Miss Louise Watkins lived in Covington, a city at the confluence of the Licking and the Ohio Rivers in Kenton County of north-central Kentucky.

Covington lies across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio.

In 1900, Covington was connected to the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad and to the Louisville & Nashville Railroad.

It was a major steamboat port, and shipped cotton products, tobacco products, iron fences, liquor, glassware, and many other manufactured goods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covington,_Kentucky

In May of 1917, Louise was celebrating a birthday.

For the occasion, she received a lovely postcard from the Sunday School at Immanuel Methodist Episcopal Church.

(The “M. E.” Church became the “United Methodist Church” about 50 years later.)

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Immanuel M. E. congregation was founded in 1849 and was the oldest German Protestant congregation in the city.

(Covington had attracted large numbers of Catholic immigrants from Germany and other European countries.)

https://www.kentonlibrary.org/genealogy/community-history/covington/immanuel-methodist-church

Louise had many classmates in Sunday School; a large annex was constructed to contain the Sunday School in 1918.

A larger church was also designed, but the Great Depression halted these plans.

The church that Louise attended was a two-story brick edifice; the congregation finally built a larger church in the suburbs in 1947.

(The German language had disappeared during World War I.)

Today, Immanuel United Methodist Church exists on more than one campus -offering a mix of traditional and innovative services, many in multi-cultural contexts.

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The face of the postcard bears a framed drawing of a peaceful river at dusk or dawn.

A lone figure is launching or mooring a rowboat on the grassy bank.

Across the water, lights are shining from the windows of a riverbank home.

There is an artist’s name (or initials) in the lower right, but I have not deciphered the mark.

The postcard was published by the Gibson Art Company of Cincinnati.

In another twenty years, this firm would become one of the world’s leading publishers of greeting cards.

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Louise seems to have been pleased by the greeting from Sunday School; she preserved the postcard throughout her life.

The face was distorted by significant foxing and fading – and my efforts to restore the original appearance is less successful than some other projects have been.

I regret the “streaky” effects on the margin surrounding the framed drawing.