Beef. It's in your mailbox.

This is one of four leather postcards that I picked up on a vacation to New England.  Like the others, this one is addressed to Miss Grace Hoare of Lowell, Massachusetts.  Of the four, this one is the most rigid, especially around the edges — though by comparison with postcards made from the card stock of today, it is not rigid at all.  It was probably manufactured and mailed in 1907.

Made by Hy-Sil. Mfg. Co. Boston

This card is the only one of the four that bears a mark from the manufacturer; it was made by the Hy-Sil Manufacturing Company of Boston, which was founded in 1903 by Eli Hyman and Morris Silverman and is still in business today.

Cows. Is there anything they can't do?

This postcard is made of actual leather, which was apparently something of a novelty back in the day.  It’s still possible to find early postcards made out of things like wood and aluminum.

Pictured is the conference building in the Portsmouth Navy Yard where the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed on September 5, 1905, bringing an end to the Russo-Japanese War.

Mailed from Portsmouth, NH, July 20, 1907

This is one of four leather postcards that I own that were addressed to Miss Grace Hoare of Lowell, Massachusetts, and which I picked up during a vacation in New England.  It is postmarked July 20, 1907, but was apparently manufactured prior to March of 1907, when postcards with divided backs became legal in the United States.

This engineer is having a nicotine fit.

“The Engineer is often praised / By passengers and crew. / He always makes his record runs, / When he needs “Happy Thought” to chew.”

Clearly someone needs to stage an intervention. He doesn’t just want some chewing tobacco, he needs it, and is willing to risk the lives of his passengers in order to get it more quickly.

Someone called “FCT” gave this to Great-Grandpa Phil, probably not later than around 1905. She writes, “Hello honey suckle.” I don’t know who FCT is, but she is not my great-grandmother.

Phil, you sly dog.

This is the gate to...?

I wish I were able to discern some text on the pillars or sign shown in this RPPC. I tried scanning this card at resolutions of 2400 dots per inch and up but, unfortunately, the resolution of the photograph itself isn’t nearly that high. Where does this gate lead? A park? A private estate? A cemetery, perhaps?

The stampbox on this card indicates that it was manufactured between 1905 and 1908; the fact that the card has an undivided back (meaning that the back is for the address only, and that any message was to have been written on the front) further implies that it was made before March of 1907, when divided-back cards became legal.