Starting off the new year with a mystery – Often times I monitor Ebay for photos and postcards of the area that I can use for “Then and Now” social media posts. Postcards in particular are fun because they capture local scenes, often including people, in the wonderful context of their time. Around the turn of the 20th century photo postcards really took off in terms of popularity. By this point photography was fairly common and a handful of men made it their careers to travel the United States, photograph the towns, and sell the photos to publishers. Many you see on my page were called “Real Photo” postcards and introduced around 1903.

So when I came across this postcard depicting “Mrs. Hattie Commins” of Morgantown, I was intrigued. Surely this woman must be a fairly important member of the community to be photographed in front of her house with the intent of people sending her likeness anywhere in the United States.

However, when searching her name in newspaper archives I didn’t get a single hit. No hits on ancestry either, even after Google informed me that “Hattie” is often short for Harriet. Perplexed, I went back and examined the postcard for clues. Four women are standing in the photograph. I assumed the oldest woman wearing black is Hattie. Perhaps the other three are daughters? The smallest on the right has the upper body proportions of an adult but appears to be the height of a child.

We can also see that the postcard was published by C. G. Gross. A search revealed he existed and while a resident of Philadelphia, was well known in Berks and an officer on the board of the Bethany Children’s Home. This confirms we have the correct Morgantown, PA.

My next course of action was to scour Google Street Views of Morgantown to see if I could find this home today. I was hopeful that this house would still be standing along Main Street (route 23), and I was right. Today, it is addressed 3207 Main Street.

Now all I needed to do was deed search this property back to the early 1900s. Sure enough John P. and wife Harriet CUMMINGS purchased this property in 1906 and sold it in 1922. This gives us a definitive time range for the photo.

Now with her correct surname, more details come into focus. The deed above lists the couple as being from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. However, records reveal that Hattie was born Harriet Jane Miller in 1873 in Caenarvon Township to shoemaker James Miller and wife Hannah. She married John in 1898 in Philadelphia, and the couple was listed as living in Milwaukee by the 1900 census. John was an Irish immigrant and a Mechanical Engineer by profession, so their move was likely career related. Only 8 years later they purchased this home along main street. Worth noting Harriet would have been between the ages of 33-50 while they owned it. I am inclined to believe this postcard photo was taken around 1910, in which she would have been 37. Perhaps it is just the quality of the photo, but I would have guessed the woman in black was in her 60s or 70s.

It is possible she is one of the other women in the photo, since John and Hattie never had any children. Perhaps it is her mother Hannah in black, who perished in 1916, and younger sister Geneva, beside her, and maybe child-sized niece? The 1910 census places father James, mother Hannah and their 10-year-old granddaughter Helen (Geneva’s daughter) living in Morgantown. Perhaps John and Harriet purchased this property for her parents to live and her to stay when she visited home. Both the 1910 and 1920 censuses place her and John in Wisconsin, so this clearly was not her full time residence.

It appears John Cummings died sometime between the 1930 and 1940 census, as 1940 places Hattie living in their family home in Milwaukee with boarders. By 1950 she was living in a boarding house. It leaves one to speculate why she had to leave her home and move into such accommodations. Hattie died in 1956 in a Milwaukee hospital. She is buried in Caernarvon Cemetery.

We may never know the circumstances of why the photographer chose to grab this shot of Hattie’s home and family. Perhaps just a lack of other interesting things to capture in the vicinity of Morgantown at that time. While I would love there to be some incredible back story to why this woman was featured, albeit with the wrong last name, sometimes reality really is that anti-climactic.

The only other postcard I have come across from this exact publisher was of the Odd Fellow’s building. It still stands along Main Street, while the block across the street; including the old Morgantown Hotel, was razed 20 years ago to build a Rite Aid.