Saturday, January 23, 2021

Romantic Calling Cards: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Valentines”

Rural Minnesota Courtship: “Hidden Name” Calling Cards

Anna Peterson: 1895-1913
Pearl Peterson: 1901-1962

Among my family’s photos and memorabilia are some charming little vintage calling cards. They bear messages that remind me of the sweet sentiments found on early Valentine’s Day cards, and may have served the same purpose as Valentines do now—to express a bit of romantic interest in the opposite sex.

As I researched these little cards, I found them often referred to as “Victorian Calling Cards”. You can find them for sale on vintage and antique store websites, with the sellers claiming they were printed in the 1880s or 1890s. I believe these were printed about ten to twenty years later.

I have four of these cards. A site called Peculiar History describes them well:

“While there are many examples of Victorian calling cards, some of the most elaborate include ‘scrap’ cards or ‘hidden name’ cards. The backing of each card carries the name of the person and is sometimes elaborately die-cut along the edges. Over the name, a small chromolithograph picture is pasted on one edge which then can be lifted to discover the caller. The chromolithograph image themes include hearts, doves, scrolls, urns, cupids, roses and women’s hands, among many others. There are also examples of short poems included in many of these pictures.”




My favorite of the four cards shows a woman’s hand against a backdrop of roses and pansies, reaching out to touch a beribboned white dove holding a card in its beak that reads, “May true friends be around you.” Beneath the scrap picture is the name “Anna Peterson” printed in script. My research found that the motifs of a woman’s hand combined with flowers symbolized friendship. The different motifs used had special meanings.


The second card’s chromolithograph features a woman’s hand holding a fancy card that depicts a snowy scene of a house and trees, and the words “All happiness to you!” The card and hand are surrounded with roses and forget-me-nots. The hidden name in this card is “Pearl Peterson”.



The next card has a smaller and thinner chromolithograph, but the die-cut card beneath is elaborately embossed with floral garlands. The picture features a hand reaching toward roses, with two white doves in the foreground, while the background shows a snow covered scene of a river, a bare tree and snow-roofed houses. The hidden name, in very elaborate script, is “Martin Rinde”.



The last card features an elaborate die-cut pattern on the backing card—it is a tear-drop shape with punched out circles making a border along the edge. The chromolithograph features a white dove holding a sprig of pine or yew, sitting amidst roses, yellow daisies, and small pink flowers. A woman’s hand holds a blue scroll of paper that reads “A token of regard for thee, In this my simple offering, see!” The hidden name is “Oscar O. Syverson.”




Anna Peterson and Pearl Peterson are two of my father’s sisters. They were born in Lake Hanska Township in Brown County Minnesota to parents Paul Peterson and Regina Syverson Peterson. Anna was born in 1895, and Pearl was born in 1901.

 The cards certainly would not have been used until the two girls were in their teens and would be paying formal calls on neighbors and friends. Therefore, the most likely period they would have been used is between 1910 and 1918—Anna married at age sixteen in 1912, so her card wouldn’t have read Peterson after 1912. Pearl married in 1920.



The other cards were likely from young men who called on the sisters and their family. I found Oscar O. Syverson on Ancestry. He was a year older that Anna, born in Linden Township in 1894, so he wouldn’t have purchased calling cards until his teens—1910 at the earliest. Sadly, apparently no young lady ever returned his “regard”, for he never married.

As for the second young man, Martin Rinde, I can find no record of him on Ancestry.




I suspect that like most trends, calling cards began as something the upper class used, and then over time the practice trickled down to the lower classes. Pearl and Anna Peterson were far from upper class. They lived in a tiny farm house on the prairie without running water. These cards would have been a luxurious little treat for a poor farming family. Since three of the cards feature winter items—a pine spray in the beak of a dove, and winter scenes in the backgrounds of two—I wonder if by the 1910s the cards weren’t being used as traditional year-around calling cards, but as Valentine’s Day greetings.

Whatever their purpose, the charming little “hidden name” cards were being used in rural Minnesota long after the Victorian era was over. The printing of the hidden names was probably handled by the local newspaper office, which doubled as a printing service in the tiny town closest to the Peterson farm. Now over a century old, the cards are lovely little reminders of the joys of courtship in a past era.

 

Sources:

https://peculiarhistory.com/post/169692389750/victorian-calling-cards

https://hobancards.com/calling-cards-and-visiting-cards-brief-history

http://www.antiqueconnectionmall.com/CallingCards.htm

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