The Other Side of Postcards

A couple of months ago I gave a talk to the local genealogical society.  I chose to talk about postcards, not because I thought any of them would be interested in collecting postcards but because of the information on their writing side (their "other side").  The things people wrote about provide a wealth of information about the life and times of the people that wrote them.

For most collectors, postcards are divided into categories such as holiday, comic, romantic, real photo, sports, patriotic, etc.  I looked on the internet but I couldn't find where anyone had categorized postcards by their messages - so I made up my own categories.  Like postcards from people with little to say...

 

 Some had even less to say...

But the most interesting showed what life

was like at the time.  This next example speaks of illness and death.  This is a little hard to read so here's the main part of the message: "...Aunt Lamire had bad luck.  She lost little Hilda & Norman in four day.  Norman died on the 20 of Jan. & Hilda the 23 Jan and nobody was about to go there they had scarlet fever and Diptheria..."

 Some of the "news" in postcards is not nearly as serious...

"... I hope its nice Easter although I have not got my new hat ..."

There are hundreds of postcards for sale at Antiques on Main so come in and see if you can find some that interest you.