New Glarus Historical Society

Greetings from New Glarus!

The Swiss Historical Village and Museum’s Picture Postcards

The history of the postcard collection at the New Glarus Swiss Historical Village and Museum is just beginning to come alive again. The collection has been part of the archive for as long as our guide, Jo Gehl, has been there. However, until about ten years ago the postcards were completely unorganized. Jo took on the project of organizing the postcards, finishing last year, and she holds high hopes that patrons will be able to use them for a wider variety of purposes. Along with postcards, the Historical Society also has collections of newspapers and store ledgers.

Jo took a little time to talk about the early history of the town. New Glarus was settled in 1845 after about 200 volunteers decided to emigrate from Glarus, a small town in Eastern Switzerland, after experiencing several years of economic downturn, poor harvests and food shortages. Settlers said that the valley, hills and trees of the area reminded them of their native Switzerland.

The postcard archive has many pictures of historical New Glarus. These were not only created by the people of the town, but were also part of the tourism industry propagated by the state of Wisconsin. The state often printed up postcards highlighting the more popular attractions of Wisconsin. Sometimes the scenes depicted were exaggerated, as seen in the postcards above. However, many of the postcards created by the citizens of New Glarus show the town in an authentic way. The postcard below has the inscription “Main St./New Glarus/Wis.”

There are many depictions of people in general, and also many bearing wedding-day images of brides and grooms, like the postcards below. Many postcards show personal scenes, and are a window into the personal memories of the early New Glarus residents. In the late 1800s, printing photographs on glossy photo paper was very expensive. In order to save money and to still have their personal photographs and memories, people would print photographs on postcards. Jo estimates that as much as 70-80% of photographs were printed this way at the end of the 19^th century.

These postcards depicting people were especially interesting; most of the postcards showed very stoic. people. Jo explained that in the late 19^th century, the process of taking a photograph was very long, and you had to stand very still while it was being exposed. Also, the ideas behind having your picture taken were different—a photograph wasn’t something to smile for, it was something that would merely show what you looked like.

Postcards with people as their subjects are interesting because they indicate some of the trends and traditions of people of the time period (for example, the postcard of the farmers above shows styles of dress and one of the machines from this time period). Not only that, but they can also be used for more specific purposes. By examining these picture postcards, patrons are able to do genealogy work and identify certain people who were living in New Glarus at a certain time.

Sometimes the backs of postcards were rather interesting. Below we see an inscription on the back of a postcard sent to a Minnesotan, written in German. The language in this message is very familiar, and the two people were possibly friends or relatives. Many of the postcards in the archive have messages written in foreign languages, especially the Swiss dialect of German.

The residents of New Glarus were eager both to hold onto their language and transplanted culture, but they were also eager to identify with the new place they lived, as we see in the pride-filled postcards depicting New Glarus. Jo shared an interesting story of how some residents of New Glarus became American citizens. The newly-arrived immigrants of New Glarus often wanted to gain their citizenship as soon as they settled. They walked the 17 miles to the county clerk, filled out the paperwork and swore an oath for their citizenship. When they left, the county clerk would give them an apple. The new citizen would take the apple back to New Glarus and plant the seeds on the grounds of the museum. All around the museum the apple trees grew, and whenever the community had a potluck or a social gathering, they would gather the apples and make an apple pie, which was known in New Glarus thereafter as a “citizenship pie.”

Thanks to Jo Gehl of the New Glarus Historical society for taking time to share these collections and their wonderful history with us!

Images courtesy of the New Glarus Historical Society.

Entry created by Eric Willey and Cassie Warholm-Wohlenhaus.