When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
A 5.5x3.5" vintage RPPC photo postcard from the estate of a vintage automobile postcard collector. This was part of a huge collection of antique postcards.
Photo Overview
An evocative real photo postcard capturing the transition from horse to horseless carriage in rural America around 1911. Uncle Adolph Wuerzburger stands holding the leads of two dark horses with a long gun in hand, posed beside Uncle Bill Schade\'s Rambler touring car on a farm southeast of Patton. The brass-era Rambler, built by the Thomas B. Jeffery Company of Kenosha, Wisconsin, displays its license plate number on the radiator, folding top, gas headlamps, and wooden artillery-spoke wheels - hallmarks of an early 1910s touring model.
The farmyard setting adds wonderful period detail, with a haystack, farm implements, split-rail fencing, and mature shade trees framing this remarkable meeting of two eras of transportation. A superb piece for collectors of brass-era automobiles, early motoring history, hunting imagery, or Wuerzburger and Schade family genealogy.
Historical Notes
The Rambler pictured here was nearing the end of its first life when this photo was taken. Thomas B. Jeffery, a bicycle maker turned automobile pioneer, produced Ramblers in Kenosha from 1902, making it one of America\'s earliest mass-produced cars - second only to Oldsmobile in early volume. After Jeffery\'s death in 1910, his son Charles retired the Rambler name in 1914, renaming the cars Jeffery in his father\'s honor. The Kenosha factory passed to Charles Nash in 1916, and in 1950 Nash revived the Rambler name for its compact car - a nameplate that carried on through American Motors into the 1960s. Families like the Wuerzburgers and Schades, still keeping horses for farm work while investing in an automobile, embodied the decade when America\'s rural roads changed forever - by 1920, the horse\'s dominance on the American farm was in permanent decline.
Browse our complete RPPC Photo Postcard photograph collection.
Text Present
On the front, on the car\'s radiator plate: "1206 B" (license number)
On the back, printed: "POST CARD - CORRESPONDENCE HERE - FOR ADDRESS ONLY"
On the back, handwritten in ink: "Uncle Adolph Wuerzburger, South east of Patton"
"Uncle Bill Schade\'s Rambler car."
Print analysis
This is an original real photo postcard, a Type 1 photographic print made at or very near the time the image was taken. The divided back with "Correspondence Here / For Address Only" layout is consistent with postcard stock used in the 1907-1915 period, matching the circa 1910-1912 Rambler automobile pictured. The continuous-tone photographic emulsion confirms this is a true photographic print rather than any printed reproduction.
Condition
All postcards we sell are in fair to excellent vintage condition. Please see photos for any tears, folds, smudges, or other age damage that may be present.
