Ephemera collecting is a hobby of mine. Postcards are just one example of what you can collect.

I have an evergrowing number of cards that I have collected during my travels. Best purchase places include antique shops, shops or dealers specializing in Ephemera items. Postcards are just a small sampling of such paper products that you may be interested in viewing or starting a collection of your own. It is amazing how much local history is recorded through postcards.

The following three post cards are samples of postcards for online viewing at the Rochester Rublic Library. Supplied here as examples of the quality available despite many cards reaching the century mark since original publication.

Support your local library. View their collections for pleasure or to expand your search capabilities and possibilities to expand your own search and collecting.

click on card to see enlargement and to appreciate the quality/age
and to appreciate Upstate New York

Location: Irondequoit Bay (Rochester,NY)











Remember if you purchase cards for your collection, keep the original intact. Do not destroy the history of the card. If scanning one of your ephemera items, save an original file before making a copy that you may digitally improve for presentation purposes.


Materials presented here are for sharing/educational purposes only, especially to increase awareness of community resources and to preserve local history.

Support The Rochester Museum and Science Center. Preserve local history efforts.

http://collections.rmsc.org/LibCat/libraries.html

From the Collections of the Rochester Museum & Science Center, Rochester, NY.

Train ride Upstate New York Autumn

Train ride Upstate New York, Autumn

Appleboom Point

Pettiness in Paradise
and
Other Tales of Appleboom Point

author: John E. Connors

Backcover:

What appears to be nothing more than a sleepy side note on the Seaway Trail along the south shore of Lake Ontario comes to life in these vivid tales. They are written by a beloved teacher and a keen observer of human nature who adopted the tiny town of Pultneyville, New York as his home. Originally known as Appleboom Point, the community is shown in its heydey as a bustling harbor town filled with lively characters busily making history. The author, using accounts from local newspapers, diaries, and other historical sources, builds a richly imagined world of days gone by. The stories, while fictional, paint a vibrant picture of a town's history. They are complete with accounts of local militiamen resisting the British assault during the War of 1812 and conductors guiding others to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Then, too, there are patrons carousing in the Pig's Ear Saloon, returning heroes haunted by the Civil War, and ghostly entities inhabiting elegant homes fully equipped with witch bottles in the ceiling. Spanning the decades when sleek and majestic schooners plied the treacherous waters of the Great Lakes, the stories tell how it must have been when the high and mighty were brought to this crossroad of commerce. Pettiness in Paradise: And Other Tales of Appleboom Point takes the reader on a fascinating journey back to upstate New York as it was when the captain was king, and the way of life was the way of adventure.

John Connors was a graduate of Alfred University with a Master's Degree in English. He taught English at Williamson Central School in Williamson, New York and at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He loved poetry and wrote many poems, some of which have been published in various poetry collections. He also wrote a collection of his own titled Conjure Man. This book is his only published prose and is his last. John died in June of 2005.

(John E. Connors lived)
In a Place called Pultneyville...Appleboom Point

ISBN #: 978-1-4251-1448-0
Trafford Publishing
Printed in Victoria, BC, Canada

Thank you Mr Connors for believing in me and my writings. Love Always.

One student,

WCS, Class of '77

Jane Marla VerDow

Roots;Land and Water

Maternal Grandfather came from London ("Home" Kent, England) on The Saint Louis, (1910) as a young man of 20. Plans were to come to America to be a barber and to send money back home to his Mother. He was sponsored by a family (farmers) in the town of Ontario and worked for them until he purchased a farm, settled in the Town of Ontario, became a Father, and played coronet in the Ontario Fireman's band.

He never returned to England. Two of his brothers traveled England to America then back, then returned to America from 1909 to 1920. His brother purchased a ticket for the Titantic voyage but at the last minute "missed the boat" by a "change in plans".

Grandma Sarah (paternal line) came from Holland (farmers) with her family; Mother and Father ages 24 and 25, with three young children (born to that date) all under the age of five. Sarah, age 1, became ill on the voyage (The Veendam) and years later it was summized by the nature and lengthly period of time of her liver illness that she had contracted hepatitis on the journey. Her passing left 6 children ranging in ages from 2 to 16 to be raised by my Grandfather, the oldest children, and extended family.

2006, my parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. To mark the occasion and for the gathering of family and extensive list of their friends of all ages I put together a scrapbook. I honored the fact that Mom's Dad (age 52) had passed the year prior to their marriage and Dad's Mom (age 40) had passed when he was 14 years old; neither of them living to be a part of that day in 1946.

I wrote this in loving memory to "the Grandparents I never met" and to include them on this day, 60 years later, in celebration of their children:

God, watch over me and mine I pray

Your Ocean to cross so vast.

Dream You planted in my heart just as deep

Your Promise be true, what I sow may I reap.

Set my sail to horizon -America, there may

Mother Liberty open her arms.

Captain my ship as she sails on the Sea

Me a lad or babe, Mother praying over me.

Farmland rich for Your Hands did make.

My gifts all I bring, from Thee.

My hands able to labor and music I play

Send Your Love and Guide my way. Amen.

Maternal family line; Great-Grandma and Grandpa. His family came from Holland sometime before the Civil War...stories were recorded by newspaper that he remembered the day President Lincoln was shot (about 5 years old at the time).

My Grandma had a green thumb for vegetable gardens and flowers. Memories of her many; spading dirt by shovel in the Spring and tending her gardens each Summer through Fall, a gift she inherited and learned from her father and then passed on to my Mom.

Photos taken near the Water, down on her Lakeshore; Ontario, the Great Lake. This place where families settled and they chose to be the caretakers of the land deposited there, a place to root children, and then to raise them near. She, this Great Lake and they, each generation, each family, each one...took a moment to be recorded as having been there...in this place, settled, together.

Good Friends

Grandpa, closest to water pictured above with a friend, was a farmer by trade, and an avid fisherman by hobby and at heart. His older brother, John was the "professional" fisherman on Lake Ontario waters. Stories told down of family back home in Holland, "farmers and fisherman on the Sea, they were."

Names of "Home Towns" In Holland (Providence) I saw printed, though letters switched or left off or added on through speech translation handscripted now in print or handwriting versions of the storycarriers. Here I will write them as Zeelandic Flander; Zuidzande; but most common I saw Cadzand. Speech we often heard Zuid-er-zee. I assume that meant land Zuidzande next to or on the zee (Noordzee/North Sea). Funny how sound and letters get lost over time.

Then, the waves and Sea...Now, still fighting the elements to work the land and to preserve home...that remains like Homeland, northwest Netherlands. The draw towards living near water remained in the hearts and Souls of next generations and there they settled along The Great Lake; Ontario. Farmland, rich and higher elevation this new place called, home.

Dad carried on the tradition...early morning fisherman with fish tales to tell, taking a break from farming.

Mom never learned to swim, was more fond of viewing or sitting near than being in the water. Still...the story has been told and retold how she jumped into the water (a pool, not the Lake or Bay) and saved me from drowning when I was 2.

"A day at Pultneyville Beach"

Mom sitting the closest to the Lake.

Roots of Life

Springtime Love

Unloading apples

Moments of fun in a day's work

Now a Dad

In Charge of Wolf and Guarding the Peaches

Then along comes...

Janie

Born to be the storyteller.

Photos:

Springtime Love. Mom and Dad;1949

Dad driving tractor, younger sister Viola riding on trailer with family dog. Mom took picture. Had just returned from their Honeymoon "around Lake Ontario via Niagara Falls, Canada, St. Lawrence" (August 1946); Fall 1946

Dad and sister, Nancy in the woods on farm;1955

Nancy and Wolf guarding peaches at Grandpa's;1953

Janie, the storyteller;1959