Inside a 1913 New Year Postcard from Wessington, SD

Every so often, one postcard feels like it’s holding a whole little world, and this 1913 New Year card from Wessington, South Dakota is one of those. It’s small and specific, postmarked, addressed, and sent with a quick holiday wish, but it also gives us a quiet look at how people stepped into a new year more than a century ago.

In this post, I’ll walk through what we can actually see on the card: the postmark, the handwriting, the printed greeting, and the design. Then I’ll pull back a bit and talk about what it hints at about early 1900s life. It’s just one card, but like a lot of old paper, it connects us to an ordinary moment that somehow survived.

Key Takeaways

The 1913 New Year postcard from Wessington, SD serves as a historical marker, capturing a specific moment in time with its date and personal message.
Addressed to a real person, Mr. W. Solder, the postcard connects the printed imagery and greeting to an actual life in a small town, enhancing its significance.
The handwritten note from Willie and Martha adds a personal touch, transforming the card into a window into early 20th-century relationships and traditions.

What Makes This 1913 New Year Postcard from Wessington, SD Special?

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What really fixes this postcard in its moment is the mix of date, place, and people.

The date, 1913, pins it to a very specific point in time. It’s not just “early 1900s” in a vague way. It’s right there on the edge of a new year in 1913, and the card becomes a little marker we can point to when we think about what a New Year’s greeting looked like then.

It’s addressed to Mr. W. Solder in Wessington, South Dakota, which gives us a clear sense of place. We’re not looking at a random New Year postcard. We’re looking at one that actually moved through the mail to a real person in a small South Dakota town. That address ties the printed image and the short message to a specific life, the same way other early 1900s cards from this region do, whether they’re floral greetings, holiday cards, or other vintage postcards that quietly made their way through the postal system.

On the back, the handwritten note from Willie and Martha is simple but personal. We know who sent it, who received it, and why they were writing. Put together, the date, the town name, and those signatures turn this New Year card into a small window onto one early 20th century New Year, framed by one relationship and one moment.

Design Details of the 1913 Embossed New Year Postcard by United Art Publishing Co.

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Visually, this card is doing more than just saying “Happy New Year.”

Published by United Art Publishing Co., it has an embossed design with cherub figures announcing the arrival of the new year. The embossing gives the surface a raised feel, so the artwork isn’t only something you look at, it’s something you can run your fingers over.

The cherubs carry most of the theme. They’re there to make the message obvious: this is about looking ahead, feeling hopeful, and treating the new year as a fresh start. The imagery lines up tightly with that idea, so the whole card reads like a picture of what a “good” New Year was supposed to feel like at the time, festive, forward-looking, and bright.

This piece shows how a publisher like United Art Publishing Co. Used specific choices, embossing, cherubs, and familiar New Year symbols, to pack that sense of celebration and new beginnings into one small postcard. Seen as a United Art Publishing Co. Postcard, or more generally as a cherub New Year card or vintage holiday postcard design, all those elements are working together toward the same message of hope and renewal. Pieces like this sit well next to other early 1900s vintage print media, where artwork, texture, and sentiment all had to share a tiny amount of space.

On the practical side, this card is a snapshot of how people kept in touch.

It was sent from S.D. With a green George Washington stamp, in the middle of the era when postcards and short handwritten notes were a main way to reach someone. A quick New Year greeting moved through the mail instead of through a screen, and it fit in with other early 1900s ephemera and vintage photographs that show the same habit: brief, tangible records of everyday connection.

The New Year greeting from Willie and Martha is short, but the tone is warm and direct, and that still comes through more than a hundred years later. As an object, it quietly holds all of that: everyday early 20th century communication, a green George Washington stamp postcard, and one small human moment. It’s the kind of thing you might find in a box of old cards or in a shop or online, mixed in with stereoviews, other postcards, or similar paper pieces you’d see in a place like Stereoview Vault on eBay, and realize it’s still doing its original job: carrying a greeting from one person to another.

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When you slow down and really look at this 1913 New Year postcard from Wessington, it turns from “just a pretty embossed design” into a compact record of how people used paper, ink, and a quick holiday note to stay close. The green George Washington stamp, the postmark, the brief handwritten message, and the hopeful imagery all work together to preserve one small exchange between two people stepping into a new year. It’s a tiny object, but it’s held onto a surprising amount of warmth for something that’s been around for more than a century.