To: Miss Mildred Freeman From: Mabel 1909
Dec. 7, 09
Why don’t you write me, M. and I want you to come up Xmas just as you did last year and we go home with you. We will meet you at Russel just the same and we will try and not make any mistake. I went skating last eve and had a fine time only wish you were here. I would teach you how to skate. he was there last eve but I didn’t skate with him. his time was occupied. Now answer right back.
With love,
–Mabel
In December of 1909, William Howard Taft was president, Pearl Harbor is founded, and the Manhattan Bridge opened. Women couldn’t vote, neither world war had broken out, and we were still three years away from the Titanic sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic.
While I love the many different postcards that I write about, and while each of them is a gem unto themselves, this particular postcard feels like something special. Partly, because it reads like it came directly out of a period movie. I can almost hear Mabel’s sweet but chastising voice, almost picture her coy and playful smile, can practically hear her nonchalant frustration at his time being too occupied to skate with her.
It is a perfect snippet of girlhood. The longing, the frustration, the all encompassing angst of (unrequited?) love. So rarely does a card capture the essence of a moment so wonderfully.
Yet this is undeniably Mabel. And she is amazing.
I love this card so much that I almost didn’t want to research the people involved. I know that sounds counterproductive, but I enjoyed the picture painted by the correspondence, and worried that research might ruin that image. And, as I’ve stated time and time again, researching women is complicated. They are obscured by their fathers and husbands, and maiden names can be just as difficult to research as married names.
But this gem of a card just kept on giving. One quick search and I immediately found Mildred Freeman, and her story is just as interesting as Mabel’s story on the card. Mildred Freeman was born September 28, 1894 in North Prescott, Massachusetts. At the time of this card, Mildred was 16 years old. However, she was only months away from her wedding to Charles Fiske, a man 7 years her senior. For reference, he was 23 to her 16 when they married. Perhaps that’s why Mildred wasn’t writing Mabel back…she was being courted by Charles. Mildred had one son and died in 1988 at the age of 94.
And what of Mabel? The letter suggests the two girls are related (especially since Mabel suggests they spend Christmas with each other’s families), so I went through each of Mildred’s aunt’s and uncles in the hopes I could find a cousin that matched.
And I did…sort of.
Mabelle Florence Beach was born on June 16, 1889. At the time of the postcard, she was 20 years old. This surprised me a little, since the voice of the card reads a tad younger. However, it still tracks. The tragic thing about Mabelle, or perhaps not so tragic depending on how you view it, is that she never married. Her father died in 1907, and in the census of 1920, Mabelle was working as a stenographer. Mabelle died in 1944 at the age of 55. She was buried with her father and mother, which I find endearing. Though, I’m saddened he never gave her the attention she hoped to receive.
What a lovely, lovely card. The love between these two cousins endures, and I’m so grateful to tell their story 115 years later.
Front of Postcard: “In the Berkshires”
Hipstory 