Among the many letters I have been archiving from my great, great grandparents in Valley City, North Dakota was this unusual gem. A quick postcard from Hilda (which at that time, judging by the hundreds of postcards I have was the early 20th century version of a paper tweet) alerting my great grandmother that she had missed the train out of Fergus Falls, MN and would be arriving a day late to Valley City.
But she chose this post card of the "State Hospital of Insane" (even the odd grammar of this title suggests something is off about the place) on which to write and then send her message. Were there no postcards of flowers? Or Puppies in teacups? (I have plenty of those). I mean, who chooses such a card off the rack? And I wonder how great grandmother Jennie Westergaard felt when she laid eyes on it for the first time. Did she know from the front that only Hilda could have sent it? And then…she saved the card, put it in a leather bound scrapbook made expressly for storing one's postcards. I am now on a hunt through all the cards and letters to see if Hilda shows up again in the mail. She seems like someone I might like to know.
I also learned from Wes Anderson, director of the Barnes County Historical Society in Valley City that Fergus Falls is currently working on a project to restore and re-purpose the old asylum into new apartments. And while I am always glad to see historical buildings given a new life, I can't shake the thought that this sounds like the plot of half a dozen horror movies where happy young couples meet angry, insane ghosts in their kitchens, bedrooms, and hallways.
Midori – I live about 40 miles from Fergus — they are developing a play cycle —
http://placebaseproductions.com/fergus-falls-the-kirkbride-cycle-september-2014/
eerie all around
Oh my gosh! What an amazing moment of synchronicity! And it was amazing to see the photos of the place now! I think I will contact someone there and see if perhaps they might like a copy of this postcard!
How fascinating! I am with you all the way… who on earth would choose such a card! Perhaps it was meant as a joke. Would they have joked about such things back then?
These are the sorts of details that intrigue me too, as I explore my own family tree and learn little details. For me, it adds such a lot of meaning to the kind of history we used to learn in school… to learn that my own family fled the Irish famine, migrated to Yorkshire for work, left Eastern Europe, and so on. Sadly, I don’t have a big collection of postcards to provide me with insights into the personalities of my ancestors. But that still doesn’t stop me from having a mental image of them. (Warts and all!)
Hi Janice — I don’t think it was meant as a joke…at least my great grandmother at the time would never have found it amusing (she could be pretty formidable from what I have gleaned from comments by my mother’s girlfriends who encountered her.) And notice how formally Hilda addresses my great grandmother with her full married title. I almost wonder if Hilda didn’t work for her as a domestic? Or perhaps for the Nebo Church? (She stayed a “Bishops House” which was the Chancery in St. Cloud for the Lutheran synod). There was a lot of travelling between Minnesota and North Dakota among the Lutherans — pastors, their families, students from Valley City who were studying at Lutheran colleges in Minnesota. I think from her handwriting she was younger and maybe not terribly educated? She might have grabbed the postcard because she thought it looked proper — or because it was at Bishops House as a reminder that it served as a site for the Missions of the Church.
I feel so fortunate to have received so many documents, letters and photos. It is like putting together an enormous jig saw puzzle, seeing how the images, the names, the calling cards and letters from friends (some over a 30 year period) come together.