Miss Cora Krautter lived in Palmyra, a borough on the Delaware River in Burlington County of west-central New Jersey.
In the late 17th century, Swedish farmers established the first European settlements here in what was the northernmost limit of New Sweden.
Palmyra remained an agricultural community until the arrival of the Camden & Amboy Railroad in the 1830’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyra,_New_Jersey
Sometime in a year near 1914, Cora received a history postcard – it does not appear to have been mailed.
This postcard was given by a woman named “Mary”.
(There is a stamped name on the reverse which identifies a collector or dealer of the late 20th century in Wilmington Delaware.
I have seen this stamp many times, so I assume that the postcards of the Wilmington collector have now been dispersed to other dealers in old paper.)
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The face of the postcard is an unknown artist’s depiction of an incident in the history of California.
Gaspar de Portola, a military Captain from Catalonia, became the Spanish Governor of California in 1768.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspar_de_Portol%C3%A1
The next year, in 1769, Spain determined to check the Russian colonization of northern California and charged Portola to fortify Monterey.
https://www.fortross.org/history/russian-american-company
This area was largely unmapped, and Portola’s small force stumbled into what became San Francisco Bay entirely by accident.
In the drawing, the dramatic composition of a mounted leader flanked by banners and the cross is surely an artistic interpretation.
The postcard was published by the Pacific Novelty Company of San Francisco.
History postcards like this one were collected in large numbers and, as we have seen in other postcard stories, often became part of public library collections.
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We cannot know if Cora had a particular interest in history, but she preserved the postcard in good condition.
One hopes that she found satisfaction in learning about the long history of California.
