Traveling in the Roadster – Portsmouth, New Hampshire (1911)

We met Ermina Schroeder a few weeks ago; she was living in Hamilton Heights (Manhattan) and had received a postcard photograph of Corning, New York.

In 1911, Ermina lived with her sister at 3750 Broadway, a different address but still in the newly-developed Upper West Side.   

Friends of Ermina and her sister were nearing the end of their summer vacation and sent a postcard to “The Misses Schroeder” announcing, “we’re starting home”,

The postcard, mailed from Portsmouth, NH, bears a hand-colored photograph of the Market Square in that city.

(Some 60 years later, I first visited Portsmouth and found that it remained a beautiful coastal city.)

After lamenting the end of the vacation, the travelers write, “the Cole 30 is ok”,

Unfamiliar with the “Cole 30”, I discovered that this was a very attractive roadster sold in 1911.

On-line, one can find antique car dealers’ photos of this spiffy machine.

Now, I am envious of Ermina’s friends who tooled around New England in a roadster.

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