Bessie lived in Hazlehurst, a small city south of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi.
(Hazlehurst was developed as a stop on the Jackson-New Orleans Railroad, and named for a railroad engineer.)
Bessie was in the midst of a project; she writes, there are “too many workmen around” and she has moved ——(?). I cannot decipher her comment about moving.
In June of 1908, Bessie sent a postcard to Miss Ellen Rea of Brookhaven, Mississippi.
(Brookhaven is a small city 20 miles south of Hazlehurst. It is also on the railroad line to New Orleans. The city was occupied briefly by a Union raiding party during the Civil War.)
Bessie writes to Ellen, “you have waited too late to take those pictures”.
It is not clear if Ellen had planned to take photographs or if she was giving a new home to decorative wall ornaments.
(Personal cameras were not common in 1908, although the release of the “Brownie Camera” by Kodak in 1900 was rapidly increasing the number of amateur photographers.)
The face of the postcard bears a beautifully-colored photograph of Lake Hazle.
Entitled, “A Cozy Nook”, the postcard lacks indication of a publisher or printer.
Bessie did invite Ellen to “run up Wednesday morning”.
One hopes that Bessie and Ellen were able to meet and to overlook the matter of the pictures.
NOTE:
An internet search reveals that an Ellen Rockliff Rea lived in Mississippi from 1886 to 1935.
She passed away at age 48. If this is “our” Ellen Rea, she would have been 22 years old when she received the postcard from Bessie.
