Archival Anecdotes: Where have all the post cards gone?

Lately my archivist tasks have been centered on preserving and digitizing the photographic collections housed at the Eddy County Museum.

During a recent bout of convalescence I found myself restless. So I arranged to collect a couple of photo albums from the museum to keep me occupied.

Imagine my dismay when I sat down to work through these albums and found they were not photo albums as I expected, but instead albums packed full of postcards from the early 20th century.

At first I was confused. Some of the cards had writing and postage, others were pristine. Some were delicate works of art with embossing. Others were amateur photographs printed on a card. I began to consider that postcards actually meant something different to the people who lived more than a century ago.

Postcards first became popular in the 1890s as an inexpensive way to drop a line to a friend. The images were often well illustrated with remarkable detail. Elsie Kerr, one of the founders of the Eddy County Museum donated an entire memory book of such postcards.

The ornate album pictured above was curated by Alice Stanley, a cousin of Elsie who lived in Ohio before eventually moving to New Rockford. The correspondence between the two cousins is documented in the pages of their memory books.

By the early 1900s common folks gained the technology to print photographs on sensitized cards and use them as postcards. The two photos at left are an example of how this technology was used to represent New Rockford to folks both near and far.

The classic design of the post card, as shown at left, was first introduced in 1902. It included instructions on how to properly address and write on the postcard.

We may have come full circle, as many folks today would be at a loss in addressing a postcard. However, that's no reason to let the art go to the wayside. Who would love to receive a beautiful postcard from someone special?