Historic Hood River
“Postcard with message”
Notes
One of my favorite tags in our photo database is “Postcard with message”. It invariably means it’s time to put on the detective hat. I shared this one (one of my favorites) 13 years ago, but I thought you might like to see what the clues actually look like, and you can catch up on the comments which have accumulated over the years.
This one gives us a head start because it has a postmark with a legible date and location. That’s about a 50/50 proposition. The location (“Post” in this case) is often a place which no longer exists, but there are good record of every post office that ever existed. The message itself is rich with information, if you can read it– another 50/50 proposition. J R Post may not have a perfect handwriting or spelling, but he gives us the details we need. His message is actually about the image itself, and his description is unusually vivid. We also have an addressee (in this case our post flushed out a grandson!) as well as some indication of the sender.
The addressee in this case was mentioned in another post, which also explains the “c/o J. R. Crosby” part of the address. Unfortunately the Caughey’s and the Crosby’s didn’t have a telephone in those years, the phone books I put online aren’t of any help in identifying their address.
I wonder who inscribed the address in such a beautiful script.
Jeffrey Bryant
Mrs. Harry Caughey was Gertrude Olive Crosby. Her parents were John Reuben Crosby and Annie Marilee Post.
The 1950 Census of Hood River County shows Harry Caughey living in Odell Election District 14-16 on Sheet 8 Precinct as follows: Summit Road proceeding west from junction of Odell- Tucker Bridge Road, 4th house south. The 1940 census does not give an address. As a farmer he likely did not move much.
L.E.
Arthur’s last link to “phone books” led to some interesting items. From Benjamin Gifford photos to Lenora Belle Hinrichs’s recipes written in beautiful handwriting. She has a recipe for preserving eggs in slack lime for the winter. I can remember when people did that.
There is Post General Store and Eatery at Post Oregon, named for Joseph Post’s father who had the first post office in 1889.