Victorian Calling Cards

The year is 1870. There are no telephones and not even postcards as a way of communicating with friends and neighbors. Although you could write letters, to keep in touch with neighbors you would likely just get in your horse-drawn carriage and stop by for a visit. On a particular day, perhaps on a Sunday afternoon, you would make the rounds, observing the proper etiquette of staying for approximately 30 minutes and leaving a decorative calling card with your name on it. In the foyer, there was a tray where you could leave the card, so even if your hosts were out they would know that you stopped by. You would hope to be remembered by your friends with an attractive card bearing your name. What you would not expect is that 140 years later someone might be looking at the card and wondering who you were. Wouldn't they be surprised!

Originally I intended to just post the scans of these cards, but, of course, I couldn't help looking up some of the names. Sometimes cards like this are simply stationer's samples with invented names. In this case, they seem to be real and generally from upstate New York, with a fair number from Cortlandville, New York.

This card belonged to Miss Mary Uhlman, but I can't say for certain which Mary Uhlman. The card looks older (1860s, maybe?) than most of the others.

Assuming I found the correct Rienzi A. Crane, he seems to have died in 1877 at the age of 19 and is buried in the McGraw Rural Cemetery in Cortland County, New York.

Edward may have been his brother.

I find a Florence Vedder in the 1870 Census living in Oppenheim, New York. She was two years old then, so perhaps she handed this card out in the mid to late 1880s.

The 1880 Census shows Dewitt B. Yonker (born in 1859)  also living in Oppenheim, New York.

The same Census shows Daniel D. Donker living in Cortlandville, New York.

The card below has June 5th, 1885 written on the back. It may have belonged to Charles Truesdail,  born in 1859 in Tioga, New York according to the 1870 Census.

The designs on some of the cards bearing male names seem very feminine, like this one for Lonzo E. Clark. This may be the Lonzo E. Clark (born 1833) who was recorded living in Canandaigua, New York during the 1850 Census.

I'm not sure who H.A. Brownell was, but I like the card.

I like Asa Foster's too. The 1910 Census shows an Asa D. Foster (born in 1869) living in Smyrna, New York.

Here are some more cards with ornate script. I would imagine that it was somewhat of a status symbol (like having hundreds of friends on FaceBook) to have a tray stacked high with calling cards in your front room.

  

  

 

Civil War Revenue Stamps

Cartes de Visite were small portraits on card stock, generally measuring 2.5 by 4 inches, that were especially popular in the 1860s. If there is a revenue stamp on the back of the photograph, you can narrow the date down to the two years during which a tax was applied to photographs. The newly-created Internal Revenue Service was looking for ways to finance the Union's Civil War costs. While the Confederate States printed money and suffered from outrageous inflation, the North imposed taxes on every imaginable product and service.

All kinds of things were taxed, including playing cards, bank checks, and matches. Photographs were added relatively late (1864-1866), so they didn't have their own tax stamp. That's why you will often see a Carte de Visite with a playing-card revenue tax stamp or a more generic proprietary tax stamp on the back. A 2-cent tax stamp indicates that the photograph cost up to 25 cents. More expensive photographs might have a 3-cent stamp.

 Photographer: R.R. Rundell, Owego, New York.

Photographer: F. Smith Hooker, Havana, New York.

Photographer: D.W. Grout, Pulaski, New York.

 

Photographer: Crum & Sharp, Watkins, New York.

 Photographer W.C. Crum, Penn Yan, New York

Photographer: George W. Barnes, Rockford, Illinois (Compliments of H. White)

Photographer: Masterson & Wood, 74 and 75 Arcade, Rochester, New York

Beacon Rock, Washington

I'm putting up my feet today and relaxing, because I have a guest post today by the architect who steals my covers (also known as Archie Techt.)  Here's what he wrote:

This scene of Castle Rock in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge, which forms the border between Oregon and Washington states, made me want to go for a visit.  It would have been a search in vain though, since Castle Rock no longer exists.  Well, the basalt monolith still exists, but it is now called Beacon Rock.  Originally named Beaten Rock by Lewis and Clark in 1805 as they headed down the Columbia on their expedition west to the Pacific, the name was later changed to Beacon Rock, then Castle Rock, then back to Beacon Rock in 1916. 

Henry Biddle purchased the 848’ tall rock column in 1915 for $1, then spent the next three years building an approximately mile long series of switch-backed trail and bridges up the near vertical south face to the summit.  Views of the gorge along the way and from the top are spectacular, if a bit vertigo inducing.  A volcanic plug, Beacon Rock is the solidified lava core of a larger volcanic cone, the softer remainder of which was washed away during the ice age by the Missoula floods. 

In the early 1930s, the Army Corps of Engineers looked at all of that rock--essentially a vertical quarry--at the river’s edge, and decided they should blow it up to supply material for a jetty at the mouth of the Columbia River. They got as far as digging three caves at the base for explosives, before the Biddle family gave the property to Washington to be used as a state park (Washington originally refused the gift, so the Biddles offered it to Oregon instead, at which point Washington reconsidered….). 

In more recent history, Daily Postcard author Christine was in a Portland book club with Helene Biddle Dick, granddaughter of Henry.  And when my father passed away, I buried his watch at the top of Beacon Rock, as I felt that it offered a view of timeless beauty in every direction.

The double-entendre of the second card made more sense when I read the back and saw it was intended for WWII soldiers.

 Christine on her way up the switchback trail--hang onto your hat!

 The view of the Columbia River Gorge from the Beacon Rock summit is lovely, even on a cold, misty day.                     

  Here's the back of the first card.