Scene on Island Waterway between Palm Beach and Miami, Fla.

Palm Beach, Fla, December 15, 1942

Dear Feverfew:-

Greetings from Florida once more- guess it will be for the last season until the war is over so we must make the most of it.  We are at Trailer Garden, W. Palm Beach for the winter and like it here.  Friendly people and a very pretty small camp.  Husband’s sister and her husband are at Lake Worth, seven miles from here, I a home so we shall be with them at Christmas as usual.  We go there for Sun. dinner usually, the only driving we do.  I can if weather is right, walk to shopping center about 1 ½ miles.  The open beach is probably ½ mile further across Lake Worth. 

Best Wishes,

Wanderer

Mrs. Etta Briggs

Pratt St.

Halifax, Mass.


Wistful musings about the war being over from a tin can tourist.  With gas rationing during the war, visitors to Florida found their journeys limited, if they could travel to Florida at all.  The Trailer Garden may still exist, given the rough directions that our Wanderer provides us.  

Etta Briggs was born in 1877 and died at the age of 91 in Halifax, Massachusetts.  The town of 7,000 people has a historical commission, so I have contacted them to shed any more light on Ms. Briggs and perhaps her mysterious "wanderer."

Greetings from Florida (with a Pelican limerick!)

A Gorgeous Bird is the Pelican,

Whose Beak can Hold More than his Belican,

He can put in his Beak, Food enough for a Week,

But I’ll be d----d if I can see how the Helican.

Mr. and Mrs. Pelican

There are those who like the Northland,

            With its cold and all its sleet,

Winter winds blowing through you

            As you hurry down the street.

Here we stroll among the roses,

            In the sun that shines so warm,

Eating fruit and smelling flowers,

            With our coats upon our arm.

West Palm Beach, Fla March 7, 1930

Dear Harry:-

While Fern is doing fine, it will be at least another month before she can be moved, wish you were here.  I am writing this sitting on the pier with almost 500 Broad bill within 10 feet of me. 

Jim

H. L. Post

Farmingdale, N.Y.


Farmingdale is a small village on Oyster Bay of about 8,000 people.  It was carved out of the Bethpage purchase made by Thomas Powell in 1685 from the local Marsapeque, Matinecoc, and Sacatogue tribes.  The Post family was a prominent family in all of Long Island, most of whom descended from a Captain John Post in the late 1600's.  An H.L. Post is mentioned in the 1913 Journal of the New York State College of Forestry as owning a "wood-using" business in Farmingdale.  The business at 393 Main Street was owned by a Gladys K. Post at least until 1985, which is the last record available from the Nassau County Property Assessors Office.  


An email on an alumni website for Far Rockaway High School exists for Gladys, so I will send her a link to this post and update later.

West Palm Beach. Florida skyline framed by cocoanut palms

February 29, 1968

Dear Glenna,

Wish to thank you so much for everything.  Guess you think I have forgotten you.  We were (?) boat on Sat N for a dinner.  Gone all day Sun.  Monday (?) friends of ours.  Pat a+ Rich went on to Miami (?)  I was going home from there.  (Shaw?) father sick she might have to go there.  Judy will be here.  I will write you.

Mrs. Glenna Castul (Casteel?)

5203 Cortez Road

Orlando, Fla. 32808


West Palm Beach was incorporated by Henry Flagler in 1894 as a stop on his railroad.  If he knew that visitors to his city would be stricken with frustratingly bad handwriting, he may have stopped at St. Augustine.  Researching the people mentioned on this card is tantalizingly difficult, mainly because the search tools I use are local.  Here's what I pieced together so far:

The house at 5203 Cortez Drive still stands in the Orlando neighborhood of Pine Hills, and was probably in a much safer neighborhood back in 1968 than it is now.

The earliest online record from the Orange County Property appraiser is from August 1993,  when the house built in 1953 was sold by a Bruce and Beatrice Cutshall.


That's it.  No birth records, obituaries, or marriages with any variation on the name of the recipient.  I'm going to physically research this one, since it's close to home.  I'll update this post with any new leads.