By Michael Bushnell
Northeast News
December 30, 2015

Happy New Year!

Sent on Dec. 31, 1905, to Mrs. E. T. Van Winkle of Hornellsville, N.Y., this unusual New Year’s card bears a black-and-white photograph of angels in flight celebrating the birth of a new year.

The poem on the card reads, “Ring out wild bells, to the wild sky, ring out the old, ring in the new, ring out the false, ring in the true.”

The personal message written at the bottom of the card is signed by Elizabeth M. Barnes and says, “Thanking you for your kind remembrances, we wish you and yours many happy and prosperous years.”

It is said that the publishing of printed postcards between 1901 and 1906 doubled every six months.

By 1907, European card publishers began opening offices in the United States and accounted for more than 75 percent of all postcards sold in the United States.

At the end of this period in time, the hobby of collecting picture postcards became the greatest collectible hobby that the world had ever known. The official figures from the U.S. Post Office for their fiscal year ending June 30, 1908, cite 6.77 million postcards mailed. At that, time the total population of the United States was only 88.7 million.

All of us here at The Northeast News wish you a happy and prosperous New Year.