Divided back, embossed, used postcard. Postmarked January 1910 probably from Kansas. Publisher unknown.
Price: $7.00
A bouquet of pink and red unidentified flowers which look like lilies or glads except for the leaves, but in any case are beautiful; tied up with a yellow bow and with a card at the top that says “Best Wishes.”
The card is postmarked January 1910 (exact date unreadable) and addressed to, “Flossie Babcock. Welda Kans. RR # 2.” This is the same publisher or printer as the prior post, showing the logo of the fierce looking roaring lion with large mane and the tail pointing upward. We’ll put this one in the mystery pile for now, and hopefully come across more info later regarding the publisher.
The sender wrote, “Well as I have just returned from Iola I will ans. your card. I guess this card will pass if not send it back and I will send another one. Well I guess I will have to ring off. L.L.S.[?]”
There is a Flossie V. Babcock on the 1910 Federal Census taken in Lone Elm Township, Anderson County, Kansas. The small town of Welda is northwest of Lone Elm, a short distance – estimating about ten miles as the crow flies, so no doubt this is the same person as the addressee on this postcard. And the town of Iola, that the sender mentions in the note, is about 20 miles southwest of Welda. Flossie is 14 years old in 1910, born in Kansas, and is on this census with her widowed father, Edward M. Babcock, farmer, age 41, born in New Jersey, and her brother, Nolan K. Babcock, age 16, born in Kansas.
Welda, KS is a small town today. Counts vary but in 2010 the population was at most under 300 per Wikipedia entries. Welda started as a railroad station in 1870 and was platted in 1873, getting it’s first post office in 1874. The town is described in an 1883 publication (Cutler’s History of Kansas) as “a thriving little village…situated on the gently rolling upland prairie, on the line of the Kansas City, Lawrence & Kansas Southern Railroad about eight miles south from Garnett.” There is a Welda, Germany in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia and also a town by the name of Westphalia in Anderson County, KS, (from brief research it looks like Anderson County had many German settlers) so it seems possible that Welda, KS was named after the German village, or named after a person, as Welda is also a surname.
Sources: Year: 1910; Census Place: Lone Elm, Anderson, Kansas; Roll: T624_431; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 0025; FHL microfilm: 1374444. (Ancestry.com)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welda_Township,_Anderson_County,_Kansas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welda
Cutler, William G. History of the State of Kansas. Chicago: A. T. Andreas, 1883. Web. 6 June 2014. [http://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/anderson/anderson-co-p7.html#WELDA]