Did you know? October 1 is World Postcard Day! The celebration started in 2019, based on the grand old global pastime of simply staying in touch.
World Postcard Day was designated by Postcrossing as the first of October starting in 2019, including a new postcard design each year. We share a simple mission to keep postcards circulating, and their way of doing it is elegant and efficient. A wonderful illustrated history of the postcard is available to enjoy, as well. To celebrate the day, I’ll be requesting my first address and then happily duty-bound to get a postcard in the mail quickly. Maybe you will, too!
Featured Postcard~ MatToon Memories
Another mention of Mattoon, Illinois. This time, it is 1912, with a typical friendly update, winter weather commiserations, and gifts exchanged.
Dear Carrie, How is this for winter? I’m good and tired of it. Tell the folks I got a basket last Wed that tickled me mightily. Tell Stella, I will redeem my promise this week if this weather continues. I’ll look them up this P.M. & send at once. I’ve been too busy to do anything extra. Hope U are better. I weigh 154 and you will have to hurry or I’ll be way ahead of U. Mayme, March 11.
Front of the card: A delicate bouquet bursts from a pink gathered vase. Pink hyacinths and white lily of the valley dominate the arrangement. The flowers cascade naturally, their stems tied with fabric and matching bow. The text “A Note to you” appears in a blue decorative font at bottom right. Embossed rosettes frame the card in an ornate lace-like border.
Back details: Handwritten script fills the left side. A one-cent green Benjamin Franklin stamp sits in the upper right corner. The postmark reads “Mattoon, IL” with partial date visible, March 11, 1912, and a flag cancellation. The address shows “Mrs. Carrie Fulmer, St. Mary’s, Ind.”
Condition: The card shows minimal wear—crisp embossing, slight foxing, faded cancellation marks, minor corner softening. Colors remain vibrant. No tears or creases mar either side, though there is a minor cancellation mark on the front upper right. Very good condition for its age.
Rarity: This embossed, die-cut postcard represents German lithography’s golden age. Publishers used chromolithography to achieve the rich colors. The deep embossing required specialized presses. Early 1900s embossed postcards survive in quantity, but this example’s condition elevates its value. The Mattoon, IL postmark and readable message add historical context. Not museum-rare, but better than average.
Appeal: Collectors of Victorian and Edwardian ephemera may treasure this piece. Design enthusiasts might enjoy the embossed example. Genealogists ought to enjoy our meanderings through Mattoon and Mayme and Carrie’s perspectives. Botanical art lovers appreciate the detailed floral illustration and coded meanings. Stamp collectors note the Franklin one-cent issue and period-specific cancellations. Vintage greeting card dealers would display this prominently.
Would anyone cut it up to make an art card? Oh, the creative tension between past and future!
If you are nearby, come visit our very first postcard display at Tempe Yarn & Fiber. Grateful for the chance to get them out in the world. New designs and online sales coming soon!
The Posted Past found its merry mission (and so much more) among the postcard albums that lined the office walls of Robert L’Ecuyer.
Postcards often stand in when more elaborate words fail. A passionate love that could barely tumble off the lips, makes itself clear in the symbol of a deep red rose. We are filled with pride, and a giant cheer bursts out of the mailbox just to say congratulations and hurrah! Also, when the sorrow is so deep, a sympathy card avoids the risks of intrusion and protects the sacred quiet that helps us heal.
It’s one of those days here at The Posted Past as we lay to rest Robert L’Ecuyer, our father. His love of travel, passion for genealogy, excellent listening skills, and long memory — combined with a truly epic postcard collection — were the makings of an extraordinary experience over the past few years.
I will write more about his wit and wisdom in the weeks ahead. For tonight, a selection of cards just to hold a space for all the gifts of his life.
Room enough for all of us to go from here to there, and back again.
Featured Postcard~ New Orleans French Market A CENTURY AGO
An early 20th century scenic postcard showcases the iconic French Market in New Orleans’ French Quarter.
Front of the card: The photograph shows the vestibule of the historic French Market, featuring tall, weathered French/Creole Colonial columns supporting a slatted roof. Perspective draws the eye down the long corridor, emphasizing the market’s impressive scale. The covered walkway displays produce, baskets, and merchandise on tables and in crates. The image captures a rare moment when the hallway of vendors face the camera. Hand-colored rose tones reflect the market’s timeless atmosphere with pops of green and blue artfully applied. Caption: Vestibule, French Market, New Orleans, La.
Back details: The left panel explains the market’s history:
This card shows the interesting old columns erected, 1822. While the roof of the market has been repaired many times, the old columns have stood as originally put, without fire aid to the injured.
Published by Lipsher Specialty Co., 320 Magazine St., New Orleans. Standard divided back format with decorative script and postage rates listed: Domestic One Cent, Foreign Two Cents.
Historical significance: The postcard documents the French Market’s appearance in the early 20th century. Established in the 1790s, the market served as a vital commercial hub where vendors sold fresh produce and handcrafted goods. Instructions to “Take French Market car from Canal St.” reflects the streetcar system and emphasis on tourism. This postcard dates to 1922-1925, based on combined evidence of one-cent postage, the specific streetcar reference, and hybrid halftone-collotype printing (Aquatone process was patented in 1922).
Condition and Appeal: The card displays excellent color saturation, with clear and interesting details and minimal defects. Tiny nicks on two corners, with yellowing on the reverse typical of age. Image and text provide valuable historical context, appealing to collectors of New Orleans memorabilia, architectural history enthusiasts, and those interested in early 20th century American commerce. The French Market remains active today, making this postcard a fascinating glimpse into its enduring legacy as a cornerstone of New Orleans culture.
Today’s Art Card & Gallery
The gallery features Landscapes by Larry L’Ecuyer, and here is a fun art card from Anne this week. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
open call for art cards!
The World’s Smallest Artist Retreat (our P.O. Box) is awaiting your art card submission. Details here!
Art card kits ~ gift or fun for you!
Our Art Card Kits are perfectly-packaged as a fun, creative activity for you and a friend to complete in as little as an hour or made into a lovely afternoon.
Here we go! The Posted Past heads into the fall season with rare cards, a new gallery, and a social mission to trade loneliness for connection.
featured postcard~ rare novelty card still holds a mystery
An early 20th century novelty postcard featuring humorous photography and personal correspondence from Missouri.
Front of the card: The photograph shows a young Black man in white shirt, suspenders, and dark trousers, grinning while holding a large broken umbrella overhead in a playful pose. Below reads the humorous caption “A little disfigured, but still in the ring”—typical novelty humor from the postcard craze era. A black border frames the photograph on cream cardstock.
Back details: The reverse bears “Carbon Photo Series No. 513” identifying the commercial publisher’s series. Addressed to Miss Grace Skillman in Pleasant Hill, Missouri, with a green 1-cent Franklin stamp and clear 1908 postmark. The handwritten message describes an exhausting early morning wait in Lee’s Summit for “Brother and Frank,” and promising a longer letter that evening.
“Still in L.S. haven’t slept but about ten minutes. My eyes looks like two burnt holes in a blanket. Brother and Frank hasn’t come yet. I will wait till 7.30 and then go home. Will write tonight. Just finished my breakfast. I will eat if not sleep. I got here ten till five.
Condition and Appeal: The sepia-toned image displays characteristic early photography with some age spots, and a nicked corner. The image and reverse side remain in good condition with clear photography and legible handwriting. The “Carbon Photo Series” indicates premium production using carbon-based printing methods prized for superior image quality and archival stability. Grace Andre Skillman was born in Pleasant Hill in 1889, making her nineteen when she received this card. The message and the lack of formal salutation and signature suggest this is casual ongoing family correspondence. As a result, the author of the postcard remains a mystery.
Vintage novelty postcards are increasingly collectible, especially numbered commercial series with documented recipients. Collectors of African-Americana may find the image appealing and relatively rare. The combination of carbon printing technology, humorous subject matter, and personal correspondence is of interest to collectors of vintage photography, postcard enthusiasts, genealogy researchers, and those focused on early 20th century American social history and communication.
Introducing~ The Posted Past Art Card Gallery
A selection of Larry L’Ecuyer’s watercolor landscapes are on display in our Online Art Card Gallery. Fitting as our first show. Enjoy!
Countdown to a Lakeside Getaway, 2025, Larry L’Ecuyer, watercolor on postcard
NEWS & UPDATES~ art card call for submissions is open
The World’s Smallest Artist Retreat (our P.O. Box) is awaiting your art card submission. Follow one rule to join the next open show. Details here!
Art card kits now in stock
Our Art Card Kits are perfectly-packaged as a fun, creative activity for you and a friend to complete in as little as an hour or made into a lovely afternoon.
The kit includes two postcard blanks, six vintage finds curated to the chosen theme, and a bundle of collage goodies for your whimsy. There is a free gift inside, too!
Once you’re done, surprise someone with an original art card in their mailbox. Or, send it back to us to include in the next online show. Either way, you’ll have cultivated a little joy in your garden.
Words to heed and repeat, and a life’s work to regard.
George Washington Carver Educational Postcard
This vintage educational postcard (likely printed in the mid-1960s) features quotations from agricultural scientist George Washington Carver (1864-1943), displayed on an exhibit at George Washington Carver National Monument. The card presents Carver’s thoughts on success, preparation, and nature alongside his portrait. Carver, born into slavery, became a prominent botanist and inventor who developed hundreds of uses for crops like peanuts and sweet potatoes while teaching at Tuskegee Institute for 47 years.
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting system, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. — George Washington Carver
The George Washington Carver National Monument, established in 1943 near Diamond, Missouri, was the first U.S. national monument dedicated to an African American. Located at Carver’s birthplace, it preserves his legacy and the 1881 Moses Carver house where he lived as a child. The National Park Service now manages the 240-acre nature preserve and historic site.
The summer slow-down is coming to a close, and The Posted Past is launching into a new phase as a social enterprise. On Wednesdays, you’ll still receive a weekly wander through postcard history, along with a new focus on rare cards, and a regular review of the art cards we receive at the World’s Smallest Artist Retreat (our P.O. Box). More inspiration as our circle expands. Wisdom, wisecracks, and butterfly wings. See you in September… next week!
Is this a portrait of the couple or their hats? Feathers in the band. Fascinator with a wide brim. Stories behind their eyes and more clues in their clothes. The real photo postcard went unsent. Pasted inside an album once, and then lost for 100 years.
A sepia-toned oval portrait photograph from around 1910 showing a couple in formal attire. The woman stands behind the seated man, wearing a wide-brimmed hat decorated with a large bow or fabric flower. She’s dressed in a light-colored blouse with puffy sleeves and a geometric patterned skirt with a button at the waist. The man sits in front wearing a white long-sleeved collared shirt, striped tie, and a small hat with multiple feathers in the brim. Both subjects have neutral expressions typical of formal photography from this era. The real photo postcard shows significant age-related damage, with cracked and yellowed edges, stains, and deterioration around the borders, characteristic of an early 20th-century item previously collected in an album.
The Posted Past marks its one year anniversary with fun, facts, and cats!
A year ago, The Posted Past began with a simple quest—to explore the stories behind my family’s vintage postcard collection. These small windows into the past gave me the chance to be curious and brave as a writer. I wasn’t sure I could research and produce a short essay on a weekly schedule. Fifty-two weeks later, without a single miss, I am happily beyond those worries.
Thank you for joining me on this journey. Together, we’ve traveled from Osaka to Matoon. Looked at buffalos roaming in a Kansas field and donkeys on the English seaside. Iconic views of San Francisco came from its well-known chronicler, and we’ve been on a more recent search for a Mexican photographer who vanished in volcanic ash. Each postcard has taken us to unexpected corners of history—social movements, architectural trends, national parks, and the everyday lives of people who took the time to write, “Wish you were here.”
Today’s postcard reminds me why I love this work. The adorable kittens and lovely roses on the front never go out of style. On the flipside, Maude writes to her mum with a few sweet sentiments and concerns. In between lies a world of personal and cultural histories: the rise of the postcard era, the Victorian language of flowers, the printing techniques that made such colorful cards possible, and the universality of cats. Always, an exchange between people. What we’re really collecting are reminders of tender human connections across time.
What’s new for year two? July will bring a shift in weekly format while I take some vacation time—shorter Wednesday posts spotlighting single cards. After that, I’ll be expanding the eBay store, indulging in the nerdy work of adding captions and citations to old posts, and exploring how these weekly essays might become a book and a workshop series. Like any creative start-up, the first year came with a to-do list of dreams and ideas.
Before I sign off, may I ask: would you ever consider sending a vintage postcard as a gift? The mechanics are easy—choose the perfect card online, add a personal note, and we send it off with love through the post office. But is that something you’d enjoy giving or receiving? Leave me a note in the comments.
Thanks again, and meow for now 🙂 Enjoy the summer!
In February 1943, a photographer enigmatically known only as ‘Navarro’ documented Parícutin’s volcanic destruction of a Michoacán village and church, creating powerful postcards that circulated worldwide at the time and are highly collectible now. Then, Navarro vanished from history.
Parícutin erupted from Dionisio Pulido’s cornfield on February 20, 1943, becoming the first comprehensively documented volcanic birth in human history.
The response was immediate and international. Despite World War II, the Parícutin volcanic plumes commanded global coverage. The geological disruptions of fire and lava inspired scientific awe. Life Magazine dispatched photographers. Newsreels carried footage worldwide. Airlines altered flight paths for passenger viewing. By 1947, Hollywood used the still-active volcano as backdrop for the movie Captain from Castile, employing thousands of locals as extras.
In the extensive archives documenting Parícutin volcano’s nine-year life cycle, one name appears and vanishes: Navarro. His postcard images capture the most significant moment in the volcano’s terrifying story—when lava reached the 400-year-old church of San Juan Parangaricutiro. Despite meticulous record-keeping around this geological event, Navarro himself remains a mystery.
His photographs have more than survived. When story of the events at Parícutin are retold, one always finds a Navarro image. The photographer does appear in one other place: Folder 7 in Box 9 of the William F. Foshag archives.
The Day Lava Reached the Church
Navarro’s postcards document a sequence unfolding over a few crucial days in early 1943. For the year prior, the Purépecha community of San Juan Parangaricutiro had watched lava flows advance on their small village while praying their homes, farms, and colonial church would be spared.
Despite their pleas and processions, the lava flow had accelerated beyond divine intervention. President Lázaro Cárdenas and local priests convinced most residents to evacuate, carrying sacred objects and any moveable materials to the nearby town of Uruapan. One rare slice of film shows men removing clay tiles from a building roof.
When the lava reached the church, Navarro was there to document the destruction. Black lava creeping around the church’s perimeter. Intense heat causing wooden elements to combust. Steady accumulation of cooled volcanic rock against the baroque stone façade, contrasting human craftsmanship with geological force.
Two striking images captures the church’s wooden elements on fire—ornate arched stonework and columns holding the structure up while everything else is consumed. Extending the mystery further, these two images bear exactly the same mark and style of the others, but a different name is entirely obscured. Perhaps it makes sense, Navarro and another photographer would go together. Better than alone.
Foshag and the Official Record
William Frederick Foshag of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum led Parícutin’s scientific research and systematic documentation. A respected mineralogist and curator, Foshag had already spent his career studying volcanic minerals and processes. When Parícutin erupted, he was uniquely positioned to lead the most comprehensive study of a volcano’s complete life cycle.
Foshag arrived within weeks of the initial eruption and remained involved until the volcano’s dormancy in 1952. Working with Mexican geologist Dr. Jenaro González Reyna, he established a research station documenting every phase of development. Their collaboration produced detailed maps, temperature measurements, chemical analyses, and thousands of photographs fundamental to volcanic research today.
Navarro’s church sequence suggests either remarkable intuition, access to local knowledge, or information coming from scientific observers. The Purépecha community, drawing on generations of volcanic experience, provided crucial insights about timing and the landscape. Navarro’s ability to be there for the church’s final moments indicates he was plugged in.
Foshag’s archives reveal an extensive network of colleagues contributing to this documentation. Box 9, Folder 7 bears Navarro’s name alongside numerous other photographers, artists, and local and international contacts. It seems Foshag recognized the value of different perspectives in creating a complete record.
The official scientific documentation benefited from all the independent photography produced at the time. Their paths very likely crossed with many others at work during critical days when the lava and ash threatened San Juan Parangaricutiro.
Kodak in Mexico
The real photo postcard industry supporting photographers like Navarro was sophisticated. Entrepreneurs traveled with complete darkroom setups in automobiles, developing film and producing finished postcards within hours. They sold to tourists, sent copies to newspapers, and maintained distribution networks across Mexico and the United States.
By 1943, Kodak had established a robust business providing both cameras and materials throughout Mexico. Navarro’s postcards bear the EKC (Eastman Kodak Company) indicia and are marked Kodak Mexicana, LTD. Navarro had access to standardized, high-quality photographic paper specifically designed for postcard production. This infrastructure allowed photographers to work with consistent materials as they traveled to remote locations.
This commercial system created a parallel archive to official scientific record, prioritizing dramatic visual impact and human interest. While Foshag documented systematic geological processes, Navarro captured moments resonating with public imagination: the church under siege, displaced communities, civilization meeting unstoppable natural forces.
The quality and consistency in images suggests professional training and equipment. His compositions demonstrate understanding of the landscape and evoke pathos. Combined with his access to Kodak’s professional-grade materials, we may assume Navarro was more than a concerned observer.
History’s Mysteries
Navarro’s fade from historical records reflects broader patterns in how scientific events get remembered. Official histories preserve institutional participants while quietly forgetting the names and stories of independent contributors. This is notable with Parícutin, where local Purépecha knowledge proved crucial to understanding volcanic behavior, yet indigenous voices were largely excluded from formal documentation.
Still, Navarro gives us another chance to go there ourselves for a glimpse of those extraordinary hours. His postcards circulated broadly through the popular means of the era—family correspondence, tourist collections, commercial distributors—and are highly collectible today.
As researchers study Foshag’s extensive archives, Navarro’s name remains a tantalizing fragment—present enough to suggest significance, absent enough to resist interpretation. His postcards survive in collections across North America, carrying their maker’s vision but not his story.
This persistence of mystery tells us something about how we remember extraordinary events. While institutions preserve official records with careful attribution, the broader network of individual contributors often dissolves into anonymity. Navarro represents countless others who showed up when history was being made, pointed cameras at crucial moments, contributed to our understanding of the world, and then vanished back into the crowd.
The photographs of the church’s destruction remain powerful because they capture something beyond ecological process—the moment when human scale met geological time and a community’s sacred center became a monument to forces beyond human control. Navarro was there to see it, and that’s a chance for us to remember the event and to admire him.
This essay was inspired by Elena, Maria, and Sandy – with gratitude.
These vintage postcards from the 1972 Tourism Year of the Americas reveal fascinating questions about natural landscapes, heritage, monuments, and whose stories we remember and tell.
In summer 1972, the United States Postal Service issued commemorative postcards that would become enduring symbols of national identity. These postcards, part of the Tourism Year of the Americas campaign, featured iconic destinations with restrained elegance—their two-color printing was both artistic and economical. As America stood at a cultural crossroads, this postcard set tells a familiar American story. More than five decades later, they reveal even more about how a nation sees itself.
Commemorative Moments
First Day of Issue cancellations mark a special moment in time, and signal that an item is expected to be collectible. The postcards were cancelled on June 29, 1972, bearing the commemorative text “Philatelic Exhibition Brussels” and “Tour America Inaugural Rome – Paris.” These international exhibitions promoted American tourism during the Cold War, when cultural diplomacy served as essential soft power.
The carefully designed cancellation artwork includes USS Constellation (6¢), Gloucester (6¢), Monument Valley (6¢), and Niagara Falls (airmail 15¢). These rates reflected the newly reorganized United States Postal Service which had become its own entity the year prior. The 1972 Tourism Year of the Americas was an ambitious initiative from the new quasi-independent agency, emerging alongside Nixon’s opening to China and détente with the Soviet Union.
USS Constellation, the last sail-only warship built by the U.S. Navy (1853-1855), served as flagship of the Africa Squadron from 1859–1861. The ship captured three slave vessels, enabling liberation of 705 Africans. During the Civil War, Constellation deterred Confederate cruisers in the Mediterranean. The selection represented naval heritage and anti-slavery efforts, though it still centered the naval victory rather than those who gained freedom.
Niagara Falls has attracted visitors for 200 years, becoming the symbolic heart of American tourism. The 1883 Niagara Reservation became America’s first state park, influencing national park creation. Current visitor statistics show enduring appeal: 9.5 million tourists visited Niagara Falls State Park in 2023, with the region welcoming 12 million visitors yearly.
Monument Valley reflect the West’s central role in national identity by 1972, immortalized through Hollywood and environmentalism. Yet Monument Valley sits within Navajo Nation territory, while Grand Canyon encompasses land sacred to multiple tribes, including the Havasupai, whose reservation lies within park boundaries—reminders that park creation displaced Native communities.
Gloucester, America’s oldest seaport, sustained coastal communities for centuries. The lighthouse image evoked both practical maritime safety and romantic notions of New England’s rocky shores, while Gloucester’s working harbor embodied the intersection of heritage preservation and living tradition. By 1972, this historic fishing port faced the tension between maintaining its authentic maritime culture and adapting to tourism pressures—a challenge that made it a fitting symbol.
Artistic Vision
The front of the postcards render multiple iconic American locations in distinctive engravings in an economical two-color print run, an important factor for a the government printing office.
The collection showcases a deliberate balance. Yosemite represents natural power and America’s first national park. Missisippi Riverboats and the Rodeo embody western majesty central to national imagination. DC Monuments offer overt patriotism and Williamsburg and the Liberty Bell connect to the tremors and tolls of colonial democracy.
Even in 1972, these were selective narratives. All featured natural sites exist on traditional Indigenous lands, for example, while largely omitting Indigenous perspectives and enslaved people’s contributions to our cultural histories.
Many featured locations are sacred sites to Indigenous communities. Some of the most sacred places for American Indian nations are located in national parks, yet access to holy ground remains contentious. Park creation often involved displacing Native peoples from lands they had stewarded for millennia.
The year 1972 was tough in other ways: Vietnam War divisions, emerging Watergate scandal, and generational alienation over the military draft. These postcards presented a different kind of unity. Rather than contemporary political divisions, they emphasized natural wonders and historical sites that transcended partisan conflicts.
During the Cold War, these postcards served as miniature global ambassadors, too, often providing people’s first visual encounter with American landmarks. They projected America as worthy of visiting and learning about, countering negative impressions from political controversies.
The postcards themselves embody crucial democratic principles: making heritage accessible through affordable media; connecting tourism to conservation through revenue and public appreciation; and revealing how commemorative choices reflect national values. The geographic diversity suggests a desire for the fullest of American experiences, though these 1972 selections still privilege certain narratives.
New Memories
These postcards continue to offer insights into American values and heritage preservation evolution. USS Constellation still serves as a museum ship in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. National parks have experienced tremendous visitation growth, raising questions about balancing access with preservation.
In what they don’t depict, the postcards show gaps in whose stories get told, whose lands get celebrated, whose experiences get centered. While 1972 selections emphasized traditional narratives, contemporary views increasingly include previously marginalized perspectives, acknowledging Indigenous heritage alongside colonial and national stories.
These artifacts remind us that commemorations reveal values and priorities. As our historical understandings evolve, it’s wise to look back and look again.
During the 1918 pandemic, daily postcards were lifelines between farm and hospital for the Moss clan in Missouri. Their words remind us that love weaves a way between two worlds.
A postcard trembles in worried hands. On the front, St Joseph Hospital, Linwood & Prospect Streets in Kansas City, Missouri. Victorian landscaping, tree-shaded boulevards, a large, new hospital. It is a world of progress and prosperity frozen in glossy perfection.
Turn the card over. Faded ink bleeds across cream paper. “Dear Verda Marie, Mama threw up all night and does not feel well this morning… only drank a cup of tea for breakfast.”
Two worlds exist on a single postcard. The front celebrates America’s gleaming cities and grand institutions. The back reveals a family torn apart by pandemic and war, working together and staying in touch every day.
The Spanish flu arrived in Missouri like a thief. It followed railroad lines and river valleys, spreading from military camps across the heartland. By September, Kansas City reported its first cases. By October, the city’s hospitals overflowed with the gravely sick and dying.
Mama Moss checked into University Hospital on Campbell Street, one of several small places on Hospital Hill, where Kansas City built its first medical facility in 1870. Now every building overflowed with sick and strapped families seeking any treatment that promised relief or protection.
The postcards begin their daily journey between Cameron and Kansas City. Fifty miles of prairie separate farm from hospital, family from mother, routine from crisis. September 20th,Verda Marie writes from Cameron:
Dear Mama, and all. How are you feeling? And the rest. Are they going to inject the serum by your blood right away? Papa’s finger is hurting worse today. He gets it hurt a good deal working around the tractor.
The serum treatments represented medicine’s desperate gamble. Doctors extracted blood from recovered patients, believing their antibodies might save others. Transfusion methods were primitive—donor to patient through crude tubes, with minimal understanding of blood compatibility.
The front of her postcard shows Fourth Street looking west in Cameron—tree-lined and peaceful, houses with wraparound porches and manicured lawns. No hint of pandemic. No suggestion of families split between farm work and hospital vigils.
September 26, another postcard from daughter Wilda May in Cameron. Papa keeps working despite his damaged fingers. Farming cannot stop, even during plague, while war production and domestic demands for food are high. Families managed alone while the virus spread through communities like wildfire.
Dear Mama, got Verda Marie’s card yesterday. I am glad you are better. When do you think you will be able to come home? … Papa said his finger felt stiff this morning. He has this piece of ground plowed north of the house and is harrowing it now.
This card displays the Third Street business district looking East. The image suggests normalcy, prosperity, urban activity. The message tells a different story—injury, illness, fragmented family life.
October 14th, from Cameron, Wilda May is writing to check in on Mama, Verda Marie, and little Roberta.
How are you getting along? Can you sit up very much any more? Papa had a man come from K.C. last night to work on the tractor. Sold the cream. Eggs are 35 cents. Had 24 dozen and a few left over.
The dramatic red brick architecture of the M.E. Church is featured on the front. The bell tower, archways, and stained glass, no doubt concealing a community in a moment of great challenge.
November arrives with mixed signals. The Great War ends with armistice celebrations flooding city streets. Victory parades march through Kansas City while Hospital Hill counts mounting dead.
November 22nd, Wilda May is now in Kansas City and Verda Marie is back in Cameron. This is the card with St Joseph Hospital on the front and a report of Mama’s worsening condition on the back. Poignantly, a plea for simple materials.
I wish you would send us a pair of scissors, a little pair. They gave Mama so many hyperdermics (sic). They think that is why she is so sick.
The front shows St. Joseph Hospital—imposing, institutional, representing medical progress. The message reveals the grinding reality inside: nausea, sleepless nights, requests for basic supplies.
December 11, 1918. The last postcard in this series leaves Kansas City at 8:30 PM. Mabel Moss writes with exhaustion and desperate love.
Does Verda Marie still have a fever? Make her be careful. Write to your mother every day. I will write to you each day, too.
She repeats herself. Write every day. Every day, I will write to you.
These postcards have become more than communication. They serve as proof of life, wellness checks, emotional anchors in a world gone mad. Each delivery confirms another day fought forward, another family member still breathing.
The front of the card features a swank soft top automobile on Mill Creek Drive, in the Sunset Hill district of Kansas City, Missouri. Lush foliage suggests it is a wonderful day to take in the fresh air.
Armistice brought celebration but not peace. Fighting continued in distant lands. The temporary ceasefire required renewal every thirty-six days. Victory was fragile, conditional, threatened by forces beyond control.
Also, influenza had no respect for borders. While diplomats negotiated peace terms, the 1918 pandemic waged its own relentless war. Families learned that health status changes cruelly and without warning. People woke well and died by nightfall.
These postcards preserve this tension between public aspiration and private desperation, helping us journey back to history as it happened. The fronts of the postcards celebrate civic pride—hospitals, colleges, tree-lined streets, architectural monuments. Their backs tell different stories. Experimental medical treatments. Daily fears about fever and death. Constant threat of injury from dangerous farm equipment. The grinding reality of families separated by crisis, held together by handwritten words.
This contrast defines the American experience during a period of dual catastrophes. Communities built beautiful institutions while individuals struggled for survival and missed hard earned opportunities. Cities planned grand boulevards while families split between hospital rooms and farm chores. America as it aspired to be, and as it actually existed for the Moss clan.
Just as her mother was getting sick, Verda Marie received a cheery postcard from a classmate with some gossip to share.
Harriet Smith is coming over here to school this year. Thank goodness she isn’t in any of my classes … I wish you were going so I would have someone to chum with…
The postcard front featured Missouri Wesleyan College campus—red brick buildings set among autumn trees. The front speaks to knowledge, tradition, the future of young minds. We can read between the lines on the back. Verda Marie would not be in class that semester, sadly.
Like Lazarus rising from his tomb, the world emerged from pandemic death to discover life transformed. The 1920s roared with celebration and renewal, and time went on. Hospital Hill expanded into Kansas City’s premier medical district. The red brick buildings where Mama received her serum treatments evolved into modern towers serving new generations. A century later, technological and medical innovations advance but essential human needs persist, too: connection, communication, proof that loved ones survive another day.
These particular postcards survived in a family archive. Stories of courage, love, determination tucked away to find a century later. Each card represents a day won against the odds, a family bond that transcended distance and disease.
The Moss family’s story continues in everyone separated by illness, every community battling invisible enemies, every healthcare worker risking their life to save others. The beautiful facades combined with harrowing messages remind us that hope and suffering coexist, flipped back and forth in our hands, repeated in every generation.
The Posted Past 