I thought we’d take a little closer look at two more of the postcards from my collection. I call them the “Leoline Postcards” since one is from a woman named Leoline, and one is mailed to a woman named Leoline. And yes, they turned out to be the same woman.
The first is this card, mailed January 4, 1910. There are two interesting things about this one. First, there is no text on the front of the card to indicate where this place is. The sender helpfully wrote a short note on the back: “This is the M.E. Parsonage. Newberry.”
The Newberry is written in print letters, not in cursive like the rest, which may suggest it was written after the fact. The pen seems to be the same, though.
But we don’t have to take the writer’s word for it. Although it is gone now, I’m sure I walked past this house every day when going to school. Here are two Google Earth 2008 Street View images of the house. Note the criss-cross glass on the front, upper-story windows, and the uneven upper windows on the side. The chimney is the same. So are the gable placements.
The second interesting thing is the back of the card, which is specifically labelled as “Canadian Post Card.” This is odd because the card was not mailed in Canada, nor mailed to Canada, nor was it made in Canada, nor was it of a Canadian subject.
On to the message.
The back of the card shows it was mailed January 14, 1910, from the Newberry Post Office. It is addressed to Miss Leoline Sprague, Dafter Mich. The message reads: “Dear Cousin. I couldent match the goods in town. I will write soon. Yours truly. R. Hayes”
So we are looking for Miss Leoline Sprague of Dafter, Michigan. It’s a fairly unusual name, so this shouldn’t too hard to find out a little something about her life.
And indeed, it wasn’t. Genealogical websites (I used familysearch.org) give us a birth record for Leoline Luetta Sprague, born July 16 1879, in Stephen Township, Huron, Ontario to Theodore and Prudence Bains Sprague.
Then, the U.S. 1880 Census shows us Theo, Prudence, Caroline, and Leoline Sprague living in Chippewa County. They were farming in the vicinity of Sault Ste. Marie.
Leoline grew up to be a teacher in the Pickford schools, and later furthered her education at Eastern Michigan University. Perhaps she was teaching in Dafter in 1910.
In 1923, Leoline Sprague, now a teacher in the Detroit Public Schools, married a widowed farmer, William McDonald. She died in 1925 of a stroke.
So who was this cousin to whom she was writing? I originally thought the signature read “R. Hayes,” but nothing was turning up, so I did a search for “R. Ha____” and found Ralph Willard Harper, son of James F. Harper and his wife, Laura Sprague Harper. And sure enough, Laura Sprague Harper was the little sister of Theo Sprague. Ralph and Leoline were first cousins.
James and Laura and their children lived in Pentland Township, Luce County, and worked for the State Hospital. In 1910 Ralph was 15 years old, writing to his 31 year old cousin Leoline, a teacher working Dafter. Presumably he was doing her a favor, trying to “match goods” for her.
Ralph graduated from Newberry High School in 1914, when he was 20. He later served in World War I, then graduated from Albion College in 1922. He became a school teacher and superintendent in the Kalamazoo area.
I have another postcard in my collection, purchased from a different vendor at a different time, written by Leoline herself!
The subject of this card is the “asylum for insane, Newberry, Mich.” which may seem an odd choice to us today. But people of 1908 were quite proud of their beautiful hospital and considered it point of interest. What’s more, Leoline may have had a special reason to want to show people how nice it looks. Read on.
This card was postmarked January 2, 1908 in Newberry (two years before the previous one). It was addressed to: Mrs. Robert Foregrave, Stalwart Mich.
The message reads: “Hello! Hope you are having as good a time as I. We drove out to see Ella yesterday. They are keeping house again. I am bringing Rob’s watch home as Sed. Hasn’t his tools with him. Leoline”
(I’m not sure of “sed” is the right or word, or what it means if it is).
So “Rob” is presumably Mrs. Robert’s husband. And they live in Stalwart, southeast of where Leoline’s family lived. I kept going with the genealogical databases and discovered that Mrs. Robert Foregrave was the former Edith Sprague, Leoline’s younger sister, 25 years old in 1908.
Furthermore, Leoline had a younger sister, Ella, born in 1885. In 1906, Ella, working as a nurse in the State Hospital (the subject of Leoline’s postcard) married Edward Langley Allen (one of the Portage Township Allens). In 1907, she had a son, Harley.
The phrase “keeping house,” as in “they are keeping house again” referred to a married couple living together and running a household. It may mean that Ella had recently recovered from a bout of bad health, perhaps relating to the birth of her son.
Interestingly, according to the 1910 census), after the birth and death of her second child, Ella is listed as being an inmate of the State Hospital, the same place where she had once worked. Edward lived nearby, and was working in the woods.
In 1920 and 1930 Ed and Ella were back together “keeping house” in Portage Township, with Ed continuing to work in the woods. They had five children altogether, three of whom died as infants.
Then in 1933 Ella died after a stay of seven months at the State Hospital. The cause of death was epilepsy.
Epilepsy was a disease that was little understood. There was a great deal of stigma surrounding it and treatment was often provided by the same institutions that treated mental illness. Perhaps that was the cause of her stay in 1910 as well.