I’m sure I’m not alone in my love of collecting postcards. In my past globetrotting travels, strapped for cash and facing luggage weight limits, I found postcards to be a cheap and space-efficient souvenir option. I’ve collected postcards of pastoral vistas, landmark buildings, works of art, and - my favorite example - a wash line filled with granny panties hung across a window in the south of France. During the pandemic, my best friend - who was living with her folks in upstate New York - and I would write to each other using blank vintage postcards (crowded antique stores: perhaps the worst place to attempt to stand six feet apart from another person). To say I have a pile of postcards is an understatement.
The Oceana County Historical & Genealogical Society has an impressive collection of local postcards, many of which are from the Shelby photographer, Harlo Elliott, who was known for taking stunning landscape photographs of Oceana County during the early 20th century. His handwriting and monogram of a circled “E” have become quite distinctive to the discerning local historian, and his work has made its way into many nonfiction books on the area.
I have selected a postcard of Elliott’s to examine today. The photo is simply titled “Birdseye View Mears, Michigan” and shows as much. There are a cluster of homes and outbuildings and one distinctive building I believe to be an old schoolhouse, based on the fragments I’ve seen of the facade in photographs of Mears’ students. Along the dirt road are telegraph poles and a single cow. The photograph is undated; however, the message and postmark are for October of 1911.
Flip the postcard around, and on the back, oriented portrait instead of landscape, is a note from Alice (no last name given) to Miss Cecil Hasty of Hart, Michigan:
“Oct. 6th, 1911
Dear Cecil; How are you getting along these fine days. Suppose you are busy threshing [thrashing] those kids over by the lake. I’m glad I’m not one of them. There has been five teachers taking their meals here the last two days. Suppose you are home tonight. Wish I were home, will go tomorrow if it don’t rain. I go home every two weeks that’s oftener than did last fall. Write soon, come and see me. From Alice.”
In the top right corner (top left if you are reading the message), the card is postmarked “October 7, 10 AM, 1911 - MICH.” So we can see that, unlike me, Alice did not leave a finished letter lying around on her desk for long. Her sign-off is tucked in along the edge of the card to the right of the message, and a Shelby address (I am presuming hers) is squeezed in on the left.
As for the content, I am sure it’s not advisable to ask your teacher friend if they’ve been “threshing” their students lately. For a brief season I was a substitute teacher, however, so I understand the impulse. The discussion of “suppose you are home tonight. Wish I were home,” and “I go home every two weeks that’s oftener than did last fall” makes me wonder if these two were teachers, traveling between the many one-room schoolhouses of Oceana County. Alternatively, Alice might have worked in a boarding house, serving meals to those very teachers, which could explain how she and Cecil became acquainted.
Cecil has appeared a couple of times in county school records. Perhaps this is why Alice chose a postcard that features a school.
Thank you for indulging me in this week’s more whimsical dive into history. Cecil and Alice may not have been movers and shakers in the community, but they still lived here nonetheless and had an impact on those around them. I enjoyed spending time considering their humble lives in Oceana County over a century ago.
If you can help fill in the mystery about who Alice is and where she worked, or if you know more about Cecil, please contact me at cmarshall@whitelakemirror.com.
