A 1913 Dutch Kids Postcard from Mansfield, MA

Every once in a while, a single postcard really does feel like a tiny time machine. This 1913 Dutch Kids card, mailed from Mansfield, Massachusetts, is one of those pieces. The front is all early 1900s charm, the back is just a few quick lines between friends, and together they give you a small, clear look at how people shared affection, jokes, and everyday life more than a century ago.

A Glimpse of 1913 Through a Dutch Kids Postcard

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Picture 1913, when a lot of what we’d text or DM now was sent on small illustrated cards like this one. This card is part of the Dutch Kids series, so we know right away it belongs to that early 20th-century postcard world, but it still has its own personality.

The Dutch Kids theme leans into affection and playfulness, with two children in “traditional Dutch” outfits standing in for the sender and recipient. Even though this is just one Massachusetts postcard, it becomes a little window into how people used stock characters and simple scenes to send warmth and humor across distance in 1913. If that kind of everyday correspondence interests you, it fits right in with a lot of similar pieces in the broader vintage postcards world.

Dutch Kids Imagery and Sentimental Art

The main thing going on here is the artwork. The video description notes the card “showcases two children in traditional Dutch attire, reflecting early 20th-century sentimentality,” and that really does sum it up.

Two kids, wooden shoes, caps, and all, carry the whole emotional load of the card. It’s a light, friendly scene that turns a quick message into a small piece of sentimental art. This kind of illustration was everywhere in early 1900s postcards and other vintage print media, where simple drawings and short messages worked together on a small piece of card.

Manda to Bertha: Friendship in a Few Lines

Flip the card over and it gets personal. The handwritten note from Manda to Bertha is short, but it does exactly what it needs to do. It’s a little snapshot of friendship, the kind of thing that turns a generic printed scene into a real moment between two people.

We don’t need a long letter to feel it. Just seeing “Manda to Bertha” is enough to anchor the card in a specific relationship, carried across distance in 1913 with a few lines of ink.

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Postcards as Bridges Across Time and Distance

A card like this is doing two jobs. In 1913, it was just an everyday piece of mail, part of normal correspondence, moving a quick handwritten message from one town to another. Over time, it also became a record of that small act of reaching out.

More than a bit of postcard history, it’s proof that two people were thinking of each other on a particular day in 1913, and that moment has quietly survived long after they’re gone. Now it sits with other pieces of vintage and antique ephemera, alongside things like the Stereoview Vault’s stereoview cards and related paper items.

From the Stereoview Vault

This postcard comes from the Stereoview Vault at stereovview.com. You can see the original entry, and where it fits in the larger vintage postcard collection and postcard archive, here: https://stereoviewvault.com/items/postcard-lgpcinklworw9px-mlgpcink. It lives there with other early 20th-century pieces, along with the broader mix of vintage and antique ephemera that also shows up in the Stereoview Vault’s eBay store.

This little Dutch Kids postcard doesn’t shout for attention, but it’s carried a friendship, a place, and a moment in 1913 all the way to us. It’s one small piece of a much bigger visual story in the Stereoview Vault, and it still does what it was meant to do: connect one person to another. If you liked this one, there are plenty more quiet treasures in the collection.