Thanksgiving Greetings from 1911 Horicon, Wisconsin

There’s something quietly wonderful about holding a Thanksgiving greeting that’s been around far longer than any of us. This 1911 postcard from Horicon, Wisconsin doesn’t just say “Thanksgiving” on the front; it carries a little slice of rural life, a familiar publisher’s imprint, and a moment someone thought was worth sending across the miles. In this post, we’ll walk through the scene on the card, the embossed details you can almost feel just by looking, and the brief, honest message that traveled from Horicon to Wessington. It’s a small object, but it opens up a surprisingly rich view of what Thanksgiving looked and felt like more than a century ago.

A Thanksgiving Glimpse into 1911 Horicon, Wisconsin

Pinterest infographic: Thanksgiving Greetings from 1911 Horicon, Wisconsin Postcard - tips and insights about A 1911 Thanksgiving postcard from Horicon, Wisconsin

This Raphael Tuck & Sons postcard from 1911 captures a calm, rural Thanksgiving scene. The date matters, because it pins the image to a specific moment when a simple printed card carried a whole seasonal mood across miles.

Raphael Tuck & Sons was a well-known postcard publisher, so that name on the back immediately tells you something about how the card was produced and circulated. Seen as a Horicon, Wisconsin postcard, it reads like a quiet snapshot of place and season at the same time, a vintage Thanksgiving greeting that leans on a peaceful country setting instead of big text or heavy symbolism.

When I call this a 1911 Thanksgiving postcard, I’m really tying together three things: the year, the Tuck & Sons imprint, and that understated rural scene that stands in for Thanksgiving in early 20th century postcard form. If you enjoy this kind of early printed ephemera, it fits right in with the Vintage Postcards you’ll find in collections like Vintage Postcards.

Embossed Details and the Feel of History

The card is embossed, so the texture is the first thing that grabs you. You can imagine running a finger along the raised areas and noticing the details in a different way than you would with a flat print. That physical depth makes it feel like more than just an image on paper, more like a small, tactile piece of history.

A Heartfelt Note from Horicon to Wessington

On the back, a short note from Horicon, Wisconsin, hints at friendship and some personal challenges, even if we don’t have every word in front of us. You can still sense that mix of care and struggle in the ink that made its way across the miles on this simple Thanksgiving postcard.

It was addressed to Miss Bertha Cougabower in Wessington, South Dakota, which gives the card a clear path: Thanksgiving thoughts leaving Horicon and landing in a small South Dakota town. Seen today as a Wessington, South Dakota postcard, it becomes part of a larger thread in Thanksgiving greetings history, with Bertha’s name tying it to a real person and a real moment. It fits right alongside other early 1900s cards and photographs you might spot in broader vintage collections, like the mix of images in Vintage Photographs.

🎬 Check out Original Content

Pinterest infographic: Thanksgiving Greetings from 1911 Horicon, Wisconsin Postcard - tips and insights about A 1911 Thanksgiving postcard from Horicon, Wisconsin

Thumbnail: Thanksgiving Greetings from 1911 Horicon, Wisconsin - A 1911 Thanksgiving postcard from Horicon, Wisconsin

▶ View Original

Click above to experience the full content!

Thanksgiving Traditions in a Bygone Era

Through this postcard, we get a small but telling look at Thanksgiving traditions in the early 1900s and how people marked the holiday with the mail. It’s just one vintage holiday postcard, but the scene and the message still feel familiar: a quiet holiday, a note to someone far away, and a wish that they’re doing well.

From Postcard Album to Digital Archive

This little card has traveled more than once. After its original trip from Horicon to Wessington, it eventually ended up in a postcard album, and now it’s part of an online postcard archive. You’re seeing it here as part of a digital postcard collection, pulled “from the stereovview.com.” In the description it’s anchored to stereoviewvault.com, which is where this physical bit of ephemera now lives in its current digital home, alongside other pieces of Vintage Print Media similar to those gathered under Vintage Print Media and the kinds of ephemera you might also see in the Stereoview Vault on eBay.

Taken together, this single card from Horicon to Wessington gives us a quiet, everyday snapshot of Thanksgiving in 1911: what people valued, how they stayed in touch, and how they chose to mark the holiday. I like that it’s gone from a postcard album to a digital archive, where it can keep telling its story to anyone curious enough to click. If you’d like to spend a little more time in that world, you can explore it now on stereoviewvault.com.