Things My Mother Never Told Me

 A mostly unknown family history unfolded for me when I uncovered the hidden stories within my mother Mother Mary Chesney's collection of vintage postcards.

For years, the I had treasured a small wooden box containing 57 postcards from the early 1900s that Mother gave me. Initially valued primarily for the 4 Santa postcards among the 23 Christmas cards in the collection, the I had mostly examined just the front images.

Everything changed when I decided use genealogy methods to carefully examine the messages, postmarks, and addresses on the backs of these 100+ year old postcards. This closer examination revealed a wealth of family history details previously unknown to me, including:

• Mother's childhood residences in Kansas: Fulton, Natoma, Codell, and Paradise
• The story of cousin Opal Alyce Chesney, who was orphaned at age 2 and raised by her grandparents
• Evidence of Mother's brother Everett's WWI service in the 38th Balloon Company
• The family's experiences with the devastating "Codell Cyclones" - tornadoes that struck the same town on May 20th for three consecutive years (1916-1918)
• Handwritten notes from Mother's grandparents, providing rare personal connections to ancestors

Particularly significant was the discovery that Mother's father had rented farmland in several locations before finally purchasing property near Paradise, Kansas. I also gained insights into why postcards were such a popular form of communication during Mother's childhood (1915 was the peak year with at least 10 cards received).

The journey through these postcards connected me to multiple generations of Chesney family history and helped me understand Mother's early life in ways I’d never known before. By "mining" the messages, signatures, and addresses; and using genealogy research practices I uncovered a detailed family narrative that spans generations.

Now the cards have been digitized and safely preserved in archival sleeves, ready to continue telling this part of my Mother’s family's story for generations to come - a far more valuable treasure than I initially realized when I first received the little wooden box of postcards.

This summary was generated by AI

 This is the script for a virtual presentation I made in 2021 to the Muskogee County Genealogical Society. It has been edited for a few corrections and updating. If you view the script you will be able to see the images that illustrate the script.

Script of PowerPoint Presentation