Unpacking a Vintage Postcard: The Little Revelations of Research

My husband Dave was the main collector of vintage postcards here. With a dozen want lists, ranging among his passions of Vermont history, AT&T founder and Lyndonville experimental farmer and philanthropist Theodore Newton Vail, the village of Gilman, and Jewish themes, he spent hours roaming the online listings, and something intriguing arrived in the mail most mornings.

It's taken me time to absorb his tasks in with mine, since his death two years ago. But I am now hunting postcards when I have time. I picked up this one for its charming "Bird's Eye View of West Derby, Vt." (which is now part of Newport, Vermont), thinking we might not have the image itself among his Newport and Derby postcards.

And then, of course, the back of the card drew me in.

It's hard to read, scrawled in pencil and overlaid with a Newport (Vt.) postmark. Even the postmark year is difficult to parse, though we can see it comes from the years when a postcard traveled for the cost of a penny stamp. Even the stamp is a challenge for my aging eyes! But with the aid of a lighted magnifier, I read "Balboa 1513" and marveled that this U.S. stamp commemorated the Spanish explorer's claiming of the Pacific Ocean on behalf of his nation.

The message, once you turn it upright, reads as follows:

July 17 - '15

Dear friend You card rec'd this a.m. Was so glad to know you'd not forgotten me. I'm getting stronger every day and hope you are also. It was so nice of Leola to see me off. I was about sick for three days after coming home. Very sincerely, Mrs. Kimball

I puzzled over the address for a while, and came up with Mrs. B. W. McCosco, 54 Concord Ave., St. Johnsbury Vt.  However, I thought I probably had the name wrong, since I'd never heard that name before. So I started pulling up town listings from the early 1900s. It didn't take long to realize that McCosco was indeed a local surname, and here's what I found:

Mrs. Maude C. McCosco was a teacher who boarded at 159 Railroad Street in St. J. She was the second wife of Basil Winfred McCosco (born in West Danville in 1872, died in St. J in 1920). Her marriage took place in 1912, and her name before the marriage was Winifred Maude Blair Clifford (she lived from 1879 to 1967).

Note that her postcard was addressed using her husband's initials, B. W.; also note that she was listed in the town as a "boarder" just a few years after her marriage. I wonder now ... had Basil left her alone for some reason? What caused him to die at the relatively young age of 48? Which years did Maude teach school, and where?

Which just goes to show: The more you pull out the clues from a postcard, the more mysteries you open up in response.

Listening to Local (Vermont) History

On Sunday morning at 7 a.m. on WIKE-AM radio in Newport, Vermont (1340 AM), Scott Wheeler provides an intriguing conversation each week that delves into this region's culture -- that is, into Northeast Kingdom life, past and present. Today Scott and I savored a conversation about old photo postcard images of Newport and Derby and how they can instigate new work in historical fiction. At least, for Scott and me, they always set the imagination rolling, along with a hunger for more research and more details. Here is the actual radio show: http://www.northlandjournal.com/audio/bethKanell.mp3

One of the images we talked about is this one from the 1880s of the Memphremagog House, a tourist hotel that could shelter about 400 people! Built in 1838, it was a response to the unusual pattern of New England tourism in the 1800s: People would pack their trunks full of necessities and literally leave the city for six months, to enjoy "country air" and escape the fumes of urban life. You can see how close the train tracks ran to the hotel -- passengers could step down from their rail car and stroll up the path to the front door. Scott pointed out that this was one of several hotels at the time; today's regeneration of Newport's downtown has a lot to live up to!

When I'm writing historical fiction, I'm usually working from more than just a place like this hotel, though, and the historical tidbit that I shared with Scott today (it's hard to find one he doesn't know, but I did!) was about Governor George Prouty, a Newport resident. In 1909, the governor's chauffeur took a "joy ride" in the governor's car, crashing into a parade on the west side of the state (part of the 300-year celebration of explorer Samuel de Champlain) and killing a child in the process. The governor made the national news (the New York Times) when he came forward to stand for the $5,000 bail called for, for the chauffeur's manslaughter charge.

Scott and I also talked about these three Derby Line postcards -- partly for the amount of detail each one captures. In addition, I mentioned that I hope local residents will collect these images before the Internet sells them all to collectors in other places. These are evidence of what life was like, and we need them, in order to hold onto the treasures of our past. They're not just for historical fiction research; they are also for our sense of place, pride, and integrity. Plus, they take up a lot less room than collecting books! (That's a warmly meant family jest, considering how many bookshelves we've filled over the years.)

Other topics: a mention of a Troy resident, Amasa Tracy (1829-1908), the 2004 Phish concert in Coventry that many recall (Scott covered it; he publishes The Northland Journal), and some details of my most recent book, Cold Midnight. Hope you'll tune in for the radio show and catch all of the conversation! Thank you, Scott, for a marvelous half hour.

PS: The two Kelly's postcards are in the Middlebury College collection, which can be searched by town name online: http://middarchive.middlebury.edu/cdm/search/collection/vtpostcards