The Postcard Collection

Before 1907, the U.S. Post Office did not permit writing a message on the address side of postcards. For that reason, many U.S. picture postcards mailed before then had messages written across their fronts.

Postcards with a divided back finally were permitted in the U.S. in March 1907; addresses were to be written on the postcard’s right side, and messages on the left. At that point in American history, the postcard hobby quickly became a public addiction, and publishers produced millions of cards in this era.

Photographers like Scottsville’s William Burgess earned a good living by photographing local scenes and people to be printed as postcards via a lithographic process. Burgess traveled all over Central Virginia to take such photographs and to sell his postcards to local stores.

When Burgess died in 1935, his estate contained over 485,000 postcards of various Virginia scenes and people. Some of these extant Burgess postcards are shown below and can be distinguished from other photographers’ work on this webpage by the ‘W.E. Burgess’ or ‘Idylwood Studio’ markings that Burgess usually put on the front of his postcards.