A Little Mail Bag from Seattle
The pouch itself deserves a closer look.
This was the kind of inexpensive novelty souvenir that could be purchased, filled with small photographs, addressed, stamped, and sent through the mail. The miniature mailbag turned an ordinary packet of souvenir pictures into something more memorable.
More than eighty years later, the original postage stamps remain on the tag. The leather ties are still attached. Most importantly, the tag still bears my mother’s name.
Miss Mary Hannigan.
Before she was my father’s wife, before she was my mother, she was the young woman waiting in New Hampshire for something in the mail from Martinsburg.
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My Father: At Nineteen
Among my father’s papers was this personality assessment, written when he was nineteen years old. He had likely just finished high school and, like many young adults, was trying to determine what direction his life would take. During this period, he explored a variety of interests through correspondence courses in subjects such as cartooning, commercial […]
Christmas 1941 — St. Vincent’s Home, Saginaw, Michigan
Among my father’s papers are several Christmas cards that help document a period of his life that I know only in pieces. In the weeks before Christmas 1941, he was living at St. Vincent’s Home at 800 Howard Street in Saginaw, Michigan. The envelopes themselves establish this address, while the postmarks and Christmas greetings place […]
National Defense Training School
Among my parents’ papers that have survived the years is this simple letter from the National Defense Training School in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Although modest in appearance, the document provides a valuable glimpse into my father, Roger E. Watson, as a young man before military service and his marriage to my mother. The letter certifies that […]
