Postcard Arrives in the Wrong Century

A Michigan woman picked up her mail on Tuesday and was transported back in time. Figuratively, of course. Sitting on top of Brittany Keech's stack of mail was a postcard that might've appeared somewhat timely—"Halloween greetings," it read, next to an image of a witch and cat—if not for the postmark. It was dated Oct. 29, 1920, from Jamestown. "I start looking at it and I'm like, 'OK, it's been through some wear and tear,'" the Belding resident tells WXMI, which reports the postcard was sent with a one-cent stamp featuring George Washington. Keech is now hoping to track down relatives of the writer, who'd directed the note to a Roy McQueen of Belding's Division Street.

"Dear Cousins, Hope this will find you all well," Flossie Burgess wrote in a neat script. "I just finished my history lesson," she went on, describing the "awful cold" weather and her mother's "awful lame knees." Keech hopes the postcard will resonate with a family member. According to Ancestry.com, there was a Flossie Burgess living in Jamestown in 1940. But she would've been around age 9 in 1920. It's unclear how the postcard ended up with Keech, but a USPS spokesperson says it's unlikely that it was lost in the mail all this time. In most cases, old letters and postcards "are re-entered into our system," the rep says, per Newsweek. "As long as there is a deliverable address and postage, the card or letter gets delivered." (More postcard stories.)