GREETINGS FROM WINSTON-SALEM: POSTCARDS HAVE STORY TO TELL
Part of the challenge Molly Grogan Rawls faced in compiling the vintage postcards in her new book, Old Salem and Salem College, was finding a variety of images.
“I found that I had a lot of postcards of the same things, such as Home Moravian Church or the graveyard,” said Rawls, who has collected postcards since the 1960s. “You couldn’t just do a book of all these different views of Home Moravian Church.”
She borrowed postcards from other collectors and from archives at Salem College and Old Salem to gather the more than 200 images for the book, which will be published by Arcadia Publishing on Oct. 25.
This is her second postcard book. Her first, in 2004, featured vintage postcards of Winston-Salem in general. It is part of Arcadia’s “Postcard History” series of books.
“What’s interesting about postcards is how they show and tell a city’s history,” Rawls said. “They show a picture on the front of the card, and that shows something significant about the city. And then what’s on the back is interesting too ... usually sent from here to someone in their hometown, perhaps.”
The anecdotes on those cards often reveal something about how outsiders saw our community.
“Everyone likes to talk about the weather,” Rawls said, “but with these, they would also talk about the smell of tobacco manufacturing in the air, or about the Easter sunrise service and talk about that experience.”
tclodfelter@wsjournal.com
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