“805” has an antique leather postcard, featuring a 1 cent stamp, postmarked by offices in Palo Alto and Dixon, Ill. The address simply reads “Ms. Sisquella Crosby, Dixon, Ill.” If the town was small enough, no street address was necessary in those days.
The postcard, bearing an embossed image of the Stanford Memorial Church, arrived in Dixon on Nov. 25, 1907. Coincidentally, Ronald Reagan lived in Dixon from the time he was 9 to 22; visitors can tour the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home. Today, the city boasts 15,000 residents (2,500 are prisoners in the Dixon Correctional Center); historical notoriety occurred in this small town.
Abe Lincoln joined the Illinois Militia at Fort Dixon in 1832 during the Black Hawk War. In 1873, a group of 45 people went straight to heaven as the bridge over the Rock River collapsed. Heaven? Yes — they were on the bridge to witness a baptism ceremony. In 1880, a farmhand murdered a traveling salesman, whose body was found near a stream at the bottom of a gulch near what is today called Bloody Gulch Road. Quarter horse breeder and Dixon Municipal Comptroller Rita Crundwell embezzled more than $53 million from 1990-2012, the largest theft in U.S. municipal history.
So … the addressee, Sisquella Crosby, would have remembered (or perhaps anticipated) the glories of her town of Dixon, Ill., as she received this postcard from Stanford, unsigned.
Postcards at that time were only a 60-year-old tradition, invented in England in 1840. Picture postcards were not invented until 1870 to honor the Franco-Prussian War; these depicting French battlegrounds were the first souvenir “image” postcards. Illustration was a French specialty; 19th century French postcards featured nude ladies.
This postcard owned by “805” is an example of pokerwork or pyrography. The souvenir image was burned or hot-stamped on leather or wood, a handcraft that was popular among ladies from 1904-15. A cottage industry, women made these images using a heat press, then over-painted with color ink. It was a brief but exciting period in postal history — exciting because the images were burnt not just on leather but also small planks of wood and sent through the mail! Pyrography was adopted by noted artists of the Arts and Crafts period.
All this rich history does not indicate a great value — the card is worth $12. “805” asked me to look into the value of the postcard, but often the value is not in the card type, writer or picture but in the stamp. The 1907 1 cent Franklin stamp could be worth more than $600. “805” should consult philatelists at the Santa Barbara Stamp Club, founded in 1947, which meets once a month at Maravilla Senior Living.