Mr. Norman Cooper lived in Chaneysville, an unincorporated community in Bedford County of south-central Pennsylvania.
An on-line history of Bedford County at the end of the 19th century shows a that a thriving village of mills, stores, tannery, shoemakers and blacksmiths, three churches, and a tavern once thrived there.
Today, these businesses are all gone.
The Post Office in Chaneysville closed in 1938.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010720102855/http://www.geocities.com/heartland/vista/7007
This is an area bisected by ridges of the Appalachian Mountains, and Bedford County now contains large tracts of forests that have been included within the Pennsylvania Game Preserve.
This village is close to the Maryland State Line.
In March of 1911, Norman was celebrating his birthday.
Norman received a postcard greeting from May.
May mailed the postcard from Steckman, a community that has disappeared from maps of Bedford County.
The Steckman family were among early settlers of the area, and a mountain ridge still bears their name.
The Steckman Family Cemetery near Chaneysville shows how extensive the family had once been.
The Post Office in Steckman operated only from 1896-1918.
This settlement of Steckman was very close to the community of Chaneysville.
The on-line archive of PA-Roots.org contains an account of the death of Barnabas Steckman in the community of Steckman in 1897.
https://www.pa-roots.org/data/read.php?52,638681,638681
The face if the postcard bears a framed verse or motto; the frame is adorned and surrounded by sprigs of green leaves and pink blossoms.
Within the fame, the verse is in the form of a prayer or invocation:
“May all good things
That life can know
Around your birthday centre,
May Heaven all gracious
Gifts bestow
Upon the year you enter.”
I cannot distinguish a publisher’s mark, but the postcard was “Printed in Germany”.
On the reverse, we find only a brief inscription, “Compliments of May”.
It appears that Norman treasured the birthday postcard, as it was preserved in very good condition throughout his life.
One hopes that Norman enjoyed a wonderful birthday and that he and May remained correspondents for many years.
This geographic region declined significantly through the following decades – one does hope that Norman and May enjoyed happy and successful lives in the 20th century.
