Happy Christmas

(Click on images to enlarge)

This postcard shows that the "Happy Christmas and Merry New Year" message I posted last year was not necessarily facetious. Apparently, people used to wish you a happy Christmas in perfect accord with religion and decorum.

Sending this happy wish was a lady with a sick baby:



Transcription:

Dear Aunt I heard you was sick hope you are better. My baby was very sick she is some better the Dr. don't come eney more. wish you and Uncle John a most Joyfull Xmas. Bertha M.

The year in the postmark is not really legible, but it has to be 1922 or later, based on that 1922 Christmas seal (sold by the National Tuberculosis Association).

I believe the writer, "Bertha M.," was Bertha Mueller, the daughter of Uncle John's sister, Pauline, and her husband, August Czerwonke. Bertha had been born in Germany in 1882, brought to this country later that decade, and grew up (as far as I can tell) in LaPorte County, where she married August Mueller in 1909. By 1910, the young family was in Hobart. The sick baby was probably Lucy Frances, who had been born December 10, 1921.

Here is the family in the 1930 Census:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from Ancestry.com.

Not listed is their eldest daughter, Mary Elizabeth — who, in a sad twist of fate given Bertha's support of the anti-tuberculosis crusade, would die in 1936 at the age of 26 from pulmonary tuberculosis.[1]

Bertha died in 1962, surviving her husband by four years.

As for Aunt Agnes and Uncle John, they lived out their lives in Wanatah, and are buried in Porter County.

And a Happy Christmas to you.

_______________
[1] Her death certificate gives her occupation as nurse, so in 1930 she may have been away from home training or working in that field.