Merry Christmas! (With beautiful 115-year-old Christmas cards)

 Hope y'all had peaceful and card-blessed Christmases! Mine was good. I spent much of the morning giddily going through my annual COMC shipment, which arrived just in time for Christmas (more on that soon), and much of the afternoon going through some old Christmas postcards I received in a lot of "junk" I bought off Net54 earlier this year. 

There are 26 postcards, all sent between 1909 and 1916 to and among the family of Harry Dawson of Rockville, Maryland.

I enjoyed working out some of the cards' meanings and the history behind them, but feel free to skip all that and just look at the cards. Postcards are a lost art - some of these Christmas cards are gorgeous. High quality too - they're thick and many are even embossed, and the colors are beautiful. Wish there were still postcards like that. 

Harry was born Henry Allnutt Dawson was born in Rockville, Maryland, May 17, 1874 to John Dawson and Amelia Hollyday Somervell Dawson.

He was stationed 18 months in Cuba as a second lieutenant in the Spanish-American war. A graduate of Georgetown University Law School, he practiced law in Rockville for a time. 

On June 27, 1901, Harry married Mary "Pollie" Hoff of Reading, Pennsylvania, and they had two sons: Harry Adam Dawson Jr. (1902) and John Hollyday Dawson (1905). (Both sons were rife with family names - John was Harry Sr.'s father, Adam was Mary's father's middle name, and Hollyday was Harry's mother's middle name.) 

His wife Mary, aka Pollie (via findagrave.com)

Flat-out quoting Harry's obit: "He was superintendent of the Leona (Wis.) Indian Agency and assistant superintendent of the Flathead (Mont.) Indian Agency. From 1920-24 he was postmaster at Rockville and in 1928 went to work for the United States Compensation Commission, where he remained until his retirement in 1933. Mr. Dawson was a captain in the Army Service Corps during the World War."

Harry's wife died August 17, 1944, and he survived her only two weeks, dying September 3. 

May they rest in peace.

My favorite message out of all the postcards comes from W.W. Dawson, a cousin of Harry Jr.'s who lived in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The young W.W. wrote: "Hello Harry. How are you Tad poles getting along. Wish you a merry Christmas." 

My favorite postcard is one that a colleague of Harry Sr.'s sent to him at his address at the "Indian Office, Washington, D.C." 

The letter reads: "Dear Friend Dawsi. Will leave Toledo Saturday and be in Washington Sunday. Paul is with me. Yours, Dr. J.H. Heidelman."

Harry Sr.'s job with the "Indian Office," presumably the Bureau of Indian Affairs, required him to spend some time in the west. In 1909, the first year of my postcards, Harry was in Montana at Christmas while his wife and children stayed in Reading at 101 South 5th St. - most likely with his wife's family.

Here's the card his wife Pollie sent him for New Year's: 

"From the big three, Harry, John & Pollie. Love & A Happy New Year dear. Ever, Pollie." 

(Thanks to my mom for helping decipher all the cursive postcards.) 

Here's a beautiful and fragile card Harry sent to Harry Jr. at the same time: 

"Merry Xmas dear son & Happy New Years. Did you get your moccasins from your Daddy." 

I have four Christmas cards sent to Mrs. Harry A. Dawson for Christmas 1909. 

One was from a Sara K. Allen and the other came from Bessie Julia Sterling of Flathead, Montana, wife of Addison McLean Sterling. Sterling may have been a colleague of Harry's as Harry was the assistant superintendent of the Indian Agency at Flathead.

The second postcard is the only religious postcard out of the 25 sent celebrating a religious holiday. 

                              

The card from Montana reads: "Greetings from the reservation. Hope you are all well and happy. Margaret sends love to the boys. Will see you in the near future, I hope. Will write a letter soon. B.J. Sterling." 

Margaret was the only daughter and eldest child of the three Sterling children. Born in Missoula MT in 1906, she would have been John Dawson's age. (Margaret was a Sterling family name; Addison Sterling's mother and sister were both named Margaret.) 

The second pair of cards for Mrs. Dawson: 

I love the 3D effect on the bottom card.

Two cards for Master John Dawson, full four years old at the time. 

The card on the top is really cool in hand - it's hard to tell from the picture, but the children's bodies are embossed so they stand out three-dimensionally. The card is "Copyright 1908, F. Sander, N.Y."

The first card reads: "St. Ignatius. Best wishes to you for a merry Christmas and Happy New Year. 'Uncle Usti.'" 

(The feast day of Saint Ignatius of Antioch is celebrated on December 20 in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The card is postmarked December 19 - "Uncle Usti" may have been Eastern Orthodox.)

The second card reads:  "Dear John, the entertainment is to be Christmas evening at six o'clock. Do come a little early so we can sing the songbook before. Hoping you have a very happy Christmas. Eleanor Moss."

John Dawson later become an inventor. He was profiled by The American Weekly on June 25, 1950 by Frances Spatz Leighton. The article told how in 1944, John told his wife he wanted to quit his job with the Potomac Electric Power Co. in order to try to sell the toy aircraft carrier he invented that made "little John Holladay Dawson Jr. clap his hands in delight." 

"For a long moment Dorothy Dawson said nothing. She remembered the other toys her husband had made for Johnny. There was the submarine game. And the top. And the race horse set. All of them had seemed clever to her and to Johnny. But when her husband had tried to place them with manufacturers, he had run into a stone wall of indifference.

"Would the aircraft carrier be any different, she wondered? Perhaps it would. If her husband thought so she would stand beside him. After a lengthy discussion the couple agreed that Dawson would leave his job but that Dorothy would continue working as secretary to the principal of the high school in Rockville, Md."

Four years later, John still hadn't been able to market any of his inventions. 

"Then one fall evening in 1948 Dawson and his wife were invited to a wiener roast. It proved to be a fateful invitation. While at the party Dawson noticed that the hot dogs which were served to him kept falling off his fork into the fire before they were done enough to eat. That gave him an idea.

" 'Dot,' he said to his wife when they reached their house, 'I'm going to invent a hot dog fork that holds on like a tiger.' " 

He developed a working model, but "Again he received nothing but discouragement. Dawson was at the end of his rope. 'I'm going to chuck out all this stuff,' he told his wife, 'and get another job.' " 

"Seeing her husband's despair, Dorothy made a quick decision. She had read in the newspapers about a certain Paul E. Holbrook, a retired army colonel and inventor, who headed a recently founded non-profit organization in Washington, D. C., known as the National Society of Inventors. Dorothy phoned Colonel Holbrook and Dawson went to see him."

Colonel Holbrook found a manufacturer for Dawson's hot dog fork. "Dawson, the once obscure inventor, had taken his first exhilarating steps on the path to success." 

The article turns out to be a puff piece for the National Society of Inventors. 

The Miami News wrote a profile of him on May 14th, 1953, titled "An Inventor's Life Is Not An Easy One." It reported that he "had his first idea for a new gadget at the age of 12," in 1917.  He had had hundreds more since then, but was only able to find manufacturers for a fraction of them due to the "great expense for getting the object on the market." 

The Miami News even showed his latest invention, a pie top cutter, in action. It was reportedly his tenth patent. 

Back to Christmas cards. 

All post-1909 Christmas cards sent to the Dawsons were sent to their home in Rockville, Maryland. Rockville was a small town, containing just 1,181 people as of the 1910 census, and the Dawsons didn't even need an address: Their letters were just addressed to Mr. and/or Mrs. H.A. Dawson, Rockville, MD. 

Here's a pair of cards sent to the boys by a Mary Bruce from Washington D.C. for Christmas 1912. 

To Master John, Mary wrote: "May Santa Claus bring you lots of good things." To Master Harry, Mary wrote: "Mary Bruce wishes you a very merry Christmas." 

Someone with gorgeous but occasionally cryptic handwriting whose name I cannot read mailed cards to the boys from Washington D.C. on Christmas day, 1911.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                                                                        

I like the Red Cross stamp on the top card.

To Master Harry, Mr. [illegible] wrote: "Dear Harry, I hope Santa brought you all you wished for and that you and John make Mama & Papa a happy New Year. Yours for a Good Christmas. Come see me. Mr. M[something.]"

To Mr John, he wrote: "Dear John, I just feel that Santa left you almost all the toys for I did not get very many. Love to see you both again and wish you all a Happy New Year. 
    Yours in [?], Mr. [?]"

Here are two cards sent to Master Harry for Christmas 1912.

The bottom card has a stamp of some kind on its top left - it's not printed and it's not a postal stamp so I don't know what it was exactly. 

A second look at the tadpole letter. 

Here are two letters to Pollie from her Aunt Hollie. 

    

The first card reads: "Dear Pollie / Got your nice letter, and will write you soon. I know this Xmas will be sad to you, dear heart, and I feel for you, as it's such a keen reminder of the loved ones who are gone - my own dear Mother left - as at this bright season & tho years are past still the season brings the sadness. Lovingly, Aunt Hollie. [?] and kisses to Harry." 

Pollie's father died in May 1911, at 82, so this postcard may be referring to that.

The second letter is postmarked December 21, 1912, from Rushville, Nebraska. "Dear Pollie and Harry, Often think of you both & wish I could see you, and I remember with so much pleasure your kindness to me last summer - and hope you can come out & let us make you have a good time. I [?] you are busy getting your new house finished. Write me some time. Lovingly, Aunt Hollie." 

Those were really the most interesting cards. Being a completist, I'll still post pictures of the rest: 

I love the simple design of the card on the left. The empty space and the shock of red in its center work together beautifully.

I suppose placing the stamp right side up was hard for some people. Either that or they enjoyed passive aggressive rebellion. 

The bottom card reads: "With best wishes for a very happy time for you all & trust the [?] is coming on satisfactorily. With much love to you all, affec[tionately], [illegible.]"

My mom commented after decoding this one: "I didn't realize that people used to have such atrocious handwriting." 

A special Christmas blessing for those who made it to the end.