Clinton Burnett Died

I am sometimes surprised by the casual death announcements that are transmitted on an otherwise cheerful postcard - especially when the card has cute little Easter chicks on it.

Here's the back of the card, sent to Mrs. E.B. Spoor c/o Geo. Snyder in Delanson, New York.

The message reads:

Dearest Mother.

Hope this will find you all well. Clinton Burnett died this morning I have not been down home this week there has been some thing all the time Miss Fancher is going to be here to supper to night Well good by love to Florence and George and yourself. Carrie

Don't be a Fool - Back up Your Blog

Along with the French April Fish cards in honor of April 1, I have a word of caution for people who have blogs on Blogger. I was caught off guard yesterday when all traces of my blog vanished. It was as if it never existed. Over two-and-a-half years of work and 800+ posts disappeared from the internet. I have heard of this happening to other people, but I thought it was an 'old' issue. Often the deleted blog comes back in a day or two, but not always. I am happy my blog is back, but I was kicking myself for not staying up to date on back-ups. This only takes a minute, so be sure to do it. It's very easy to do, just not so easy to find the directions:

Click on Design in the upper right-hand corner of your blog window.
The new window that comes up will have a list on the left. Click on the last one: settings
Then click on other at the bottom of the list
Towards the top of the page, you will see Blog Tools, click on Export Blog
Don't worry, this will not make your blog go away, but it will create a file that includes all of your posts and the comments too!

It's probably a good idea to do this at least once a month. You can just delete the older files.  Then if your blog disappears, you have two options:

1. You can create a new blog in Blogger, and go through the same steps above, but instead of clicking on Export Blog, click on Import Blog. It will then allow you to browse for files. Hopefully you can remember where you saved the export file. Click on it and it will quickly load all of the posts.

2. You can export the blog to another blog service like Wordpress.

I have not tried exporting to Wordpress, but I did try creating a new test blog on Blogger and importing the posts. It worked beautifully. Please note that it does not save the blog template; you have to do that separately. The export works very quickly and without taking up much disk space (my exported blog was 15.4 MB.) With any luck your blog will not disappear, but in case it does you'll feel a lot better if you saved a copy of it and so will your readers.

The Life of a German Housemaid

One of the things that's so wonderful about postcards as documents of social history is that people of every economic and social status sent them - from royalty and world rulers to farmers, laborers, and housemaids. Children just learning to write sent cards to each other and to relatives. Old people sent them too. If you were somehow able to pull all of these cards together, you would have an amazing collection of first-hand accounts of world and local events, epidemics, and trends in fashion and technology,  all from varied individual perspectives. Along with this, you would also get a sense of their values, daily routines, interests, and education.

If you have a collection of cards to or from one person, that's where it can get very interesting as you try to piece together the events that shaped their lives. I bought a collection of about 100 cards sent to a young German woman named Trinchen von Oesen over a span of years from 1909 to 1926.  I wondered at her ever-changing addresses, inevitably in care of someone else. I speculated that she had been a domestic servant of some kind. With the help of genealogical information, I was able to confirm that this was indeed the case. Her social status did not prevent her from sending and receiving lots of beautiful cards, including real-photo cards of herself and family members, as well as co-workers.

Based on the other photos I have, I believe that Trinchen (pronounced Treen-shen) is the one in the middle. She was born in 1892, so she would have been about 23 in this picture.  It's hard to see, but there's a sign above the door that says 'Wilkommen.' The three young women, with their well-worn shoes, likely worked at a guesthouse in the vicinity of Bremen.

This is a somewhat earlier picture. I think Trinchen may be the third from the right. The card was sent in 1911, so she would have been about 19 at the time.

The second card was sent from her sister Lina, although the handwriting, as on many of these cards, is very difficult to decipher. Trinchen also received many cards from her twin brothers Karl and Hermann from home and as they went off to fight in World War I. I know that Karl returned, but I suspect that Hermann did not.

Here are the backs of the cards in the same order. Once I learn to read this Suetterlin handwriting (any day now), I will have a translation for this.

The second card from her sister is a discussion of keys, in particular keys for Trinchen's chest of drawers and for a safe of some kind. She is requesting that Trinchen bring all the keys she has when she visits.

If you want to observe more people at work (as you relax this weekend), head over to Sepia Saturday.