a glimpse at love 1917 style

With Valentines Day soon upon us I couldn't miss the opportunity to share with you a few treasures of my grandparents courtship during WWI.  

I've been studying the genealogy of my family in recent months and have found many many interesting things about my family.

I dragged my cousin Heather into my little family roots search albeit willingly when she was visiting over the New Year holiday with her family. She later found these postcards  in her mother’s attic while putting away the Christmas decorations.

Heather's grandmother Frances (my godmother) is the eldest daughter of my grandparents Mary and Henri.

If you are at all interested in WWI then you might enjoy seeing these postcards just for their nostalgic or historic value.  Or you might enjoy them simply for their beauty. For me they are my history, a small glimpse of my grandparents courtship in my grandfather’s own hand preserved for almost one hundred years.

This first postcard is considered a "sweetheart postcard."

I have to say, the picture is just outstanding and the colors are amazing!

The romantic in me loves that their courtship survived despite the fact that there was a war going on. The message in the postcard isn't all that romantic. I have to guess that was more the due to the more formal social norms of the early 1900's rather than their affection for each other.Fortunately they did marry two years later and had six children five of them survived and went on to have their own families. 

I am the second born child of their eldest son Henry.

This next post card is the actual announcement that my grandfather's sent to my grandmother letting her know he had arrived back in the US back in 1919.

At the base of the Statue of Liberty it says:

STATUE OF LIBERTY, NEW YORK CITY
Statue of Liberty on Bedloc’s Island in New York Bay, 1 ¼ miles from Battery, a colossal figure of Liberty enlightening the World. It lights the harbor with an electric torch held 306 feet above the water, the highest beacon in the world. Was presented to America by the French nation.

My grandparents rarely told stories about their native countries and they spoke of their families infrequently.They came to this country him from Canada and her from Ireland to become Americans and were grateful for that opportunity. I never did understand why they felt all the rest had to be left behind!! I've often wondered whether it was something deeper or maybe it was just too painful.

Regardless of whether my recollections are indeed accurate or a result of the limits of a child’s understanding or an adult’s imagination. What I've been uncovering in my search including these postcards is an interesting experience rather like peeking at little bits of myself.

Have you ever looked into your family history? What's your experience?

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you did what?

For Mama Kat's Pretty Much World Famous Writer's Workshop this week I chose this prompt: You know the stories that are retold a million times at family gatherings? I call them Life Stories that you just never live down. List your Top 10 Life Stories. 

Family stories are most funny to the family that they belong to because we know the people, the personalities. I come for a large family with lots of kids many many cousins.We're all in our thirties, forties, fifties even sixties now and I have to say we never get tired of these stories.  There are so many good stories that are swirling around in my head that could be told about all of us. Here are some of my favorites!

• Once at a holiday dinner, I believe it was Thanksgiving, someone threw a piece of turkey  across the table and it landed in my cousin Genevieve’s soda , she sipped it not knowing it was there, then threw up on the table. ( my brother Paul swears it was stuffing not turkey, he had a front row seat, he was sitting next to her) We still don't know who threw the offending object!

• I took a walk with my cousins, Gen, Patricia, my brother Paul and cousin Mickey on the boardwalk once, I didn't want to be with the girls I wanted to be with the boys. They however had different idea, they left me by jumped off the boardwalk. I was eight years old and lost, I walked to this little beauty parlor which sat off the end of the boardwalk and sat there crying and crying until they came back later. They got in trouble! (I didn't know my address we were living at a summer house)

• We had a party at our house once and my cousin Yvonne mistakenly used a Clorox wipe thinking it was a personal feminine wipe. Ouch!

• Poor cousin Lorraine was locked in the car trunk in Brooklyn by her sister Yvonne and my brother Paul, my grandfather found her.

• My brother Gerard (aka, Gerry berry) stuck a berry in his ear, from the Christmas decorations.

• My personal favorite when at a family party my cousins threw my little shit balls from my diaper out the upstairs window at Uncle Charlie’s head since he didn’t have hair!

• While visiting my friends Flora’s Uncle Joe in Brooklyn he was commenting at the dinner table how beautiful my daughter Heather was, as the words left his mouth, she threw up on the table.

• My son Billy put a clothes pin on our cat Tinkerbelle’s tail once, needless to say they didn’t like each other very much. Once when staying with my parents Billy was sleeping on the couch, and Tinkerbelle  who traveled with us decided to get her payback, she climbed on Billy when he was sleeping and peed on his back.

• My cousin cut my hair after one lesson in hair cutting school; it was a disaster. Mom took me to the beauty parlor after to repair the damage, can anyone say pixie?

• I was walking down the street with my son Matthew and I was VERY pregnant with Eric, a utility worker was working in a freshly dug hole on some sewer pipes. As we turned the corner I said to my toddler son” look Matthew a big hole.” The man looked up at me and said” not big enough for you lady!”