Sunday, February 15, 2015

1907 postcard: Nubilous but moonlit sky hangs over riverside town


As I sit here typing, it's 12° F outside and the fierce winds have died down for the moment. Here's an early 20th century postcard featuring a painting of a cloudy summer night, with a full moon shining through the overcast sky and down onto some riverside rooftops.

I can only read the second of the two postmarks on the back of the card. It was stamped on December 9, 1907, in Linden Hall, Pennsylvania. There are two possibilities for what Linden Hall could refer to:

  • Linden Hall is a girls' school (founded in 1746) in northern Lancaster County. I suppose it's possible that it once had its own post office.
  • There was a Linden Hall in Centre County, Pennsylvania, which thrived until the 1920s. It definitely had a post office around the turn of the century. It is now the Linden Hall Historic District.

I don't have a great guess as to which of those two it might be.

The split-back postcard is addressed to Miss Bertha Tressler of Linden Hall and the short message is: "I beg your pardon for not writing yet but will write soon. E.R.H." Yes, another one of those postcards to indicate that a longer correspondence is on the way.


Another mystery of this postcard is the publisher. This is the tiny logo on the back. It might be H.K. & M. Some sources indicate that it's Hubert Kohler & Co. of Munich, Germany.

2 comments:

  1. I'm voting for Linden Hall in Center County for this postmark. I graduated from Linden Hall in Lititz a long time ago, and I never heard that the school ever had its own post office. We had individual mail boxes but they were only for sorting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Today's episode sponsored by Nubilous :)

    ReplyDelete