The "Souvenir Postal Card" series
The cards in the collection are indicated by icons:
The view of the Hay house on this card is taken from the northwest corner of the house. The view of the Hay house in the second printing of the series is photographed from the southwest corner. Although the two photographs are similar in detail they were probably made at different times: note that in this photograph the shutters on the front windows are closed, while in the card from the second printing the shutters are open. There are differences in the fence, as well. Interestingly, the view on this card was used again on an announcement card mailed in 1909. This indicates that the various series of cards were the work of a local printer. Photoengravings like this one were expensive, and printers didn't through them out or melt them down. They saved and reused them -- often until they were so worn the subject was barely recognizable.
I knew Miss Charity Dennis half a century later, in the 1950s. She ran a candy shop on the north side of the square, a long, narrow, dim, old-fashioned store with a Coca-Cola cooler and a couple of tables on the right and glass cases along the left wall. It may have been a more robust business at one time, perhaps in her father's day -- the building bore the name "Dennis" on the cornice. But when I was 8 or 10 its stock was mostly comic books and soft drinks and penny candy, and Miss Charity Dennis was an extremely old woman (when you're 8, every woman older than your mother is inscrutably, indescribably old). But a nice one. When I went in to spend a nickel on Bonomo Turkish Taffy (my favorite) she would perhaps be sitting in a chair behind the Coke case reading the paper, and as she rose and moved behind the counter she always had a word or two and we had a little conversation -- not something all adults take the trouble to do with children. She was always Miss Charity Dennis. I suppose someone might still have been alive who called her just Charity, but I did not know them. Even my parents referred to her by her full name. Miss Charity Dennis. Who had once been a young woman who sent her friends postcards. (7/15/04) |
The first version of the series is identified by the words "Souvenir Postal Card SALEM, INDIANA U.S.A." in a sans serif typeface on the address side of the card. This view of the Hay birthplace and the next one, of the courthouse, are from this series. This card is postmarked in very early 1906, indicating a publication date possibly late in 1905. This is supported by the inclusion of a view of the Carnegie Library in at least in the second version of the series (it has not yet been confirmed in the first). The library was completed in July of 1905.
The second series is printed from the same engravings as the first (with the exception of the view of the Hay birthplace -- see below), but the text on the back of the card omits the "SALEM, INDIANA U.S.A." Cards from this set in the collection currently include views of the courthouse, the Hay birthplace, and the Presbyterian Church. The earliest postmark among these is Sept. 19, 1907, and another is Nov. 9, 1911.
The third version of the set is also printed from the same engravings as the others, but the text on both the front and back of the cards is changed. The backs of the cards read simply "Post Card" in a serif face. The only card in the collection with this back is a view of the 
