Valentines: A Brief History & a Sampling from Cassandra’s Antique Collection

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

February has been a month of romance since ages past. St. Valentine’s Day originated from Christian and Roman traditions - the Roman Catholic Church recognizes three martyred saints named Valentine or Valentinus. During the Middle Ages in France and England it was believed that February 14 was the beginning of birds' mating season, thus began the practice of celebrating Valentine's Day as a day for romance in the middle of February.

The oldest known valentine still in existence today is considered to be a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. Several years later, King Henry V hired a writer, John Lydgate, to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.

During the 1600s, the holiday began to be popularly celebrated in Great Britain; and, by the mid -1700s, it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. Due to improvements in the technology of printing in the late 1700s, printed cards began to replace written letters. The manufactured cards made it easier for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one's feelings was discouraged. Less expensive postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of posting valentines.

In the 1840s in Worcester, Massachusetts, a young woman named Esther A. Howland, inspired by the fancy lace-covered English valentines that her father sold in his Worcester stationery store, began to create and sell the first mass-produced valentines in the U.S.

Esther initially created several sample valentines and persuaded one of her brothers skilled in penmanship to inscribe sentiments in the cards. The valentines proved extremely popular - despite their high cost – many sold for $5 to $10 each, and very extravagant ones, bedecked with ribbons, satin, and silk, cost up to $30.

Esther’s business boomed, and she recruited four friends to help her fulfill the orders and created an innovative assembly-line approach in making the cards. Seated at a long table, one worker cut out small colored lithographs of sentimental subjects, the next laid them on brilliantly glazed paper backgrounds, a third assembled the layers of lace paper that framed the central design, and the fourth pasted down a printed sentiment, typically inside the card or under a flap where only the recipient could see it. In 1881, Esther sold her business to the George C. Whitney Company.

While other manufacturers of valentines competed for the affection of the public, none could compete with the quality, taste, and style of Esther Howland. She is credited with having popularized the lace Valentine, and propelling it into a major industry and came to be known as "The Mother of the American Valentine"..

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

The more I have, for both are infinite.

~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

A life without love is like a year without summer.

~ Swedish quote

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

~ Lao Tzu

To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.

~ Karen Sunde



Love is the only gold.

~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,

Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

All are but ministers of love,

And feed his sacred flame.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

~ Mother Teresa

Paper Doll Memories

As children during the “Fabulous Fifties,” my sister and I enjoyed playing with paper dolls. Many hours were spent on our living room rug or on that of our Grandmother Lavenua, cutting out and arranging the clothes, accessories, and sometimes even furniture of our paper doll families. Our favorites included brides and grooms; ballerinas; movie stars: Doris Day, Vivien Leigh, Debbie Reynolds, and Elizabeth Taylor; and television stars: Roy Rogers and Dale Evans; the Mousketeers, Cubby & Karen from the "Mickey Mouse Show;" the Story Princess from the “Howdy Doody Show;” and the Lennon Sisters from the “Lawrence Welk Show.”

A special favorite was our magnetic set, “Magic Mary Jane.”

Paper dolls are a wonderful source of history, culture, literature, costume, art, marketing, and nostalgia and have been around as long as there has been paper. In Asian cultures many years ago, faces or other objects were applied to the paper used during religious rituals and ceremonies. More similar to contemporary paper dolls were the “pantins,” the jointed dancing or jumping jack puppets of eighteenth century France. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain, printers printed paper dolls, mixing fun and virtue by printing stories with morals and values to accompany them. Paper dolls were a valuable treasure in early America, since paper was limited.

By the mid-1800s, paper dolls were produced as a beautifully lithographed full-color collection. The artist, Raphael Tuck, was perhaps the best known manufacturer of the vintage paper dolls of this era. The trademark style of this company was the set of vintage paper doll costumes and interchangeable heads.

There were dolls representing royalty, the children of royalty, and actors from the theater, stage, and opera. Early paper doll sets often advertised a particular product, e.g., sewing, bakery, or medicinal products. With the purchase of the product children would receive a doll or outfits.

The Boston Sunday Globe began printing paper dolls in the 1890s. Characters from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” were the subject of one of its paper doll supplements in 1896.

Women's magazines often came with a page of paper dolls for children to cut out: Ladies' Home Journal (Lettie Lane Series); Pictorial Review (Dolly Dingle); and McCall’s (Betsy McCall). The website, Betsy McCall Paper Dolls: The First Ten Years, features scanned originals from 1951 through 1961, ready to download, cut and play.  Another web site includes a brief history of McCall’s magazine and the history of the Betsy McCall paper dolls.

The popularity of paper dolls soared during the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's. Paper dolls were made and sold representing royalty, public leaders, movie stars, fantasy fairy tale style characters, comic book characters, TV characters, family groups, brides, dancers, stuffed animals, babies, and even cherubs. Public popularity waned somewhat during the 1960s , attributed to the increased popularity of television-viewing and the rise of the three dimensional fashion doll industry, i.e., Barbie, Toni, etc.

A site from which to order vintage and mint uncut paper dolls (as well as a real trip down "Memory Lane") is: http://www.papergoodies.com/scripts/default.asp.  You are certain to locate some of your old favorites!

Pioneers to Indiana

I am descended both maternally and paternally from pioneers to Indiana, who arrived to the unbroken forests in the early 19th century from Connecticut, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and North Carolina. These many grandmothers and grandfathers were mostly English or German in ancestry and traveled to the Hoosier State by horseback and Conestoga wagon.

From the History of Indiana by the Hon. W.S. Haymond, 1879:
"The journey from civilization to the forest-home for the pioneer, with his wife and family, was not among the least of their difficulties. The route lay, for the most part, through a rough country. Swamps and marshes were crossed with great exertion and fatigue; rivers were forded with difficulty and danger; forests were penetrated with risk of captivity by hostile Indians; nights were passed in open prairies, with the sod for a couch and the heavens for a shelter; long, weary days and weeks of tiresome travel were endured. Perchance the mother and child were seated in a rough farm-wagon, while the father walked by the side of his faithful team, urging them over the uneven ground. But they were not always blessed with this means of transportation. And, in the best cases, the journey westward was a tedious, tiresome, dangerous one...Generally the pioneers were blessed with good health, and enabled to overcome the privations of the forest travel. At night they slept in their wagon, or upon the grass; while the mules, hobbled to prevent escape, grazed the prairie around them.

But the toils and dangers of the pioneer were not ended with the termination of his journey. Perchance the cabin is yet existing only in the surrounding trees. But he never falters. The forest bows beneath his axe; and, as log after log is placed one upon the other, his situation becomes more cheerful. Already the anxious mother has pointed out the corner for the rude chimney, and designated her choice in the location of the door and window. The cabin grows day by day; and at length it is finished, and the family enters their home. It is not a model home; but it is the beginning of a great prosperity, and as such is worthy of preservation in history, on account of its obscurity and its severe economy. But it was a home, notwithstanding; and I venture the observation, that with all its lack of comforts, with all its pinching poverty, with all its isolation and danger, it was often a happy home; and perhaps its growth, in this respect, is not among the greatest of its accomplishments; yet after all, it has become happier, as well as wealthier...

The years passed on, and the pioneers continued their toils, submitted patiently to their hardships, until the light of civilization and prosperity dawned upon them in open cornfields, waving in harvest luxury, or in neat, comfortable dwellings, that were raised by the site of the cabin homes. But his dawn is rapidly approaching the high noon of prosperity. In place of the ever-winding 'trace,' the iron rail may now be seen, and for the old-fashioned two-wheeled cart we have the powerful locomotive. The scene has been completely changed. The forests have disappeared, or are rapidly disappearing, and being supplanted by cultivated fields. On every hand we may behold evidences of this great transformation. Let us thank God and praise the pioneers of Indiana for what has been accomplished, and, having the promises already fulfilled in our eyes, continue in the industry and perseverance for which we have had so glorious an example."