Postcard History

It’s January 1^st. It may be too early to re-think any new year resolution, but here is a set of cards by a little-known artist, that may provoke thoughts on how you may have used them if you lived in 1910.

One of the few known facts is that W. H. Woolums was born in Kentucky in 1828, but we have found no records from his early years. He was 34 years old and married when he was drafted into the Union Army from Lexington, Kentucky.

Sadly, there is no verified record of an artist with this name suggesting that W. H. Woolums appears to have been one of the many late nineteenth or early twentieth‑century postcard illustrators, a group of semi‑anonymous commercial artists whose work circulated widely but whose biographies were rarely preserved.

The only artistic works that show the name Woolums are a set of six hand-colored postcards from 1910, a few studio sketches of rural scenic views, and a few pen and ink drawings of fisherman along rivers and at lakesides. These works place Woolums squarely in the world of the golden era of postcard art, a time when postcards were not just souvenirs but miniature artworks, often humorous, and more-often sentimental.

While no direct record has been discovered in a search that Woolums’ “Six Scenes Devoted to New Year Resolutions” were published in America or the United Kingdom, the title resembles the naming conventions of holiday postcards produced by the likes of Ullman, Tuck, Whitney, and the International Art Publishing Company.

These companies frequently issued multi‑card sets built around a theme, and New Year’s resolutions, was a popular subject for humorous postcards. Typical resolutions of the era, based on card sets by known publishers include, “I will rise early,” “I will not gossip,” “I will save money,” “I will be kind to animals,” “I will avoid strong drink,” and “I will work harder.”

This Woolums series certainly meets the standards by having each card illustrate a different resolution and have each card be dramatically different.

All this is significant because with the discovery of these cards we are essentially uncovering a lost or nearly lost postcard artist, someone whose work circulated widely in American homes but whose name slipped out of the history books. Artists like Woolums helped shape the visual language of early twentieth‑century holidays—small, intimate artworks that carried humor, hope, and moral aspiration into the new year.

Since W. H. Woolums left almost no biographical footprint, the only honest way to approach him is to reconstruct the life he likely lived from the world he worked in – the postcard industry. What emerges is not a traditional biography but a silhouette. Since the cards are dated 1910 and follow a rural or small‑town setting, subjects like schoolhouses, fishermen, and quiet domestic scenes suggest that he was familiar with rural life.

Artists of this type often learned to draw from early grade schoolteachers, or working at the local newspaper, or from art themed correspondence schools.

Sadly, like dozens or perhaps hundreds of others, W. H. Woolums almost certainly belonged to the class of commercial artists whose names appeared only occasionally, and when they did get credit for their work it came as tiny initials in a corner.

This six‑card set devoted to New Year’s resolutions would have been a bread‑and‑butter assignment for an artist like Woolums. His image topics played well with publishers who wanted to sell cards that were humorous and sold well in drug emporiums and general stores.

Sadly, illustrators like Woolums lived lives that were largely unrecorded. They left no interviews, no museum holdings, and no framed masterpieces. Whatever they left behind was in shoeboxes, scrapbooks, or bottom dresser drawers.