Finding The Rest Of The Story.

Part of what got me into Postcard collecting was the occasional hobby of finding an old, used postcard and hunting for the rest of the story. For example, here's a WWI postcard:




In case you don't want to try to read it, it says:




After a bit of research, I found records for all four people (Helen, Helen's unnamed sister, Oliver, and Warren). Oliver and Warren both made it back from the war.

Oliver Stoddard became a factory worker and married a woman named Mildred White in 1933. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1948 at the age of 54.

Warren Robbins married a woman named Marian Donery (or Dornery) in June of 1918 (must have been before he shipped out). This confused me, because Helen's sister was also named Marian (or Marion). His wife passed away in 1924 at the age of 29. He married again in 1925 to a woman named Alice Daniels. Warren passed very young in 1935, only a couple of weeks after their 10th anniversary.

Helen Stoddard worked as a secretary at a hospital and lived with her sister Marion until at least 1950. I couldn't find much information beyond that.

All four of them lived in or around Waterbury for their entire lives, as far as I can tell.

Does anyone else research the senders/recipients of their postcards? Or am I strange?

Nothing strange about that

I research the addressee of my pre 1880 New South Wales covers, as State education wasn't compulsory so the literacy rates were lower. Our 19th century newspapers are freely available online, and coupled with a good handle on genealogy, it's amazing what you can uncover. You couldn't sneeze in the 19th century here without it making the papers.

Finding the story is as much fun as acquiring the material!

I am a postal stationery collector, and I do this searching too for some cards and envelopes.

Before the WWW / Internet became public, circa late 1990s, this was difficult to do. You had to travel and spend a lot of time in libraries shuffling paper books. It was slow going.

We live in a golden age.

Smithereens,

I uploaded the below postcard last year on a topic I cannot find. In any event, it was interesting find. It had an obscure signature of G Lufbery on the bottom. From reading the text on the postcard, it made total sense of who wrote it.
Apparently, Gervais Raoul Victor Lufbery (March 14, 1885 – May 19, 1918) was a French and American fighter pilot and flying ace in World War I. Because he served in both the French Air Force, and later the United States Army Air Service in World War I, he is sometimes listed alternately as a French ace or as an American ace. Officially, all but one of his 17 combat victories came while flying in French units. He was first assigned from the recruit depot of Fort McDowell, Angel Island to Company F, 20th Infantry Regiment, at the newly established Fort Shafter, Territory of Hawaii on 13 December 1908.
NOTE POSTCARD INSCRIBED DATE OF 21 December 1908.
Should you do a Google search simply on Gervais Lufbery, you will find many websites and images of this war hero.
You can learn so much from postal history.

Great post smithereens!
You did a lot of research and it is very interesting to hear "The Rest of the Story"

What you are doing is the true essence of postal history beyond the postal service. Keep it up and enjoy the journeys your paper treasures take you on.

hawaiianbrian, would you be interested to moving that Lufbery postcard?

Please note that you can't buy or sell here until you have fifty posts.

brodney 16,
Sorry, the G Lufbery postcard is part of my Hawaii collection.
Thanks for viewing it though.

Regarding this topic of "Finding The Rest Of The Story", I posted 4 separate covers of sailors,postmarked on board the USS Arizona. These 4 heroes perished on Dec 7, 1941. You can find my posting of these covers I posted on Dec 7, 2023, under: US Stamps and Covers Discussions Forum: In Memoriam - December 7, 1941.