Searching Partial City & Town Names on Postcards

We just published this tool for doing partial match searches for US City & State Names:

https://www.cardcow.com/city-lookup/


This is especially useful for postcard collectors and postal historians for identifying locations when you might have a few letters from a postmark or maybe the writing is unclear.

This comes up often in the Photo Postcards RPPC Unidentified Images Facebook group.  This week a member posted this unidentified real photo card:

Not a lot to go on, except the sender writes that one of the buildings is the "First National Bank".  That doesn't narrow it down much.

Luckily, they also posted the back of the card:



This gives us a few more clues.  Maybe Wisconsin?  Or related to Mammie Miller?
At first glance, the postmark doesn't look decipherable, with only 3 or 4 letters and no state:



Is it WAPO?  NAFO?  NARO?  Hard to say.
But, the A is most likely in the middle of the word, and there are most likely only 4 or 5 letters on either side of the A.  That can narrow it down significantly.    Using the partial search tool, we can enter a few queries like:

...AFO.. - Returns Hanaford, IL (maybe)
or
...APO.. - Returns Tagapofu, AS (That's a definite "no)
or
....AFO.. - Returns Hannaford, ND & Stanaford, WV (probably not WV)

Based on it looking like a small "frontier town", Hannaford ND seems like a good place to start.
A quick Google Search confirms there was indeed a First National Bank in Hannaford:


https://www.bankforward.com/about/about-our-history
And it does look very similar to the stone building in the postcard.

Another quick search on Google Maps and we're able to locate the building today:
https://goo.gl/maps/eDiCF89EwNo7qmVi7

Another Google Search for Hannford ND Main Street Antique Photo turns up an exact match for our unidentified street scene:











Location: Hannaford, ND 58448, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Rare" 1c George Washington & Benjamin Franklin Stamps on Postcards

Image
We get a lot of folks that tell us they have a collection of postcards with "Rare Stamps".  Usually they're referring to stamps like these:        These are usually common  Washington–Franklin Issues , issued from 1908–1922,  Benjamin Franklin 1902 series issued from 1902-1917 and US Regular Issues issued from 1922-1931. Most of these stamps were printed in quantities that reach into the billions, so they are definitely not rare by any account.  Just because something is 100+ years old, doesn't make it valuable.  Scarcity and collector demand make things valuable.   "But I just Googled these stamps and they're selling for $50,000!" you say? Perhaps you see something like this: First, it's doubtful that any of those stamps have actually sold for that much.  You need to look at SOLD prices [ebay.com] , and even then many of those sales for common stamps may not actually be real.  There may be a few of these there that sell for more than $1, but for
Read more

Along the Malibu: The Color Serigraphs and Art of Paul Dubosclard

Image
  Just received a copy of this book.  If you're a collector of California postcards, or you've looked through southern California cards at a show you've most likely seen some of these serigraph cards . I had always thought the artist was Margaret Sheehan, since most of the cards are identified as "Published by M. A. Sheehan, Topanga California" on the back. But these distinctive cards are actually attributed to Paul Dubosclard. Although many are unsigned, a handful have a P. Dubosclard name or stamp on the front:     Many cards also have hand-written titles in pencil, presumably by Dubosclard. The bulk of the book is a catalog of all known works by Dubosclard, highlighting details about many individual cards and the series (US Presidents, State Flags, and Zodiac).  So this serves as a "checklist" for collectors, but also shows a beautifully artistic compilation of different variations of the same serigraphs, as well as showing other similar postcard view
Read more