Duffield/Sisson Postcards No. 27

Next in the series of postcards from 1908-1914 is No. 27, View of Beach and Pier, Highland Park, Grand Haven, Mich. These postcards were discovered last year in the Sierra Madre, California home of Warren Brown after his death. They were saved by his maternal grandparents, Edith Amy Duffield (1864-1926) and Charles Herman Sisson (1868-1927), and passed down to Warren, my husband’s cousin. Charles and Edith were married in Ottawa, Illinois in 1895 and remained there until the early 1920s when they moved west to Los Angeles, California. 

View of Beach and Pier, Highland Park, Grand Haven, Mich.

Postmarked 27 Jun 1910, Railway Mail Service.

This is an unusual postmark because it wasn't stamped at a traditional post office. The RMS stamp next to the date stamp signifies "Railway Mail Service". The RMS was a separate department of the US Post Office, operating on a passenger train in a designated car. Mail was sorted en route to the destination, receiving a cancellation the same as it would have at a Post Office. "TR. 7", under the date, may have been the train number, or route number, and the lettering around the cancellation probably denoted the route or name of railroad. I looked around to see if I could match up the part of the stamp we can see, but it will take some more research to nail it down.

Addressed to:

Mrs. Chas. Sisson.

Marcy St.

Ottawa,

Ill.

Message:

Dear Friend,

Having a 

swell. did

not get sick

at all. Lovingly

C. M. S.

The initials and handwriting identified the sender of this card as Carrie Stiles. She mailed several other postcards to Edith and it seems they were good friends. Perhaps Carrie was concerned about motion sickness on the train, but thankfully there was none of that. The beaches in Michigan were popular vacation destinations in the summer. It's not known if Carrie was on her way there, or on her way back, but she was having a swell [time]. 

The image below is a modern one of the lighthouse on the end of the pier as found on Wikipedia. It looks much the same as it did in 1910 and is still very busy with beach-going vacationers every summer.

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• CC BY 2.0 File:Grand Haven MI South Pierhead Light and inner lighthouse.jpg, Created: 25 April 2007