Hey everybody, welcome to Retell Seller, an ephemera podcast where I uncover forgotten stories and the ephemera people leave behind. I’m Angie, a reseller of 10 years, and I’ll share one of those snippets with you. Let’s see what today’s find has to say
This episode stems from a postcard and I have a lot of them so, I’m probably going to focus more on these in upcoming shows and I’m guessing many will be shorter, maybe, unless something else jumps out at me, which very well could happen.
Today’s card is not too different aesthetically from the one I read on Ella Wheeler Wilcox, episode 13. That one was called A Postcard, a Poem, and a Shift in Perspective. The florals and the colors are pretty much the same. The front of the card has a bundle of purple violets being the main attraction, with green leaves and stems trailing off the edge of the card.
The bottom center has a white box with a verse written within. It says, “I tried to pen a greeting to pledge a friendship true, but the violet is more eloquent. Let it confide my thoughts to you.”
The other side’s written message reads, “Dear Niece, I hope you will pardon me for not writing to you sooner. I got back two weeks ago, am feeling very well now. I had the grip. Hope you are all well. Love to all and write soon too. Aunt Molly.”
I knew I wanted to talk about her speaking of the grip. Even if the phrase is unknown, within the context of the message, we have a pretty good idea the grip is most likely some sort of sickness, something she had, past tense, and now she’s very well. So yes, the grip is a sickness, and it’s better known as influenza, the flu.
Other older names like sweating sickness, epidemic catarrh, which is spelled differently and not associated with the country at all, and Spanish fever or flu. People spelled it different ways, G-R-I-P or with two Ps, or it was la grippe ending in an E.
I searched for the grippe with one and two Ps just to see what came up, and everything but sickness came up in the first couple of pages.
A few things were an eco-friendly squeeze ball, an online news site out of Georgia, even an asset tracking platform for farmers came up.
Wikipedia redirects to Influenza, where it goes into all the details about that, so if you’re curious, you can absolutely find the information there.
As for the card, it’s dated February 10th, 1913, processed through Catlettsburg, Kentucky.
And since I do have a Newspapers.com subscription, which I’m not an affiliate for, I started looking specifically for February 10th, 1913, Catlettsburg, Kentucky, along with the word grip, and nothing came up. I kept dwindling down my filters until I ended up with 1913, Kentucky, and grip. And during this time in the early 1900s, local newspapers would of course report on things like murders, robberies, things like that, uh, but they also shared things about the people in the town, like when someone was sick, or maybe they were headed over to grandma’s house for the day, or leaving on a business trip.
And here are some examples where they talk about those that had the grippe and then other things that they found important to share.
On January 1st, 1913, a paper out of Millersburg, Kentucky, says, “Mr. C.W. Cornington, who has been ill with the grip, is improving. Mrs. Thomas McClintock, who has been confined to her home for a week with the grip, is not so well.”
And then other notable events included, “Mrs. W.V. Shaw is visiting her mother at Butler, Kentucky and Miss Sadie Clark left Saturday to Escondida to resume her school duties January 6th.”
The paper out of Louisa, Kentucky, dated January 17th, 1913, says, ” Uncle Ike Gobel is very poorly with la grippe at this writing at the home of his son, Legie Gobel.” And some other happenings were John Garrett has moved into one of Clint Leslie’s houses.
March 21st, 1913, out of Lancaster, Kentucky. The first thing is a potential fix for the flu. It’s titled:
“Only Unwise People Tolerate Catarrh”
In part it says, “Here is a sure way to get rid of catarrh. Hawking, snuffling, and all misery caused by the Catarrh germs. Get a HYOMEI outfit today. Follow the instructions and breathe five times a day deep into your lungs the germ killing air through the little inhaler.
A complete outfit which includes inhaler is $1. Separate bottles, if the first dose does not entirely cure, can be obtained for 40 cents, and money back from R.E. McRoberts & Son if you are dissatisfied. Just breathe it. No stomach dosing.”
I have to say the next advertisement over from that one is a hair tonic also brought to people by R.E. McRoberts & Son. They will also pay for any unused tonic if it didn’t end up working.
Next is out of Mount Hebron, Kentucky. They report Miss Amy Montgomery is victim of grip and Mrs. Laurany Montgomery has been quite ill with grip this past week.
They mentioned others who were just plain sick, also saying Mr. Newton Gill, who has been so ill of pneumonia is better. An article out of London, Kentucky, on May 1st, 1913, says W.G. Pennington, is confined to his bed with the grip. Do you think the townspeople had any say in whether they were put in the paper or not?
Like, “Don’t put me in the paper about being sick. Don’t tell people I’m leaving town.” Of course, I think of social media today and I’ve never been big on it myself. I use it mainly for business and barely that. I found what the HYOMEI inhaler looks like and it’s on the Smithsonian’s website.
They have a collection of this and other Booth’s brand products in their collection, and so that was really neat to look at. Uh, it looks like it could have been a duck call maybe.
I also came across an old wooden crate on Etsy, which of course already sold because wooden crates are amazing. But it was a Booth’s Hyome branded crate. It had one dozen outfits engraved on it, which is exactly how the newspaper article referred to them.
And when I looked up Catlettsburg, where the card was postmarked, I found out a man by the name of Alexander Catlett, when he was passing through the area following the American Revolution, he became the first landowner in the area in 1798, and his son Horatio opened the post office and became the postmaster 100 years before this postcard was written. It’s a small town, which in 2020 had a population of 1,780.
Catlett House
Built 1812
And when I look at these cards, I like how I can pull from any part of it and find a story. It then becomes a matter of which one do I tell? So while I didn’t find much pertaining to the writer and nothing on the recipient, the writer wrote enough for me to catch many little stories surrounding her at the time.
And don’t forget the blog and the YouTube videos I create do share the imagery I talk about, so if you visit either of those, you’ll see exactly what I’m reading from. So stop by retellseller.com. That’s R-E-T-E-L-L seller.com, which will get you to YouTube, Instagram, or where you can sign up for the newsletter if you choose
Thank you for joining me as I shared a snippet of the past. I’d love to know if it connected with you in some way. Did it spark a memory or make you see something differently? If so, consider sharing it. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional info, links, and ways to connect. It’s not nostalgia, it’s human.
Until next time, may you find something worth holding onto
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pinny please
