Author: Ray Hahn

  • A Story from Postcard Genealogy and the Value of Space-Savers in Your Collection

    A Story from Postcard Genealogy and the Value of Space-Savers in Your Collection

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    A postcard from a century ago provokes a story of two unrelated people in towns thousands of miles apart who led lives of much different value.

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  • Part II – While still holding Earth in the heavens, here’s Atlas at one of his side-jobs.

    Part II – While still holding Earth in the heavens, here’s Atlas at one of his side-jobs.

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    Atlas had quite a long career, he first started in Greek Mythology as the fellow responsible for holding Earth in the Heavens, but some years later he worked in a place called Panama. Read about a poster style postcard that shows Atlas at work.

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  • Andrew B. Bowering

    Andrew B. Bowering

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    [elementor-template id=”3378″] Andrew B. Bowering   Andrew B. Bowering At age eighteen, Andrew served, with the rank of private, as a bugler at the first battle of Manassas.  He moved up quickly, and by July 1861 was a musician in Virginia’s 30th Regimental Band, and then on June 1, 1862, he was promoted to principal…

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  • Jewish Welfare Board Ship Postcards

    Jewish Welfare Board Ship Postcards

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    Nathaniel Sener mailed a Jewish Welfare Board postcard home to his mother in 1919. He was not alone; it could be that as many as 800,000 soldiers and sailors, members of the US Army and Navy, did the same. Nat, as his family called him, lived on a western Maryland farm and most of his…

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  • Part III – Fresh Air for the Children

    Part III – Fresh Air for the Children

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    [elementor-template id=”3378″] Poster Postcards Part III Fresh Air for the Children Translation Long live clean air and space Thanks to the French Red Cross hundreds of children are leaving the cities The British author, Kipling, wrote something to the effect that scents are stronger than sights and sounds to make the heart strings crack. This…

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  • A Hudson River Steamer and an Artist Named Samuel Ward Stanton

    A Hudson River Steamer and an Artist Named Samuel Ward Stanton

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    For nearly a century, New Yorkers had river steamer service second to none other. When the Washington Irving launched in 1913 it was a splendid steamer, but sadly it sailed without its artist. Read the whole story.

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  • Poster Series – Part VIII, I Tre Conti

    Poster Series – Part VIII, I Tre Conti

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    [elementor-template id=”3378″] Poster Series – Part VIII, I Tre Conti I TRE CONTI THE THREE COUNTS One of the most fascinating features of posters is how they communicate a great deal of information in very few words. The featured card for this episode of In A Few Words is to be a true test of…

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  • February 12, 1908:  The Day the Great Race Began

    February 12, 1908: The Day the Great Race Began

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    The Race was sponsored by the NEW YORK TIMES and LA MATIN, a sister newspaper in Paris. The torturous New York to Paris route crossed three continents and amounted to over 22,000 miles in 169 days. The Thomas Flyer Team of Buffalo, New York won with a comfortable margin of 26 days. The feat has…

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  • Marie “Rie” Cramer

    Marie “Rie” Cramer

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    Marie Cramer was an extraordinary person in an extraordinary time. The world thought her to be a joyful individual, when in truth she thought life was a continual string of mishaps and foul relationships. But art made her happy and wealthy. Read her story and how she became the darling of post-war society in places…

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  • Poster Series X – The US Navy Visits Australia

    Poster Series X – The US Navy Visits Australia

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    [elementor-template id=”3378″] Posters Series X The US Navy Visits Australia U. S. Fleet Visits Australia The year before President Theodore Roosevelt left office, he dispatched the U. S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet on an around the world tour. Twenty-eight ships and 14,000 men left port in Hampton Ponds, Virginia for South America, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, Malaya, and back home…

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Past Article

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Forty miles north of New York City, “up the Hudson River,” Sing Sing Prison got a new warden in 1915. Thomas Mott Osborne ushered in a wave of penal reform. Out went the lockstep, in came (limited) prisoner self-governance. T. Fred Robbins, a nearby photographer and constable, was allowed to document many of the changes and he published postcards of his photos.

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