Mrs. M. J. Dudley lived in Portland, the commercial and industrial city at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers in northwest Oregon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland,_Oregon
In March of 1913, Mrs. Dudley received a postcard from one of her children, “Lindsay”.
The postcard was mailed from another place – the postmark is so faint that neither the city nor the state can be read clearly.
The face of the postcard is a soft, impressionistic scene of an untraveled path beside a lake.
The quietness of the landscape is emphasized by the sight of a single sailing craft – far in the distance.
Beneath the drawing, is a rendering of two verses of Psalm 23, “The Lord is My Shepherd”.
We have seen similar examples of postcard art in which an artist’s name is attached, but this artist remains anonymous.
The postcard was copyrighted and published by L. F. Pease of Buffalo, NY.
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On the reverse, Lindsay greets, “Dear Mamma” by asking, “how are you and the girls ?”
Lindsay reports, “I am well and getting along just fine.”
“It has been three months since I was home”, writes Lindsay, and adds, “Wish I could see you.”
Some good things have happened; “Mrs. Williams made me a birthday cake (banana)”.
Nevertheless, Lindsay “thinks an awfully lot of my pillows” – “they are just beauties”.
It appears as though the pillows were a gift from home, and that Lindsay was comforted by them.
The message is sent “Lovingly”.
On hopes that Lindsay continued to do well, that the pillows continued to provide satisfaction, and that the family would be reunited for a visit at the home of Mrs. Dudley.
Uncertain of the gender of “Lindsay”, I did not use pronouns for the writer of the postcard.
I turned to genealogical data banks for help.
GENEALOGICAL NOTE
On March 19, 1890, Lindsay Alden Dudley was born in Banks, Oregon.
Lindsay was the son of Alden Shorey Dudley (1838-1904) and Mary Josephine Beamis (1856-1952)
Alden was 40 years old when he married Mary (age 23) in Washington County, Oregon in 1879.
Mary and Alden had four children, two girls (Anna and Grace) and two boys (“baby boy” and Lindsay).
The baby boy died at birth or soon thereafter.
Sadly, Alden died in 1904 at the age of 66.
Lindsay, the youngest child, became ‘the man of the house” when he was 14.
Lindsay registered for the draft of 1917 in Butte City, Montana – so he was living on his own by that time.
In 1919, Lindsay married Esther Amy Benedict (1896-1993) in King County, Washington.
Lindsay and Esther had a daughter, Lois (1920-2006) and a son, Robert (1922-2016).
After 1930, the couple lived in Los Angeles, California.
It appears that Lindsay and Esther divorced sometime around 1930, as Esther remarried in 1932.
Her son, who was 10, appears to have been adopted by Esther’s new husband – Robert does not have the name “Dudley”, but is identified as the son of Lindsay and Esther.
Lindsay died in Los Angeles in 1959, two days before his 69th birthday.
