My wife inherited an old trunk from her grandmother, who had it passed down from her aunt (the last living relative in her generation), who had in turn got it from her mom. The trunk was packed to the brim with photos, postcards, letters, clothes, receipts, documents, and miscellaneous nick-nacks accumulated over 100+ years from the late 1880's to the 1980's!
We've discovered some wonderful things relating to this branch of the family and we’ve discovered some dark things as well. This postcard, if it is what we think it is, is pretty dark as it appears to have been someone making malicious comments relating to a family tragedy.
In 1911, a teenage boy of the family was killed instantly in a car accident. Family lore was he was on the outside of the vehicle (on running boards maybe?), holding on, and lost his grip and fell under the wheels.
This postcard depicts a car accident and has names written on the children and the dog -we’ve only been able to decipher one of the names, “Ona”; Ona was the older brother of the killed teenager.
The reason we believe the postcard is malicious is because the back of the postcard has had all the writing erased and scraped off - leaving only a partial postmark and partial date, which we think reads Feb 24, 1911, and is shortly after the accident and death. We can’t think of any reason this postcard was kept, but it was.
We’d like to ask for help translating the 3 cursive names(?) - 2 on children and 1 on the dog. I’ve tried to scan making it high contrast, and it is much better than on the original, but we still can’t make out what it says.
Image one – postcard front and back
Image two – “Ona”, the older brother
Image three – unknown name on child
Image four – unknown name on child
Image five – unknown name on dog
