Delia and Flossie talk about chickens in Buckeye City, 1919

DANVILLE — Time to read people’s mail again, as we dive into the historical mail bag and find a postcard sent from Buckeye City (today part of Danville) in 1919.

It’s a real photograph postcard of an intersection in town.

On the back of the card, someone named Delia is writing to her friend Flossie Doll, who lived on Millersburg’s rural route #1: “Danville O. Sunday evening Mar 30th. We are well.

Hope this finds you O.K. We had some snow today. I have 16 little chicks. To[o] early for them but if they live, I can have one when you come down. I want you to come sure this summer.”

Flossie was easy to find, with such a distinctive name. She was born Flossie Fern Cutnaw in Shreve, Wayne County, in 1889. She married John Franklin Doll in 1912 and moved to Holmes County.

They later moved to the village of Mohican in Ashland County, and later into the city of Ashland itself. A genealogy search even turned up a picture of her.

She’d no doubt be startled to hear that her mail would one day be discussed in a local history column.

(As an aside, I do feel sorry for future historians. Almost no postcards are being sent today, and the texts and tweets of today will dissolve into digital detritus if no one makes any attempt to save them. In the midst of all this technology, I see a data desert for future historians.)

With Delia, I only had the first name to go by. While rare today, it wasn’t an uncommon name in 1919, and several Delias lived or were somehow connected to Knox County in this period.

The best candidate who emerges is Deliah Steele, who is listed on the 1930 census living with her husband Stephen in or near Danville (albeit, according to the postcard, with enough room for chickens).

While not rich, they were well enough off to own a radio, a luxury noted on that census report. Stephen was employed as an elevator clerk.

I’m not sure if that means an elevator operator, or a clerk in an elevator factory, but their house is valued at $4,000, equivalent to almost $79,000 today. They were doing better than a lot of people in the Great Depression.

It could be that one of the houses in the photo is where Delia lived, though, alas, the census report did not list the streets where houses were being surveyed. Does anyone know if the house still stands today?

It is presumably in what was once Buckeye City, the southern section of what is, today, Danville.