The Cathedral at Reims -Biglerville, PA (1920)

In October of 1920, Miss Theresa Bittinger received a postcard invitation to Rally Day at her church in Biglerville.

Biglerville is a borough of Adams County in south-central Pennsylvania.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biglerville,_Pennsylvania

The postcard was published by the Westminster Press of Philadelphia, a publishing house that specialized in congregational supplies and Sunday School curricula for Presbyterian Churches and other churches in the Reformed tradition.

Looking at the historical churches of Biglerville, I think that Thresa probably attended Trinity Reformed Church, which became part of the United Church of Christ in 1957.

The face of the postcard invitation bears original art depicting the Cathedral at Reims.

(Riems was a prehistoric settlement and center of the Remi tribe in Gaul.

The Remi allied with the Romans under Julius Caesar, and Reims became an important Roman city. 

A Christian church was established in Reims by the middle of the third century. 

The baptism of Clovis, King of the Franks, in the Cathedral at Riems in 496 A.D. made Reims a center of royal and ecclesiastical importance for centuries thereafter – the coronations of all subsequent Kings of France were celebrated at Riems, 80 miles northeast of Paris.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reims_Cathedral

The impressionistic drawing is beautifully executed – and it communicates the dignity and allure of the 13th -century Cathedral even when paired (somewhat incongruously) with the invitation to a Reformed Church.

On the reverse, J.B.B. (the Church Secretary or Sunday School Superintendent, perhaps), urges Miss Bittinger, “Don’t disappoint us”.

One hopes that Theresa was moved to participate in the celebration of Rally Day on October 10, 1920.

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