In September of 1936, Susie was on her way to Portland, Maine.
Portland, the largest city in Maine, remains an important port on the Atlantic coast.
In the 1930’s, a ship-building industry still thrived in this southeast corner of Maine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland,_Maine
En route, Susie visited “a friend’s daughter” in Hingham, Massachusetts.
Hingham, a very old town on the South Shore of eastern Massachusetts, is a suburb of Boston, today.
Susie found Hingham delightful, “a fine old town.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hingham,_Massachusetts
To report on her progress, Susie mailed a postcard to Mrs. Mary Rhodes.
The message does not begin with a greeting, so we do not have clues about the relationship of Susie and her correspondent.
Mrs. Rhodes lived in St. Clair, a borough of Schuylkill County of east-central Pennsylvania.
This area, in the 1930’s, supported the manufacture of explosives used in the mines of the coal region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Clair,_Pennsylvania
The face of the postcard is a photograph of “The Old Ship Church” in Hingham.
This church, constructed with an English Gothic style of open beams, was the first meetinghouse of Puritans in Hingham.
When viewed from the interior, the roof resembles the hull of a ship (which was a related building skill) and gives the name to the structure.
The Old Ship Church, erected in 1681, is the only surviving example of 17th century Puritan meetinghouses -and it is the oldest church in continuous use in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Ship_Church
We do not know if Susie visited this landmark while she enjoyed the beautiful sites of Hingham.
One hopes that Mrs. Rhodes was delighted by the postcard remembrance, that Susie completed safely her journey to Portland, and that the correspondents maintained a friendship for many years.
