Vintage Greeting Cards



Not as popular as they once were with our ancestors, greeting cards from the past can provide you a bit of insight into the social aspects your ancestors were involved in. The Baltimore Collections online has the Enoch Pratt Greeting Card Collection containing over 71,000 items dating back to 1870. For just about any occasion, a greeting card was created. Not only holidays, Christmas, Easter and especially Valentine’s Day, but for baby showers, engagement parties, and weddings.

Not all have dates or time periods, but many do, so that helps narrow the time frame for your ancestors, the typical cards they would have sent or received. 

Click on a card of interest and it will enlarge. You can then save to your computer. Add the digital images or print a few for your family history collection to really add interest.

For those liking to be arts/crafts, you can even print some of the greeting cards to give on certain occasions.

It is great to cover different decades to see how greeting cards changed.  

Photos: Valentine’s Day about 1910s; Thanksgiving about 1910s to 1920s; and Christmas greetings 1900-1909.

Related FamilyTree Blogs:

History of Christmas Cards

Picture Postcards

Flirtation Cards

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