Lake Lucerne, Orlando, Fla.

postmarked November 30, 1905, Winter Park, Fla

Dear I.,

How are you this Thanksgiving Day?

PAC

Miss Ida Hawkins

East Greenwich, Rhode Island

A lovely photograph of how Lake Lucerne appeared over a hundred years ago.  You can see the Historic Inn on the other side of the lake, unobstructed by the Spessard L. Holland East-West Expressway.

East Greenwich, Rhode Island is a town of about 13,000 people today.  It was a waterfront town with a prominent mill built by one of the early developers of steam mill technology, Charles Tillinghast James.  It turns out that Ida Hawkins was his niece.

According to her gravestone in Glenwood Cemetery,  Miss Ida Hawkins was born in 1873.  She attended the East Greenwich Academy, a prominent boarding school, graduating in 1893, then went on to Brown University complete her Bachelor's in education at  in 1897.  She was 32 when she received this card, which would be well after she started her career in teaching at an undetermined high school and before she was married to Alexander Morrison.  After a long life of teaching, she passed away in 1944 at the age of 71.  

Let's hope she was well on this Thanksgiving Day, whoever P.A.C. was. 

Lake Lucerne, Orlando, Fla.

Postmarked March 14, 1907, Jacksonville, Fla.

Mrs. Philip DeLeon?

East Greenwich, Rhode Island

East Greenwich, Rhode Island is a community in Rhode Island of about 13,000.  Founded around 1686, the town has the the highest per capita income in the state.  It's hard to make out the name of the recipient, so records for her are scant.

This card is the first of many featuring my new hometown.  I'll see if I can augment these posts with some present day photos, so you can see how time has treated buildings like the Historic Inn at Lake Lucerne seen in the distance on this card.

Lake Eola, Orlando, Fla.

Lake Eola, Fla.

Postmarked March 11, 1905 Received March 14 1905 Northhampton, Mass.

March 10

We have been in Orlando since Wednesday, but shall stay but one week so direct your next to Jacksonville, Gen. Del.  Papa is better but I think the water in Tampa was not good for him.

Mama

Miss Beaulah Wells

Albright House,

Northhampton, Mass.

As a Tampa native living in Orlando, I can attest to the lesser quality of Tampa’s water system, and I am not surprised that Papa suffered some as a result. 

Northhampton, Massachusetts is a town of about 23,000 people with an eclectic social history.  It's been home to a Great Awekening, Transcendental Abolitionism, Industrial Age and Rust Belt Decline, and now vibrant music scene and large LGBT community.    Albright House is a dormitory still in use today at Smith College, and there is a mention of a Beulah Wells in the October 1905 Smith College Monthly newsletter (archived here) that informs us that Miss Wells went to Rochester, N.Y. to work at the Rochester Business Institute.  From there, the trail grows cold.

On a tangent, if that's a receiving postmark from Northhampton, then that shows it took three days en route through our Postal Service.  Before optical character recognition and ZIP codes.  Before Interstate Highways.  Wow.

Here's the game I invite all my Orlando readers to play with me.  Try to find the correct shore of Lake Eola that corresponds with this photo.  My guess is the camera is located on the northwest shore looking south, which would put the structure in the photo where the bandshell is today.  I welcome your thoughts and photos, with which I will update this blog to compare the two!

Shawmut Congregational Church, Tremont and West Brookline Sts., Boston, Mass.

April 29, 1909

Everything in (Revere?) is booming

What in the world is the matter that you don’t write.  I wrote you telling you of my youngest br. Death Mar. 10^th and you haven’t ans.  I am very well and busy.  The (Marks?) have moved in Dr. Morris’ house so we have lost our neighbor.  Try to get time to write. 

(H. Gary?)

Mrs. Henry H. Haines

Madison, Maine

Haines the Druggist


Boston's Shawmut Church is a very historic building in the South End of Boston.   There's a New York Times article about the church's divisions in 1892, an address on Abraham Lincoln, delivered by civil rights leader Moorfield Storey in 1909, and a Flickr page set up by the Boston Public Library with early 20th century photographs.  The church was severely damaged by fire in 1978, and was converted into residences in 1990.  Some units are for sale today!

Madison, Maine is a small town in Somerset County with a population of about 4,000, incorporated in 1804.  In 1900, the population was 2,700 and had a thriving business center.  Maine genealogy records show a Henry Haines that died at age 92 in 1972, but there is no mention of his drug store, or any "Haines" currently doing business in Madison.  Taylor's Drug Store boasts that it has been family owned for over 100 years, so perhaps they changed their name or provided some stiff competition for the neglectful Mr. Haines.

The scolding tone of H. Gary? is a departure from the usual text seen on postcards.  It is a tale of loss, displayed for any postal worker to read, as well as a plaintive cry for communication.  Was H. Gary a dear friend of Mr. Haines?  Or perhaps a former lover?  If the latter is true, than the sender was out of luck, if ancestry.com's marriage record of Henry Haines is the recipient.