Two Home Towns

Here's something I never thought I'd see: a postcard sent from McKinleyville—my home town of the last quarter-century—to the home town of my birth, Covina, back when both burgs were basically backwoods backwaters that no one ever heard of.

"Ethel" mailed this postcard to "Elvin Gilmore Esq." in Covina in 1909. The somewhat cringe novelty side can be viewed by clicking here.

Let's see if we can figure out the connection between these two home towns of mine!

First of all, here's the cursive message transcribed:

          Sept. 14, 1909.
Hello Elv—
       Rec'd all your
postals since
you left. I
suppose you are
having a dandy
time "skylarking"
around I know
what that means
now. Say my dear
"cousin" you have
to come thru with
a late song for sending
me such a "nice postal"
Everyone is fine & dandy. Ethel

How is "Bless
my soul"
now days

A few words about McKinleyville before we go further. McK today is an unincorporated town of about 16,000 located on the Redwood Coast in California's Humboldt county. As the crow flies, it's about 70 miles south of the Oregon border and almost 600 miles north of Covina. In 1909, McKinleyville was home to maybe 300 people; Covina, about 1,400. So, both were small towns at the time, rural in setting, and their respective economies centered around agriculture. In sum, the two places were not too dissimilar at all.

Ethel would have bought and mailed her postcard here at Isaac Minor's mercantile (built 1895), where Elvin had previously worked as Minor's poultry manager.¹ The old store and creamery building shown here still stand today on McKinleyville's Central Avenue.
Photo by A. W. Ericson, courtesy Ericson Photograph Collection, Library, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.

I found out through census records that, around 1900, the family of Jacob and Sarah Gilmore moved to McKinleyville from Nebraska, where Elvin had been born in 1882. The mister and missus had 12 living children, with Elvin being the next-youngest son. Concerning the sender of the postcard, I found no record of a "cousin" named Ethel on either side of the family, so I presume it was actually Elvin's younger-by-a-year sister—Ethel Irene—who wrote to him in Covina.

And what was Elvin doing in southern California? Turns out his parents and several sibs had moved to Riverside c.1905, with Mrs. Gilmore being widowed not long after. But more to the point, Elvin had an elder brother, Walter, who instead had settled in Covina, where he worked as a horse groomer at Rook's blacksmith shop² on the south side of Badillo just west of Citrus.³ (And I imagine that when Ethel asked how "Bless my soul" was doing, she was inquiring about brother Walter, who I further assume used that peculiar expression often enough to be known by it.)

Elvin Gilmore of McKinleyville, and Walter Gilmore of Covina, c.1911. Source: Ancestry.com.

Speaking of Walter, he ended up being a lifelong resident of Covina. When the time came to get married, Walter really scored in terms of a bride, hitching onto the only daughter of early Covina pioneers Joseph and Sarah Amon,⁴ who were quite well-to-do orchard owners. After horses panned out as a living, Walter went to work as a bus driver for Covina Union High School.⁵ The job evidently paid well, as Walter was eventually able to acquire a 10-acre orange grove of his own.⁶ Walter Gilmore died of heart failure in 1949 at the age of 73 at the former Amon home on West Badillo,⁷ only a block from the site of the blacksmith shop where his life in Covina began.

Anyway, back to our postcard addressee: after a month "skylarking" in SoCal, Elvin and his brother, Arthur, returned to Humboldt county on the steamer S.S. Roanoke on October 1, 1909.⁸ (At that time, there were as yet no automobile highways serving the North Coast of California.)

The S.S. Roanoke in Humboldt Bay. Image courtesy Steven Lazar and The Humboldt Project.

Sometime during or after his trip, Elvin evidently decided to move to Riverside himself, where he would eventually marry, have two daughters, and spend the rest of his life. In the end, Elvin Gilmore outlived all of his siblings, finally passing away in 1968 at the age of 86.⁹

So, there you have it! Probably more than you ever wanted to know about a 117-year-old throwaway novelty postcard—which thankfully in my case never met a trash can.

Thanks to Michael Schoenholtz for finding the photo of the Gilmore bros!

References:

¹ Daily Standard, October 24, 1904, p.2.
² Covina Argus, January 1, 1910, p.6.
³ Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Covina, 1906 & 1911, Library of Congress.
⁴ Covina Argus, August 19, 1911, p.6.
⁵ Covina Argus, July 1, 1921, p.1.
⁶ Covina Argus, October 13, 1922, p.4.
⁷ Walter Gilmore, Certificate of Death #12056, State of California, Dept. of Public Health, filed October 7, 1949, in the Los Angeles County Recorder's Office.
⁸ Humboldt Standard, October 1, 1909, p.8.
⁹ Social Security Death Index for 1968.