Mr. B. F. Hartman lived in Rouserville, an unincorporated community in Franklin County of south-central Pennsylvania.
The community, near Waynesboro, uses alternate spellings of “Rouzerville” and “Rouserville”.
I had to double-check web-pages, including historical markers and real estate listings to be sure that both names referred to the same place.
At last, I found a history website which noted:
“About Rouserville
Rouserville is an unincorporated community that lies entirely within Washington Township in Franklin County. While the marker spells the community name as Rouzerville, the spelling of the community name is alternately seen with an s elsewhere.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouzerville,_Pennsylvania
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We met Mr. Hartman in two earlier postcard stories – he was a teacher and was given postcards by students:
“Appreciation of a Teacher”, and, “Mr. Hartman’s Son in Amsterdam”.
From the evidence of these and other postcards, we know that the Hartman family lived in several places in south-central Pennsylvania.
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Sometime around 1910, Mr. Hartman was given a lovely postcard painting of an alpine church.
Before a large mountain, the church is surrounded by foliage and overlooks a valley from which mist appears to be rising.
This example of original postcard art lacks both an artist’s name and a publisher’s mark.
This is not the first image of a church in a mountain landscape that we have seen:
“Bessie Sends an Alpine Church”, “A Mountain Village for Grace”, “Master Thomas Receives an Onion Dome”
On the reverse, the sender inscribes a numerical code and teases, “Have a guess”.
If we apply a simple alpha-numeric counting – the numbers are revealed as the initials “R. M. P.”
The relationship of the sender to Mr. Hartman is not disclosed – this postcard could be a presentation from another student.
In any event, we can see that Mr. Hartman appreciated the lovely image.
One hopes that all the students of Mr. Hartman harbored kind thoughts and feelings of gratitude for his labors.
