Thanksgiving Greetings from 1912 Wessington, SD

There’s something quietly charming about a holiday postcard making its way through the mail over a hundred years ago. This 1912 Thanksgiving greeting from Wessington, South Dakota is one of those little paper time capsules that somehow survived long enough to land in front of us today. In this post, we’ll look at the card itself, who it was sent to, and the few handwritten lines that mention “glings” and the heat, giving us a small, very human glimpse of early 1900s life as autumn settled in.

A Thanksgiving Greeting from Early 1900s Wessington

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How did people in a small South Dakota town mark Thanksgiving in the early 1900s? One way was through illustrated postcards, sent as quick holiday hellos. This Thanksgiving postcard comes out of that world, a piece of everyday life mailed during the autumn holiday season from Wessington, South Dakota.

Hold a card like this and you’re looking at how people stayed in touch: short notes, holiday wishes, and a picture on the front doing half the talking. It’s a simple, practical way families and friends kept a connection going across distance.

If you enjoy this kind of ephemera, it sits in the same world as other vintage postcards that carried short, seasonal messages and quick check-ins between friends and family.

The 1912 Postcard to Miss Bertha Nugabau

This card doesn’t just hint at the era, it nails it down. It’s postmarked 1912 and addressed to Miss Bertha Nugabau in South Dakota. The handwritten note mentions “glings” and the sweltering heat, which is about as ordinary and specific as it gets.

Those few lines do most of the work: you can picture the sender, think about Bertha reading it, and imagine the weather they were both dealing with, all tied to that one Wessington, SD postcard and that single moment in time.

Postcards as Windows into Community and Tradition

Cards like this carried more than a holiday greeting. They quietly tracked who was writing to whom, where they lived, and what they chose to mention in a tiny space. Names, addresses, and quick notes add up to a small record of community and tradition in everyday communication.

You see the same mix of daily life and holiday sentiment in other early 1900s cards, whether they were simple greetings or more elaborate pieces of vintage print media that people held onto and saved.

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Where This Postcard Lives Today

Today, this 1912 Thanksgiving postcard is still around, just in a different form. The card shown here is from the stereoview vault’s vintage postcard collection, specifically “from the stereovault.com.” That’s where it lives now in digitized form, filed alongside other pieces from the same vintage postcard collection.

It shares that space with everything from old photographs to stereoview cards, all kept as small, tangible records of everyday lives.

Closing

More than a pretty seasonal picture, this 1912 Thanksgiving postcard to Miss Bertha Nugabau holds a moment in time from Wessington, SD, heat, “glings,” and all. I like that it now lives on in an online collection, still doing what it was meant to do: carry a greeting from one person to another, just across a much longer stretch of years. If pieces like this interest you, there are plenty more small paper windows into the past to explore.