Greetings from Stalybridge in 1909 with Pattie

 I have to say that I am a great fan of the picture postcard and have written about them plenty of times.

After all you do get a lot.  For a start there is the image which offers up a moment in the history of a place.

But added to that there is the message on the back which are often more interesting and more revealing than the picture.

One of my favourites was from the young Bertha Geary who told her friend that she had “seen the flying man” as she walked from her home in Didsbury. The “flying man” was the French pilot who in 1911 won the All Britain Daily Mail Air Race.

What made the card all the more unique was that Bertha had included hero own address and armed with that
I was able to track her family find the family name using a street directory, and then armed with a surname track them on the 1911 census.

All of which allowed me to discover that Bertha was the third child, and was just 13 when the “flying man” appeared over Didsbury.

And so to our card of Old Street, in Stalybridge around 1909.

Now I can’t be sure this was the date the photograph was taken but it was the year the card was sent to Miss Mary Jamieson of 12 Grand Avenue, Sharon, USA by her friend Pattie.

And in the way of these things Pattie had little to say but just wanted to keep in touch.

And since I first wrote this I have come across an excellent account of the place in a fine blog on all things Stlaybridge, Cocker Hill, Stalybridge, which is well worth a read.

Pictures; Old Street, from the series Stalybridge, by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB,http://tuckdb.org/

*Cocker Hill, Stalybridge, http://cockerhill.com/category/st-georges-churchyard/