One of my favorite pieces of WWI ephemera to research is the pre-printed postcard that was handed out to soldiers intended to be sent to loved ones from the decks/bunks of the multitude of transport ships that brought doughboys back from Europe in the years following the war. In tonight’s case, I purchased this card on eBay without any prior research. The date of 9/11 caught me as particularly interesting given the 2001 connotation, so I made a quick bid and won the postcard. My research process can be followed below:

Step 1: Purchase the card

Only $9.89+0.99 shipping!

Step 2: Receive the card in the mail

Front side of the postcard

Back side of the postcard

Step 3: What the heck is going on?

The first actual step in the interpretation and research of a WWI postcard is to figure out when it was made, when it was sent and who sent it. This one should be pretty easy.

Copyright date of 1919

Most WWI postcards don’t usually come with a Copyright date and/or an artist’s signature. This one comes with both. I don’t have time to delve into the identity of the artist, but I can say that the card was copyrighted in 1919.

So, the written portion is from September 11th, 1919 at the very earliest.

September 11th

Step 4: Who the heck sent this thing?

Whenever I attempt to identify a soldier-sent postcard, I always try to research the recipient first. Normally, we have the name of well established member of a community as well as a normal mailing address and town name intended as the recipient. Assuming most postcards are sent to a mother or father, it doesn’t take much effort to track down the 1910 census record for that family using Ancestry.com. This is exactly what I did in this case. The first Maroney to appear in the Eyota, MN 1910 census was a Patrick C. Maroney… Bingo.

1910 Census record

From here I researched the children of Patrick and Emma Maroney (the card says “Dear Ma”) and found that they had a son named Charles E. Maroney who was born on September 22nd, 1895 and passed away on September 5th, 1934.

Charles’ September 11th, 1919 return to the USA

Charles singed in aboard the U.S.S. Montpelier after his time in France on August 28th, 1919 and landed back in the US on September 11th. It was at this time that he was most likely given the above card to fill out and ship to his parents back in Minnesota. His wartime record puts him with an engineering unit that was focused on railway work during the war and this tombstone identifies him as a Private with the 69th Engineers . This doesn’t exactly jive with his US Headstone Application or the US Army Transport records seen above. According to records, his grave should’ve listed him as being with the 144th Transportation Corps. Please note that his mother was also the recipient of his body after he passed away in 1934. 😦

US Headstone Application

Charles E. Maroney’s resting place