Transcription

Front — ] Bertha

Back — ] hello Pearle, how are you dear?. was in Ft. Madison today, wish you could have been there too. Saw the -and- -irons that belonged to Jo. Smith the morman who [continued on left edge and top:] was killed in Carthage jail, -also saw the chest in which he kept his Bible, they are owned by Mrs. Campbell.

Postcard Information

• Postmark: WEST [illegible], IOWA, JUN [illegible] 19[illegible]
• Sent To: Carthage IL
• Era: Golden Age (1907–1915)
• Publisher: PEARSON-ULLBERG CO., Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Stamp: 1¢
• Distance Traveled: ~25 miles
• Notes: Sender signed her name on the front of the card. The message references the death of Joseph Smith ("Jo. Smith"), founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, who was killed at the jail in Carthage, Illinois.

About This Card

The Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison, Iowa was commissioned in 1839 — seven years before Iowa achieved statehood — making it the oldest continuously operating prison west of the Mississippi River. The stone walls and cell houses visible in this photograph defined the city’s eastern skyline for more than a century. Fort Madison would eventually take on a second identity connected to pens of a different kind: in 1913, a Fort Madison jeweler named Walter A. Sheaffer would patent a lever-fill mechanism for fountain pens and found the Sheaffer Pen Company a few blocks away, giving the city its durable nickname, Pen City.