Click here to read story from beginning.
Before returning to the story, I have some photos of the village of Nieder-Mohrau that seem to fit in here with the history of the area.
*****
The postcard pictures here show views of Nieder-Mohrau, but I do not know the exact time frame. I added these photos because they seemed to be relevant, I don't remember if they were actually in the little cotton sack with the rest of Grandma Cecile's souvenirs.
 |
| old postcard photo of Nieder-Mohrau |
Printing on the face of this postcard identifies the scene as "Nieder-Mohrau". The shading and dark edges on the left side are from smoke damage from the house fire in the old Beitel farmhouse in Oregon. The picture shows how the fields ran from the back of the houses up to the forest and hills in the background.
 |
| Back of the above postcard |
As you can see, this postcard was never mailed to anyone or used as a message. The vertical printing in the center of the back says "Foto. Hans Olbrich Wurbenthal 299. Ges. Gesch"... where the print fades out. My guess is this was a photo taken by Hans Olbrich in a series he did in the Wuerbenthal area.
 |
| Nieder-Mohrau from a different angle |
Again, this postcard is identified as being "Nieder-Mohrau", but it is a different view, closer to the center of town. The church is quite clearly visible in the upper left section of the picture, with the cemetery behind it. In processing the file for this photo, I changed the color to improve the contrast. In reality, it is more of a sepia tone.
 |
| Back of the above postcard |
This picture shows the back side of the second Nieder-Mohrau picture postcard. Again, this postcard was obviously never used. The vertical stamp says the same as the other Nieder-Mohrau card - "Foto. Hans Olbrich Wurbenthal 299. Ges. Geschoff". The type gets very blurry at the end of "Geschoff", so that is a best guess.
 |
| Another Nieder-Mohrau postcard |
This postcard, though also never used, has more of a story to go with it. Among the items in my Uncle Tony Beitel's family history photo album, was this printed copy of a page from the book "Unvergessen Heimat - Nieder- und Ober-Mohrau", a book which I have mentioned before in this blog:
 |
| Page 62 of : Unvergessene Heimat" |
As you can see, the top photo on the page is the same picture as in the third postcard, a large building with a small truck parked in front.The text under the picture in the book is, "Hansdorfer Bierauto beim Niedergericht". My friend Al translated that as "Hansdorf beer wagon near the Lower Judicial Office".
In the copied page (not in the actual book) there is a handwritten note to the right of the photo. It says:
This is the Restaurant where they celebrated your mother's visit in 1936. The family picture was taken just 50 ft. to the right. It was the gathering place for the Village and was near the Church and School.
Since the written text says "your mother's" I'm guessing that it was written by my Aunt Mildred, Uncle Tony's wife. Or it could have been written by Sr Agnes, who must have copied the page from the book to give to Aunt Mildred for her family history records. I remember Uncle Tony saying that the album was Aunt Mildred's work.
It does corroborate the idea that one of the photos taken that day was indeed taken by a restaurant - see the third photo in Post #35. It also seems to indicate that the photo was originally from about the time of Grandma's visit in 1936. Since the other postcards are all by the same photographer, they must also be from around 1936.
Remember, to see a larger view of the images, simply click on any of them and you will be able to scroll through them all. And if you are curious about the other two images on "page 62", my friend Al translated the text as:
the second picture - "Gasthof (restaurant) Eschig-Breiter" (the name of the property owners)
the third picture - War Memorial (WWI), behind it is the Restaurant Koehler
***************************************************
Story to be continued......
