Category Archives: Flowers

A Wish For Your Gladness

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Divided back postcard. Postmarked December 22, 1928 from Sacramento, California. Series or number 1181 D. Publisher unknown.

Price:  $8.00

A beautiful Christmas postcard from The Alice Ellison Collection of a ringing bell with a poinsettias, mistletoe and a scene of a cozy home at sunrise in the background:

Christmas Greetings

“A wish for your gladness

As Christmas bells ring,

And all the bright blessings

These holidays bring.”

Addressed to:   “Mrs. Ellison & Family, 1015 O Street, Sacramento, California”  and signed, “Greetings of the Season from Mr. and Mrs. Gomes.”

Ringing The Bell

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Victorian Era card. Circa 1870s – 1890s

Price:  $3.00        Size:  3 and 15/16 x 2 and 3/8″

A trade-type card that never got stamped with owner info. Very beautiful design – a sturdy-looking little boy or elf-type guy. What’s he doing exactly? Flower-wrangling 😉 comes to mind. A made-up term. Not that it matters, but the best guess is he’s ringing the bell-like flower (to call someone, across the misty, dreamy-looking expanse that would have held advertising.)

Samuel Clarke 12 & 14 S. Queen St., Lancaster, PA

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Trade card, Lancaster, PA. Circa 1888 – 1890.

Price:  $10.00        Size:  about 4 and 1/8 x 2 and 1/4″

“Call on Samuel Clarke, for Teas Coffees and Groceries, 12 & 14 South Queen Street. Don’t read the other side.”

Ahhh, a nice marketing ploy… who could resist turning over the card to see what we’re “not” supposed to look at? It shows a list of  “A Few of Clarke’s Prices”  (coffee 25¢ per pound!) and underneath,  “Call and be convinced that we are the Cheapest and Best House in Lancaster.”

Samuel Clarke, grocer, shows up on the Lancaster city directories below:

1888  and 1890 – address 12 and 14 S Queen, home address the same

1892 – 4 E. King, home 21 N. Ann

1899 – 38 W. King St.

Sources:  J. E. Williams’ Annual Lancaster City and County Directory, 1888. p. 67. Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995.

J. E. Williams’ Lancaster City and County Directory, 1890. p. 63. Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995.

J. E. Williams’ Lancaster City and County Directory, 1892. p. 91. Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995.

R. L. Polk & Co.’s 1899-1900 Directory of Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Vicinity. p. 87. Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995.

Best Birthday Wishes, 1910

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Divided back, embossed, used postcard. Postmarked October 1911 from Sacramento, California. Copyright 1910, J. Baumann. Series or number 2900.

Price:  $2.00

Pink roses and a muted country scene in a pink flowered border – another in our ongoing Alice Ellison Collection. The sender wrote:

“Dear Ma:  All are well. Bert is working, but not on a steady job. Did Irv & Minta get away. make some of the kids write me and tell me. and get Ella address and name and send it to me. we are going up town again. love to all. Lena.”

Addressed to:  “Mrs. J. M. Ellison. 26th Cheyenne Ave. Pueblo, Colo.”

As to the publisher, the first name and location for J. Baumann is unknown. We don’t see a huge amount of cards for him online; the time frame found is 1910 – 1912.

Hugh Ester Bayles

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Divided back, unused with writing and/or photographer stamp. Three Real Photo Postcards of Hugh Ester Bayles, taken in San Jose, CA, by photographer Enrico Bambocci. Circa 1913 and 1918. Solio stamp box.

Availability Status:  SOLD

So, we’re a little late with this military-related post, for the prior Memorial Day, but nevertheless….three wonderful RPPCs of Hugh Ester Bayles. Hugh was the son of Levi Bayles and Lydia Mitchell, and was born August 21, 1892 in Paxico, Kansas (still a small town today). The 1910 Federal Census shows Hugh, his parents, and his siblings, Charles, Ruth and Homer, living in Mokelumne, Calaveras Co., CA. At the time of the first World War draft registration, he was living at 918 Harliss Ave., San Jose, CA, and working as a truck driver for the Raisch Co.[?] located on Auzerais Ave. He enlisted April 30, 1918. He was married to Bessie Irene Way, prior to 1939. He died November 30, 1982 at age 90.

At age 21, about 1913, San Jose, California. The photographer props at this time include an animal skin (uggh) of….is that a badger? (poor guy) and a vase holding geraniums.

Hugh, age 21. Different day, as he is wearing a different (pin-striped) suit and a wider tie.

In uniform, at about age 26, circa 1918.

Sources:  Registration State: California; Registration County: Los Angeles; Roll: 1544322. Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918.

The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; World War II Draft Cards (4th Registration) for the State of California; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System, 1926-1975; Record Group Number: 147. (Ancestry.com)

Paxico, Kansas. n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxico,_Kansas (accessed May 30, 2017).

Ancestry.com. U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010.

Year: 1910; Census Place: Mokelumne, Calaveras, California; Roll: T624_73; Page: 13B; Enumeration District: 0011; FHL microfilm: 1374086. (Ancestry.com)

State of California. California Death Index, 1940-1997. Sacramento, CA, USA: State of California Department of Health Services, Center for Health Statistics. (Ancestry.com)

Find A Grave Memorial# 140189413 for Bessie I. (Way) Bayles

Picking Flower, Near Mississippi Headwaters, Minnesota

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Divided back, unused, Real Photo Postcard. Circa 1950s.

Price:  $15.00

This Real Photo Postcard is one of (at least) four that we see that had been taken, circa 1950s, of an Indian woman named Picking Flower. The other three vintage cards are currently on ebay:  One shows a very similar view to the photo taken for this card, and the other two show Picking Flower standing at the Headwaters of the Mississippi River, Minnesota, with captions. My guess is that she’s Chippewa, a.k.a. Ojibwe or Ojibwa, and it’s possible she might have been a member of the Mississippi River Band Chippewas, but of course, that is mere speculation. The artwork of flowers and leaves that she’s working on (or more likely it was some finished work that was used for the photo shoot) and that which adorns her dress, is very distinctive to Chippewa beadwork design (not to mention stunningly beautiful). Here’s a quick screen shot of a Google search for examples (note the similarity in the top right design to that in the postcard.)

And, if you enlarge the postcard image, you’ll notice the little pair of moccasins that’s attached to the dress (on her left) and the shells interspersed in the shoulder areas. Always the case, we get to wondering about the circumstances surrounding a photo session, about the person themselves, how they felt at the time, what the rest of their life was like. I think Picking Flower is maybe in her 50s, from the graying hair we note, and she looks like she was squinting a little from the sun, when the photo was taken.

Sources:  Mississippi River Band of Chippewa Indians. n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River_Band_of_Chippewa_Indians (accessed May 21, 2017).

“Images of Chippewa beadwork”  Google.com search. (accessed May 21, 2017).

Easter Joy Attend You

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Divided back, embossed postcard. Unused with writing. Publisher:  International Art Publishing Co., New York and Berlin. Printed in Germany. Circa 1907 – 1914.

Price:  $8.00

The spring colors are beautiful in this card, and the theme is egg shell bells and pussy willows, with a narrow road stretching off into the distance…On the back is written,  “Miss Conroy Form Dora.”  Heehee, “from” is charmingly misspelled. This looks like it might have been a card from child to teacher.

Easter Chick For Verne

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Divided back, embossed postcard, unused with writing. Copyright 1909, H. Wessler. Series:  422.

Price:  $7.00

A Peaceful Easter.…

Chicks rule this year…and this is another beauty, a charmer (that face!) Our chick appears in an oversized eggshell, the top broken off; egg and chick comfortably nestled in a cluster of lilies of the valley. Note how very well-done the subtle shading is around the shell and flowers, and the white decorative trim at top and bottom is beautiful, especially falling as it does on that shade of gray for the background.

In pencil, on the reverse, is written:   “Verne from Aunt Bertha.”  And with no loss of elegance from front to back, the publisher’s lily design (a bonus for Easter, we reckon 😉 ) divides the back, and the top corner holds a matching stamp box.

A publisher mystery……..solved:  H. Wessler is Hugo Wessler, per the invaluable, Publishers’ Trademarks Identified by Walter E. Corson.

Who was H. Wessler? At the time of this post, no identifying records had been found…….Later we discovered his full name with postcard reverse design cross-referenced in the Walter E. Corson publication…..There’s a Hugo Wessler, born about 1879 in Germany and living in New York, as a possible match. Advanced book searches only reveal snippet views such as the initial one we’d already found:  He’s mentioned in a Google book snippet along with John Wensch (see prior post), as both being importers and producers of beautiful greeting and postcards. We presume that Wessler, like Wensch, was of German ancestry. Quite a number of postcards can be found online for him, but none showing the full name. This is the second H. Wessler we have on LCG:  See Just A Few Lines From.

Sources:  Lighter, Otto & Reeder, Pearl. Hobbies. Vol. 59, p. 147. 1954: Lightner Publishing. Google snippet. Accessed April 16,  2017.

Corson, Walter E. Publishers’ Trademarks Identified. Ed. James Lewis Lowe. Norwood, PA:  1993. (print).

A Lucy Larcom Easter Greeting

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Divided back, embossed, unused postcard. Design copyright John Winsch, 1911. Printed in Germany.

Price:  $5.00

In tones of rose, forget-me-not-blue and plum….A Happy Easter!

“Every flower to a bird has confided

The joy of its blossoming birth,

The wonder of its resurrection

From its grave in the frozen earth.”

This is an excerpt from the fourteen-stanza poem “Nature’s Easter Music” by American poet and author, Lucy Larcom (1824 – 1893).

Ms. Larcom is known especially for her autobiographical, A New England Girlhood, and for having gone to work in the cotton mills for about ten years, starting at age eleven…She was a very popular and prolific writer. The Poetical Works of Lucy Larcom is available as a Google eBook. (Personally, I must admit I had never heard of Ms. Larcom till this post, but am now a fan. The line, “Who has tracked a dream’s beginning?”  from “The Magic Flower” has captured my imagination.)

Publisher and New York native, John Winsch (1865 – 1923) is well-known to ephemera collectors, especially for his Halloween postcards – antique and vintage Halloween anything is much sought-after today. The 1910 Federal Census for Richmond, NY shows his wife, Florence, born in Pennsylvania, about 1871, and their son, Frederick, born New York about 1905.

Sources:  Lucy Larcom. n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Larcom (accessed April 15, 2017).

Larcom, Lucy. The Poetical Works of Lucy Larcom. Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Company, 1884. (Google.com)

“John O. Winsch (1910 – 1915) Publishers – W.” (MetroPostcard.com). Accessed April 16, 2017.

Year: 1910; Census Place: Richmond Ward 2, Richmond, New York; Roll: T624_1073; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 1315; FHL microfilm: 1375086. (Ancestry.com).

John Winsch (1865 – 1923). Find A Grave Memorial# 31161686. (Findagrave.com)

To My Valentine, 1910

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Divided back, embossed, used postcard. Postmarked February 10, 1910 from Los Angeles, California. Printed in Germany. Number 4129.

Price:  $3.00

A smiling cupid, with pale green gossamer wings, is knocking at the door, ready to deliver a valentine gift:  A garland of forget-me-nots which, at present, frame the doorway and drape over the large red heart. The sender wrote the year, 1910, on the front. On the reverse:

“Dear Ella, write me another one of your good letters. Dossie.”

Addressed to:   “Ella Ellison, Pueblo, Colo., 26 St. & Cheyenne Ave.”