Jul 126 min read

103 ~ Of Postcards, Threshing, and Elevation

I have received many snippets of information about Blawenburg over the past six years, and I appreciate all who have sent them to me. Many of these are interesting, but are not enough to warrant a full blog. Every once in a while, I like to reach into these notes and present a conglomeration of unrelated information about Blawenburg. In this blog, I report on postcards about Blawenburg, threshing season, and the elevations of the village and the surrounding areas.

Postcards from Blawenburg

Postcards as Early Communication

In the 19th century, communication with others was pretty much limited to sending letters or face-to-face conversation. Some people may have sent a telegram, but that was more complicated and expensive. In 1861, a shorter, quicker method of sending messages by mail was created. Mail cards, as they were originally known, were about the same size as postcards today, with address and artwork (no photographs) on the front and room for a message on the back.

By the last decade of the 19th century, the telephone was adding a new dimension to communication, but it wasn’t until the 1920s and beyond that it had widespread use. Around the turn of the century, advances in photography enabled printers to produce “real pictures” on postcards, making them more interesting. People could buy a postcard with a picture of buildings in their community and send it with a message to another person, sometimes as nearby as the next town.

Postcards served the same function as email does today—to send a brief message to someone. But unlike email, there was no instantaneous delivery system. You needed to purchase a card, write a message on the card, and mail it at the post office. Depending on where you were sending the card, it might have taken a few days, a week, or even longer for the card to get to its destination.

A Variety of Types and Uses

The Golden Era for postcards (1905 -1915) saw millions of postcards produced, and some were sent, while others were collected and saved in albums. Photographers traveled through towns and villages across America taking pictures of anything that might be of interest, and then they would print them on cards. Postcards with pictures of villages and towns are known as “real photograph” postcards. In the collectibles market, these cards of greatest value. These postcards were popular because newspapers and magazines did not have many pictures.

This real photography post card was used for advertisement for James N. Van Zandt, who sold postcards, bicycles, sundries, and phonographs at the intersection of Route 518 and Great Road.

Do you recognize this scene from Blawenburg? Probably not, because there is no lake like this in the village. Postcard companies would take one picture and use it for many towns and villages. They would change where the greeting was for each town.

Sometimes, postcards were sent with a joke to make you smile.

The two colorful postcards above are from the 1930s when textured cards made with linen and paper were popular. Improvements in color printing made these cards possible.

Postcards are no longer a craze, but many people still collect them today. In their heyday, they served purposes that have been taken over by digital technology. The collection of older postcards is still a hobby for many people, but it doesn’t have the following that it did a century ago.

The Threshing Days of Summer

Threshing in Blawenburg circa 1920s

Most of us have little knowledge of and likely no experience with threshing. A century

ago, everyone living in farming communities would know about threshing. Threshing is the process of removing grain from a grain plant such as wheat. The first step is to reap what has been sown and grown. Wheat and other grains were planted in the spring, and in the early summer they were ready to be cut down. Next, the grain was separated from the stalk. In the early days of farming, this was done by hand in a process using a flail, a long stick with a shorter stick (a swipple) attached. The flail was used to strike the wheat so the grain would fall out.

Charles Seyfarth grew up in Blawenburg, and his grandfather is pictured above in the white overalls. Charles sent a letter to the Farm Collector magazine in 2011 recalling his grandfather’s threshing team from a century ago. Gramp Seyfarth, as he was called, had a large dairy operation in Blawenburg along Great Road, milking 112 cows by hand each day. That farm, which was sold to Aetherton Hobler in the 1930s, was later renamed Woodacres Farm, and is now part of Cherry Valley Country Club. (Learn more about Woodacres Farm in Blog 94.)

Threshing only took place once a year, so it was a sideline business for Gramp. He used a team of nine men to thresh his fields as well as the rye, wheat, and other grain fields in a 30 to 40-mile radius of Blawenburg. The team traveled as far as Freehold where much rye was grown for horse farms, riding stables, and race tracks. Grandmam, as she was called, and other women stayed behind to tend the farm while the men traveled to thresh.

“As a child, I remember the stack of grain 20 feet high,” Charles recalled. “Gramp used mules to pull the thresher. The tractor pulled the wagon and all the necessary equipment.”

Today, the work that required nine men is done by one person driving a combine. This equipment will reap, thresh, and winnow the grain. Winnowing is the process of blowing air through the grain to remove the chaff (non-grain parts of the plant). Being able to “combine” operations has made large farming possible with less staff needed. Of course, combines come at a high price. They range in cost from $100,000 to $500,000.

The Highs and Lows of Blawenburg

Did you wake up this morning wondering what the elevation of Blawenburg is? Probably not. You might have noted that the village is on a small ridge, the top of which forms a path for Georgetown Franklin Turnpike (CR 518). Or you may have noted on another day that you have to go uphill to get to the village if you are coming from the north or south.

I was curious about the elevation of our historic village, and I learned that in 1954 a survey was done to calculate the elevation in the village and other locations such as the Neuropsychiatric Institute, now Skillman Park. The surveyors placed brass benchmark plates in the ground as permanent surveying marks that show the elevation.

On this topographic map, benchmarks are recorded with BM followed by the numerical elevation above sea level. Route 518 is on the lower part of the map and NJNPI is in the middle. The benchmark elevation for the village is 156 feet, while the NJNPI entrance on Route 601 is 110 feet. You never know when this type of information may come in handy!

FACTS

1. Postcards were originally called mail cards and then postal cards. They later became postcards.

2. Mail routes in 1851 for the Princeton/Blawenburg area were very slow, but that was the best they could do with horses and wagons. Had postcards been invented at this time, it would have taken a long time to deliver a brief message!

3. Several old sayings came from threshing:

“you reap what you sow”
“separating the wheat from the chaff” (Farmers would separate the grain from the inedible chaff, an image used to suggest separating the good from the bad.)
thresh hold (The poor would cover their dirt floors with thresh (i.e., straw) and use a board to hold it down so people wouldn’t slip entering their house.)

4. The flail was originally a weapon used to strike an enemy. As better weapons were discovered, the flail was repurposed for less violent uses.

FLASHBACK

A look at information or graphics related to previously published blog

This Flashback is connected to Blog 55, The Polling Family of Blawenburg, which is about the George Gallup family who lived in Blawenburg on the farm once owned by Michael Blaw.

I recently received emails from Carol Schultz of Jefferson, Iowa, who is doing research on the Gallup family for their local newspaper, The Jefferson Bee. For eight generations, beginning in 1630, the Gallup family lived in Stonington, CT. Then, George Henry Gallup’s father took up dairy farming, so he moved to Jefferson, Iowa, where George was born and raised. In the 1930s, George moved east to Blawenburg where he started the Gallup Poll.

Ms. Schultz reported George worked on the farm and sold milk to earn money. Jefferson High did not have a football team, so he saved his earnings and used them for the uniforms for the football program that was just beginning.

The house where the family lived is known today as the Gallup House. It is a unique octagonal house which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. In 2010, it was restored and rededicated.