Picturing Our Past

Author Forrest Lamar Cooper probes
the Mississippi history presented
in his vast collection of rare postcards

By Debbie Stringer

The early 1900s was the golden era for picture postcards in America, when hundreds of millions of cards were mailed each year.

The postcard provided a novel way for travelers to send brief notes to the folks back home. Unlike the telegraph, a postcard could relay a photographic image. And mailing a postcard with a one-cent stamp was far more affordable than calling long distance.

With their unlimited subject matter—from World Fairs and historic events to local street scenes and people—picture postcards came to rival coins and stamps as popular collectibles.

Forrest Lamar Cooper became enamored with old picture postcards 42 years ago while browsing at an antique shop in his hometown of Florence. There he found an album filled with dozens of hand-tinted postcard views of Jackson in the early 1900s.

“I had never seen an old picture of Jackson in color. I bought the album and have collected postcards ever since,” said Cooper, a member of Southern Pine Electric Power Association.

Through the years, Cooper has amassed more than 10,000 postcards depicting a person, place or event in pre-1920 Mississippi. Of these, 4,600 make up the Cooper Postcard Collection of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Cooper’s private collection of postcards is neatly organized by subject matter in photo albums at his home near Florence. There are albums for views of hotels, street scenes, parades, railroads, churches, hospitals, sports, people, industry and agriculture.

One album is dedicated to citrus production on the Mississippi coast. Another album stores more than 100 views of trolleys that operated in 14 Mississippi towns before 1918, when the rise of the automobile made them obsolete.

The picture postcard industry provided employment for both local and itinerant photographers.

“Postcard manufacturers sent photographers throughout America, taking pictures in just about every little town,” Cooper said.

Town officials wanted their town to be shipshape when the postcard photographer arrived. Road and utility workers were shooed away to avoid the appearance of anything amiss. The locals showed up in fancy dress and shiny automobiles, just in case they were asked to pose.

“Everybody knew the photographer was coming to town. Word got out quick, and they’d come out to see what was going on,” Cooper said.

As he worked, the photographer would note the colors of the bricks and other details appearing in the scenes he snapped. Back at the postcard publishing plant, workers would use his notes to accurately hand-paint selected black-and-white photographs before they went to press.

Cooper keeps an eye out for Mississippi postcards at antique shops, flea markets, estate sales and online auctions. But his most productive source may be the large postcard shows he attends across the country and abroad. At a London show three years ago he found a view of McComb’s train depot.

Cooper’s passion for Mississippi postcards and the stories behind their subjects led to his avocation as the author of the “Looking Back” column, which has appeared in every issue of Mississippi Magazine since it began publishing 29 years ago. Using one of his postcards to kick-start an idea, Cooper researches and then writes essays about aspects of Mississippi culture, history, products and people.

His first “Looking Back” column was a look at the citrus industry that flourished in the Mississippi Coast area at the turn of the 20th century.

“Mississippi Citrus” is one of 39 essays collected in a new book of Cooper’s writings and postcards. “Looking Back Mississippi: Towns and Places” presents selected “Looking Back” essays illustrated with postcards, memorabilia and photographs from Cooper’s collection. The focus is on various cities and towns throughout the state from the mid-1800s to the 1930s.

“I had written more than 160 articles in 29 years, so we boiled it down to 39 on 35 different locales,” Cooper said. “The book covers the state, from top to bottom.”

Most of the postcards in the book offer rare glimpses of places that no longer exist, including a 1906 view of the Ship Island Lighthouse, Lake Cormorant in the 1920s and Belzoni’s ice plant in 1909.

Cooper is working with his publisher, University Press of Mississippi, on a second “Looking Back Mississippi” book. The focus will shift to people, mostly Mississippians but also notable people who visited the state for various reasons.

One such individual is “Professor” Charles Oldrieve, a Bostonian who invented a pair of pontoon shoes so he could literally walk on water. Oldrieve accepted a wager of $5,000 to walk the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Cincinnati to New Orleans in the span of a month.

The Mississippi connection? Cooper has a postcard view of Oldrieve walking past Greenville on the Mississippi River, where the locals gathered to cheer him on.