Over the past couple of weeks I have included a number of images in my posts that are derived from 110 year old postcards of "Duke's Park" in Hillsborough. Today I offer a handful of additional depictions of the grounds of what is known today as Duke Farms from a different series of 1905 postcards.
All of the cards come from my personal collection, I own a few dozen in all. The clearest views of the J.B. Duke estate come form the very earliest postcards, from 1905 to around 1910. After that, most of the publishers seem to have garishly hand-colored photos that were already somewhat degraded.
To be clear, none of the images in my posts are the unadulterated cards as they exist in my collection. I have been more interested lately in attempting to rediscover the underlying photograph within the postcard. To that end, all of the images have been scanned and cropped and cleaned up on the computer. Blemishes, scratches, rips, tears and extraneous writing have been mostly removed.
I have all of the originals safely in a binder on the shelf, and they make for interesting artifacts in themselves - including many century old postmarks and messages on the reverse. Some day I may even get to posting the "flip sides".
But today, I am still on the hunt for more cards!
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