Schenectady, N.Y. (Jan. 22, 1999) – At the start of this century, before even the telephone, people sent postcards like we send e-mail today. “I'll see you on Saturday,” was a typical message.
Many of those messages were scrawled on postcards that featured buildings and scenes of the Union campus.
Lance Spallholz, instructor of computer science, has been finding these little pieces of Union history tucked away in antique stores as far away as Crisfield, Md.
Now, he's sharing his hobby over the Internet. His homepage — http://tardis.union.edu/~spallhol/postcards — features the decade-old collection of Union postcards.
His site gives a glimpse of the postcards he has found: South College, the Nott Memorial (then called Memorial Hall), the old Washburn Hall. The cards date from about 1906 to 1920. Many were printed or hand-colored in Germany
A postcard of the Nott Memorial carries the message, “Here is one of the great buildings where many great men have received their learning.”
On a 1908 postcard of South College the sender wrote, “X marks Harry's room where we are having a fun time, but most too strenuous for me.”
Some of the messages are poignant, like this one on the back of a postcard of South College: “If your father had a good memory, he could tell you what a good time he had here.”
On another: “Hard luck, Milton. Rain, nothing but rain up here – with love, Mother.”