Inspired by…old postcards

This winter I’ve been increasingly interested in researching my family tree…I so much enjoy looking at old things, I sometimes shuffle through my old photos and postcards to OCD proportions.

I revisited a couple paintings I had left off in January. It is a pair of 16×20 canvases showing rural scenes. I had done photocopy transfers onto each of them of windmills; one of the old windmills that were used in the 1800s (one still stood on our farm when I was a child). The other has three of the new windmills that dominate the landscape now in Southwestern Ontario. I was stuck on where to go next until I came across this postcard. It has two windmills pictured in it, and while the postcard was printed in Germany, the text on the back relates to the theme of the paintings, because it was written and sent to Great Grandma in our farming village (Morpeth, Ontario).

I find it so interesting how this piano teacher would write a postcard to a student to give her a message – imagine the postal service being that reliable that you could communicate on such short notice with it.

So I made a copy and am collaging it in to both pieces to tie them together.

While I am on the topic of postcards, here is another one from 1879 to my Great Great Great Grandfather’s brother, Isaac Duck. I am not sure what year they came to Canada, but I think that Isaac was on the 1861 census of Canada. I am having trouble finding any information on his brother, Henry, who was my Great, Great, Great Grandfather.