Archive of 47 American mourning cards, 1878–1902
A single-family archive of forty-seven black-bordered mourning cards spanning twenty-four years of Ohio deaths.
- SKU
- MS-CU-1008
- Era
- Pre-1900
- Condition
- Very good as a group; a handful with edge wear, all legible.
- Dimensions
- Box: 6 in. × 4 in. × 3 in.
- Weight
- 1.1 lb
- Provenance
- Estate sale, Jefferson, Ohio, 2023; kept by successive generations in a single tin box.
- Category
- Curiosities & Oddities
- Tags
- ephemeramourning-cardsarchivevictorianamerican
Forty-seven black-bordered memorial cards, all issued for members of, or connections to, a single extended family in Ashtabula County, Ohio, between 1878 and 1902. Each bears the name of the deceased, dates of birth and death, and a short verse; several are illustrated with lithographed weeping willows, urns, or gates ajar.
As an object, a single mourning card is small. As an archive, forty-seven of them, kept together for a century and a quarter, are something else — a household's record of who was lost, in which order, and how they chose to say so. We have not separated the group and would ask that a buyer keep it intact.
Supplied in an acid-free archival box with a hand-written index of names and dates prepared by our shop.
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