Heir Mail

In 2004, we helped organize the Smith family reunion and invited attendees to bring old family photos and mementos to share. Connie Conradt, the daughter-in-law of a cousin, had never attended a Smith gathering, but she brought a postcard showing stores in Steinauer, the small southeastern Nebraska town where she lived. The card was postmarked there in September 1911, and addressed to a Smith at Norcatur, a Kansas town about 300 miles west. Connie's mother had bought the postcard at a flea market in Des Moines, Iowa — some 200 or more miles east of Steinauer — because it showed Connie's town.