Why the Date?

My paternal grandmother’s holiday cards from 1946 somehow got saved when other ones did not. The only reason I know this is because most of them are still in their original envelopes.

Except for the card on which my grandma’s sister wrote her a fairly long letter. My digital image of the card includes the name of the sender and the recipient along with what I believe to be the year the card was sent and my reasoning why.

The discussion of the year in the citation is brief and only focuses on information not in the card itself. The other time clues in the card are not mentioned in the citation because they are in the card:

  • The reference my aunt’s birthday suggests the card was written in the month of her birth–December.
  • The reference to my aunt’s girls coming back home for a visit suggests it was written after they moved to Chicago in the early 1940s.
  • The reference to Frank is likely a reference to Frank Micklin, my aunt’s son-in-law. It’s not clear here whether her was yet her son-in-law when this was written.
  • The reference to boys raising bantams suggests this letter was written when my Grandma’s sons would have been old enough to help raise them. Her youngest child was born in 1941.

If you estimate the date of something you’ve made a digital image of, consider including some of that reasoning on the image–particularly any date information not evident in the item itself.

Check out MyHeritage’s current offerings!