"Sorry, I have not written to you for ages"

Of course, you know that postcards are an object of collecting. Postcard collectors (deltiologists) pay attention mainly to the front side of postcards, which usually have a printed picture. These pictures sometimes give valuable information to historians, but collectors have their own ways of valuing them. For example, a postcard seller in a market in Riga charged  much more for postcards showing railway station buildings, because he knew they were very valuable for some collectors.

The backside of postcards is important for the collectors (philatelists) if it shows a non-standard postage stamp, an interesting cancel or postal service mark, or an unusual postal rate. Almost no one cares what the sender wrote on a postcard before mailing it.

I found the inscriptions on the old postcards can be useful for family history research. First of all, there is a clearly written name and address of the receiver on the backside. Even this information can be important when one wants to ensure that a person existed.  It seems, however, that the senders are more interesting than the recipients, because the senders wrote text that could have reveal (or hide) some information on their family.

For this reason I began to buy old postcards with inscriptions. There is rather good choice of them in Riga stores. I can not buy all of them and usually choose cheaper ones, which means I have rather few viewcards, and very few viewcards in color. Postcards printed  in color were available for a long time before color photography became common. The most popular postcards sent congratulations with drawings of flowers or printed verses. Viewcards and postcards with portraits of certain people (writers, artists etc.) became popular long ago.

But enough about the front sides of postcards. What did the people write on the backs of  postcards? It seems that the sender's main purpose was to remember himself/herself to his/her  family members, friends or acquaintances. Large number of postcards begin with the phrases - "Sorry, I have not written to you for ages" or "Why did you not write to me for ages?"

People congratulated each other on birthdays and namedays, on confirmations and weddings,  New Years, Christmases and Easters. Unfortunately these kinds of postcards not always have  genealogical information, frequently they are signed only by initials or even semi-anonymously, as in "from somebody in the world". Although the addressee may have understood quite easily who the writer was, for us this is an unsolvable mystery. I bought some of this kind of postcards only if written before the WW1, just for the names of the addressees. By the way, I did not notice price difference between those from before the WW1 and those from before the WW2.

There are many postcards from people who left their homes for various reasons and informed their relatives or friends of the life in foreign areas. In some cases these postcards contain information important not only for family history but also for understanding of the migration routes or historical events. I think the cards sent by soldiers of the Russia Army on WW1 or by German émigrés of 1939 belong to this category. Of course, there is no hope of discovering postcards that reveal any secrets of history; but reading several hundreds of them does result in a better understanding of the people.

It is frequently possible to buy several postcards addressed to one person, which I  prefer, because in this case I hope to recover some dynamics of a life. For instance, the postcards received by Elisabeth Wielander, Katrīna Dikmanis or Krišjānis Kalniņš cover rather long period and tell much about their lives.

Description of the postcards

I am hoping to prepare a database of these postcards to make searching possible and to include the names found on them in a kind of genealogical datawarehouse. Since it is unclear when I shall be able to complete the job, I am describing my collection of postcards now in text files. I think this will start discussion about the need for this activity, about the possibilities of expending the postcard stock; maybe other people will join the project from their sides and sites.

I have about 3000 postcards that were sent to about 2500 persons. Main part of the texts were written in Latvian, of course. Quite a few texts are in German and Russian and some are in Polish and other languages. I estimate that about 250 000 people may find a known person in these lists, assuming that an average person knows about 100 others.

The postcards in the lists are ordered by the name of the addressee, because this name is always present if the postcard was sent by mail. In cases when it was handed to someone, instead of mailed, the name of the addressee may be missing. The cards are numbered, and a second number is used when a group of postcards sent to the same person or family is described. If the number of postcards in the group is greater than 3, the group is described separately under the family name.

The following is the description of a draft structure of the future postcard database:

1. Name. Surname and the first name or initials of the addressee. Some problems arise  when the postcard is sent to someone for transferring to a third person, which is not uncommon. In this case the third person is regarded as the addressee.

2. Mstatus. Marital status of the addressee. Prior to the WW1 the Latvian etiquette required different address forms to married and unmarried people. In the more or less official language,  analogues for Miss and Mrs (Madam) were used, and there was a form to address an unmarried man. For women the rules were followed more strictly than for men. In the German and Russian languages this distinction exists only for women.. The address form Mlle (short for Mademoiselle in French language) is frequently seen in addresses written in Russian to an unmarried women.

3. Sstatus. Social status of the addressee. The etiquette of the Russian Empire required separate forms of address for people of higher social status - these depended on the position of the addressee in the Rank Table. However, in my collection there are only few cards addressed to army generals and nobility, so I have not provided a survey of this system, but explain it in the appropriate cases.

4. Dates. Date of receiving (R) and/or sending (S). It is not always easy to decipher the dates of sending/receiving. In many cases the postage stamps were torn off by collectors so some interesting postcards can not be dated. On the other side sometimes the senders wrote in the dates.

5. Address. Address the postcard was send to. Usually it is rather easy to read the address written on the postcard. In some cases the address contains the name of the person who should transfer the postcard to the addressee. It is because the house owners in Russia had a duty to transfer letters to their tenants. When describing an address, I omit the apartment number for privacy reasons.

6. Sender. Name or initial(s) of the sender. It is almost always very difficult to decipher the signature of the sender. In some cases I scanned the obscure signatures. I hope you will be more successful to read them.

7. Place. Place the postcard was send from. No difficulties to find it, if the canceling stamp print was clear and undamaged. Unfortunately this is not always the case. And to say the truth, for the money I was ready to pay I could not afford the card with nice stamps with clear printings.

8. Language. Language of the text. According to the postal rules, the language of the address is that of the country the postcard was sent to. But the language used in the text was up to the author.

9. Text. Short description of the text and the names mentioned in it. In many cases I copied the text, especially if it was interesting or was difficult to translate in order that anyone  could check my translation. I always copied  the German texts written in Gothic, because I needed to write the separate words down during the process of deciphering - so, in the end, I had entered all the text. I did not feel a great need to translate the text in all cases. Frequently I just explain what it was about and mention the details that I found significant, always recording the names of other relatives, friends or common acquaintances found in the text.

10. Picture. Picture on the front side of the postcard. I briefly describe the picture just for the sake of completeness. It has little importance for the family history, I guess. However, it should not be neglected.

11. Comments. Additional notes and explanations of the postcard, the names and the text based on my understanding and information I could gather.

In the descriptions I used several acronyms and symbols:
LU - Latvijas Universitate (University of Latvia)
TD - telephone directory.
TPO - travelling post office
? - for a character I could not decipher.
* - for unknown number of characters I could not decipher

To save the space on text files, I united some fields of the description fields, for example, writing both the Name and Address on the same line, omitting no information. If not mentioned, the language of the text is Latvian. The names of the people are in boldface.

Disclaimer. In some cases I try to characterize the author of the postcard text. For example, I estimate his/her level  of education.  Please do not think, I want to demonstrate superiority or to criticise. I just thought that in these cases this information could give some hints for a family history.