The Butler County Courthouse in Greenville, Alabama. International Postcard Week 2023

Happy International Postcard Week 2023

The Butler County Courthouse, Greenville, Alabama

There have been four Butler County courthouses at this location.  The first one was built in the 1820's and lasted for more than 25 years before it was destroyed by fire on April 12, 1853. 

The second was another wood structure that cost around $6,000 to complete.  It was in use until 1870 when it became apparent that it needed extensive repairs and it was recommended by a committee to replace it with a larger building.  

By 1871 work started on the third building, this time it would be made of brick.  This one would last for 30 years before the county realized it was too small for their needs and was torn down to make room for a larger building.

The final courthouse was finished in 1903 and it was wired for electricity.  Considering the size f the town, this is quite remarkable!  There have been changes to the structure over the years, air conditioning was added 50 years later, the dome was replaced in 1977, but this building has lasted.  Personally, I hope it lasts for many years to come.

I wish you all the best and may your mailbox be filled with wonderful postcards,                                        Brenda Cole 

International Postcard Week 2021, Greenville, Alabama

 

Happy International Postcard Week 2021 !!

This year I decided to highlight our local farmers market in Greenville, Alabama, USA.  My husband and I have been growing and making things to sell here three days a week.  We have met a lot of wonderful people including the lovely lady you see on the front of this postcard. If you have a local farmers market, I would like to encourage you to visit it and see all the wonderful things they have to offer.  You never know, you just might find your new favorite food!

Take care, 

Brenda Cole

Limited edition of 150

100 years ago Harry Gardiner "The Human Fly" climbed this Building in Alabama

National Post Card Week
May 3 - 9, 2015

In 1917, Harry Gardiner climbed to the top of the Empire Building in downtown Birmingham, Alabama.  A crowd of 35,000 people gathered to watch "the Human Fly" scale the sixteen story building.  The Birmingham Ledger newspaper sponsored the promotional event.   This image was the cover of my book "Birmingham: Then & Now. (2007)

This postcard is from JD Weeks and is number 71 in a limited edition of 100.

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Harry H. Gardiner (1871 – after 1923), better known as the Human Fly, was an American man famous for climbing buildings. He began climbing in 1905, and successfully climbed over 700 buildings in Europe and North America, usually wearing ordinary street clothes and using no special equipment.

The climb on this postcard took place on January 30, 1917. 

Birmingham, Alabama, Then and Now...

Greetings from Birmingham Alabama

This is a large letter Curteich postcard and is postmarked in 1973 with an Alabama stamp.

USA stamp 1969

The 150th Anniversary of Alabama Statehood

Camellia Flower & Northern Flicker (Woodpecker Bird)

6 cents

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Here is Birmingham in 2009...

An aerial view of Birmingham at night.

This is postmarked in 2009 with a 27 cent 'Guava' stamp.

USA stamp 2008

Tropical Fruits

Guava, 27 cents

Alabama Space and Rocket Center, Spaceship Lunar Odyssey

Alabama Space and Rocket Center
Huntsville, Alabama

World's Largest Space Museum
Tranquility Base

Passengers experience 'g' forces and a simulated form of weightlessness aboard Spaceship Lunar Odyssey, at the Alabama Space and Rocket Center.  The futuristic spacecraft flies 46 passengers on simulated flights to the moon everyday from the world's largest space exhibit, located in Huntsville, Alabama.

This postcard was made by Dexter Press and is unused. 

Huntsville, Alabama - U.S. Space & Rocket Center

 The U.S. Space & Rocket Center
Huntsville, Alabama

postmarked in 2012 with a 32 cent Aloha stamp

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The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama is a museum operated by the government of Alabama, showcasing rockets, achievements, and artifacts of the U.S. space program. Sometimes billed as "Earth's largest space museum", astronaut Owen Garriott described the place as, "a great way to learn about space in a town that has embraced the space program from the very beginning."

Opened in 1970, just after the second manned mission to the lunar surface, the center not only showcases Apollo Program hardware but also houses interactive science exhibits, Space Shuttle and Army rocketry and aircraft. There are also more than 1,500 permanent rocketry and space exploration artifacts, as well as many rotating rocketry and space-related exhibits.

Post Card Exchange Store in Birmingham, Alabama

 National Postcard Week
May 1 - 7, 2011

Post card Exchange, Birmingham, Alabama
W. H. Faulkner Proprietor

William H. Faulkner came to Birmingham, AL in 1903 as a traveling salesman.  In 1909 he opened the Postcard Exchange dealing mostly in postcards.  In 1919 he changed the name to Faulkner Novelties as the golden era of postcards subsided.  He continued in that business until his death in 1946.

limited edition 46 of 100
postmarked in 2011 with one 28 cent polar bear stamp and two 1 cent Tiffany Lamp stamps

Final Battle of the Creek Indian War, Horseshoe Bend

Horseshoe Bend National Military Park
Final Battle of the Creek Indian War

March 27, 1814
12 miles north of Dadeville, Alabama, Hwy 49

Storming the Barricade the soldiers of the U.S. 39th Infantry followed by Tennessee militiamen pour over the log wall to attack the Creek Indians. The barricade was five to eight feet high. In the foreground, the man with an arrow in his leg is Sam Houston, later of Texas fame.

postmarked in 2010 with a 32 cent 'Remember the Maine' stamp

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Creek Indian War:

The Upper Creeks, siding with the English, sacked Fort Mims (Baldwin County, Alabama, north of Mobile) in the summer of 1813, massacring more than 500 men, women, and children. These same Indians, grown to a force of about 900 warriors, were decisively beaten at Horseshoe Bend (Tallapoosa County, Alabama) late in March 1814 by Andrew Jackson and his force of about 2,000 Regulars, militia, and volunteers, plus several hundred friendly Indians.


USA Stamp 1997
32 cents
Remember the Maine

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The USS Maine was the United States Navy's second commissioned pre-dreadnought battleship, although she was originally classified as an armored cruiser. She is best known for her catastrophic loss in Havana harbor. Maine had been sent to Havana, Cuba to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban revolt against Spain. On the evening of 15 February 1898, she suddenly exploded, and swiftly sank, killing nearly three quarters of her crew. Though then, as now, the cause and responsibility for her sinking were unclear; popular opinion in the U.S. blamed Spain, and the sinking (popularized in the phrase Remember the Maine) was one of the precipitating events of the Spanish–American War. Her sinking remains the subject of speculation, with various authors proposing that she sank due to the results of an undetected fire in one of her coal bunkers, that she was the victim of a naval mine, or that she was deliberately sunk for the purposes of driving the U.S. into a war with Spain. The cause of the explosion that sank the ship still remains a mystery.

Two Alabama Map Postcards

Alabama

1- Lake and Swans in Avondale Park, Birmingham

2 - Entrance to Fort McClellan, Anniston

3 - Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library, Tuscaloosa

4 - Vulcan, The Iron Man, Birmingham

5 - Alabama State Capitol, Montgomery

6 - Bunker Tower, Mt. Cheaha State Park

7 -  Noccalula Falls, On Lookout Mountain

8 - Pulpit Rock, Cheaha State Park

9 - Noccalula Falls, Gadsden

10 - River Terrace, Bellingrath Gardens, Mobile

11 - Bankhead Tunnel Under Mobile River, Mobile

unused

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Alabama

1 - Birthplace of Helen Keller, Tuscumbia
2 - Big Spring Park, Huntsville
3 - Wheeler Dam, North Alabama
4 - Vulcan, Birmingham
5 - Dock Scene, Mobile
6 - Bunker Tower, Anniston
7 - Denny Chimes, Univ. of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
8 - Azalea Bushes in Full Bloom
9 - Noccalula Falls, Gadsden
10 - State Capitol, Montgomery

postmarked from Birmingham, AL with 9 cent  US Capital stamp in 1976

Beinville Cross, Alabama and the Colonial Dames of America

Beinville Cross, Beinville Square
Mobile, Alabama

This public park in the center of the business section was set aside for park purposes when the city of Mobile was chartered by the first Alabama State Legislature more than a hundred years ago.  A granite cross erected by the Colonial Dames of Alabama near Dauphin Street bears the inscription: "To Jean Baptiste La Moyne, Sieur de Beinville.  Native of Montreal, Canada, Naval Officer of France, Governor of Louisiana, and founder of its first capital, Mobile, 1711."

unused

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The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America is an American organization composed of women who are descended from an ancestor "who came to reside in an American Colony before 1750, and whose services were rendered during the Colonial Period." The national headquarters of the society is at Washington, D.C., at Dumbarton House. The organization was founded in 1890 with the Alabama branch being incorporated February 22, 1898.

Peanut Butter Pie - From Alabama or Georgia??

Card 1:
From the Dothan Recipe Collection
Dothan Alabama
"Peanut Capital of the World"

Card 2:
From the Georgia Recipe Collection


on the back of both is the same recipe for:

Peanut Butter Pie

1 baked 9-inch pie shell
1/2 cup peanut butter (creamy style)
1 cup powdered sugar
3 egg yolks
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups scalded milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons butter

Mix the peanut butter and powdered sugar together in a small bowl and set aside. Place egg yolks in top of double boiler and beat with electric mixer until fluffy - before heating. Combine sugar, salt and cornstarch and beat into yolks. Add scalded milk and heat until thick and smooth, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add butter and vanilla. Spread two-thirds of the peanut butter/powdered sugar mixture on the bottom of bake pie shell. Pour the hot custard over peanut butter and cool Top pie with whipped topping and sprinkle with remaining peanut butter/powdered sugar mixture.

Both are - - -
Photo courtesy of Peanut Advisory Board

Cathedral Caverns, Alabama

Frozen Waterfall, Cathedral Caverns, Alabama

A portion of the world's largest frozen waterfalls, 100,000,000 years old. Featuring the 7 greatest wonders In the world.

postmarked with US Buffalo Bill Cody 15 cent stamp in 1989

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Cathedral Caverns State Park is located within Woodville, Alabama city limits. The cave was first developed as an attraction by Jay Gurley in the late 1950s. It was declared a National Natural Landmark in June 1972.

Mr. Gurley maintained the cave as a tourist attraction from 1959 to 1974. The cave was sold in 1975 at an auction. The State of Alabama bought the cave in 1987 with the intent to reopen the site as a state park. After funding delays, restoration work actually began in 1995. In May 2000, the Cavern re-opened to the public.

In 1995, Cathedral Caverns provided the cave settings for the Disney Studios film Tom and Huck especially where the vicious Injun Joe (Eric Schweig) falls into an enormous chasm.

Cathedral Caverns holds six world records:

(1) Cathedral Caverns has the widest entrance of any commercial cave in the world. It is 25 feet tall and 128 feet wide.

(2) Cathedral Caverns is home to "Goliath"--the largest stalagmite in the world. It measures 45 feet tall and 243 feet in circumstance.

(3) Cathedral Caverns has the largest flow stone wall, which is 32 feet tall and 135 feet long.

(4) Cathedral Caverns is known for the largest "frozen" waterfall.

(5) Cathedral Caverns has the largest stalagmite forest of any cave in the world.

(6) Cathedral Caverns has the most improbably formation in the world which is a stalagmite that is 35 feet tall and 3 inches wide!