Miss Peggy Cook lived in Princeton, the charming college town of southwest New Jersey.
We met members of the extended Cook family in other postcard stories – “Aunt Ruth Is at the Races” and “Taking the Waters in July”.
In July of 1928, Peggy received a postcard from Charlotte.
Charlotte mailed the postcard from Canajoharie, a town on the Erie Canal in Montgomery County of central New York.
Once the site of a Mohawk village, the site became an important trading post between the Mohawks and Dutch and English settlers in the Colonial Era.
In 1928, Canajoharie was somewhat larger than it is today.
Canajoharie is about 40 miles southeast of the city of Utica.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canajoharie,_New_York
The face of the postcard is a photograph of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Canajoharie.
The solid, stone edifice is surrounded by trees and a small lawn.
A sidewalk, and nearby buildings, suggest that the church is in the middle of town.
This building, erected in 1870, reflects the growth of the town – the earlier church was a community church shared with a Reformed congregation.
Later, the German-speaking Lutheran residents built their own congregation (St. John’s Lutheran)- but the two Lutheran congregations merged within this building in 1970.
https://www.stjm-canajoharie.org/about.htm
Below, I share a picture of the Church’s interior that is taken from the website for St. Mark’s and St. John’s Church.
On the reverse, Charlotte pens a short message.
It seems that Charlotte is traveling, perhaps on a vacation, as she writes – “Wish you were with us”.
Charlotte adds, “Our best to Jack”, and sends the postcard, “With love”.
Peggy preserved the postcard throughout her life – a remarkable amount of Cook family correspondence survives.
One hopes that Charlotte returned safely to her home and that she and Peggy remained friends and correspondents for many years.
