.
(I do get these cards in groups or lots).
Mildred was in New York City when she wrote to the Waymans in 1927, plenty of time to have outgrown Paris, Ohio and made it to Gotham on the Hudson!
Of course, Mildred may have been a fairly common name.
I think the mystery town may be Schenevus, NY, about 40 miles WSW of Schenectady.
Thank You Dannielle and Sara.
I did not recognize the name, and did not perform a name search.
Where is Schenevus?
Kate is already hard at work on identifying the people.
This is jolly good fun - discovering the folks who sent the cards.
We see them in an F. Scott Fitzgerald aura of glorified Romantics - but the majority of upright, law-abiding, god-fearing Americans thought that the post-War generation was going straight to hell.
The twenties saw the wide-spread popularity of the tent revival and the traveling evangelist, also.
Of course, that's pure speculation. There were many other potential causes and I know I've been surprised by how readily people died in that time frame. My grandfather was one of more than 10 children himself, but barely half made it to adulthood. It makes me appreciate how lucky I am to live now, where parents don't have to live with the knowledge that 20-50% of their children will never grow up.
I never realized that, while you were chasing me with the pointy stick, you were expecting a child.
I hope that all will go well.
Only in the very short past has childbirth been less than a dangerous procedure for many women.
It is hard to imagine how much difference pre-natal care, antibiotics, fetal monitoring have made.
Thank all the Gods we live in this time with medical care as it is now instead of how it was then. It really makes you respect the people muddling through back then and the often hidden tragedies that made up their daily lives.
Yes, it does. We speak so casually of the westward migrations, yet it took enormous grit and self-reliance to head out and live entirely on one's own.
Kate, I don't see why it could not have been sent by a child.
In 1927, Harry Wayman is 33 years old and living in Schenevus; his widowed mother, born in 1865, would be 62 years old.
"Grandma" would have to be 80 years old, were she alive.
Surely, that "Grandma" didn't bob her hair.
Mildred must be the mother of Harry's wife, who refers to herself as "Grandma" to Harry's children.
That would make her a 50 year old woman with bobbed hair.
Remembering how long ago this all was, I recall stories my mother told me about helping her own mother. Gramma was 43 when she gave birth to my mother in 1927, and another healthy baby was born two years later. Gramma lived to a good old age, but as she got older, taking care of her hair became challenging. My mother and her sister would wash and style her hair -- I'm sure shorter hair was easier to care for by then. *My* mother also wore her hair relatively long until she was in her mid-50s. It might be less about courage and more about ease of care.
This is a case where we have some cute, but insignificant, details of lives - but no picture.
My earlier images were all about haunting faces about which we knew nothing.
kids.
This is not the first time that kate has used her genealogical prowess to solve historical riddles.
If you really like this stuff - I have two articles related to a collection of pictures about which Kate was able to identify some time and place.
Cousins in New York, One Hundred Years Ago
Margaret Luke Gets Married
And Stephanie is so right about how much more dangerous childbirth and childhood were in the past. The greatest danger to an older woman who's had a large number of pregnancies before would be placenta previa (low-lying placenta) causing massive bleeding during childbirth.
I'm glad to share with all the readers who are fascinated by these old messsages.
You're welcome, Ina.
I started scanning a dozren old Christmas postcards with messages for posting after Thanksgiving.
The college course sounds fascinating.
I love old things, too.
Joanne, penmanship is prized less and less as we become slaves of the keyboard.
Some samples of early 20th century handwriting are works of art.
You'd love this one from WW1 where the Kaiser's image changes into some sort of chicken when you pull a tab. If I can find it, I'll see if I can share a photo of it -- it won't be anytime soon, but I'll get to it.
Then, we didn't hear anything, so I assumed you were being selfish. :-)
Actually, it would be great to see some vintage or unusaul cards from the collection.
But I know that you have a lot going on right now, and I am going to post a dozen antique Christmas postcards after Thanksgiving.
So, Hedwig was 22 in 1911, and working as a servant.
The card is postmarked from Oshkosh, so she may have been employed there.
Emma was the older sister, 25 in 1911, and also working as a servant, in Milwaukee.
It doesn't sound as though they saw much of one another, and , according to the card, Emma didn't write often.
It sounds hard.
Glad to know that Hedwig went west; I hope she enjoyed her stint as a Harvey Girl.
Are Harvey girls something I should know about?
This is the first reference I have heard about them.
Thanks for your diligent research, Kate.
You make the the collection of antique paper wuite a bit more interesting.
One of those strange things where the reference was completely stuck in mental folders under the heading of "railroads".
As soon as I read the first sentences, I recalled having seen this before.
Thanks for the wealth of information on the Harvey Girls.
She even gets paid for it, sometimes! :-)
"Murder on the Plains" (was it in Nebraska ?), "In Lukewarm Blood" ?
I would read them all.
Aniko, Kate's family may be used to lettng her do unusual things.
When they make the movie, can I have a small supporting role?
I'm with you, Stephanie; I look forward to the murder tale.
But there has to be a part for him in which he appears as a preternaturally good, Christ-like figure of healing and redemption.
He has sunk more films (Waterworld, anyone) by this penchant for glory roles.
I will add the message to the site.
I thought it was a perfect expression of the twenties, Mariana.
Thanks for your words of appreciation (and, elizabeth's poem is a hoot).
Kate was thrilled to find the Harvey Girl reference through this old correspondance.