Building 35 Postcard, 1914 (Cat. # 12426; Acc. # 2204)
I recently cataloged a black and white photographic postcard of Building 35 on the Presidio, which was originally built as cavalry barracks in 1912. Seeing a building that is centered on the main post of the Presidio and completely surrounded by other military buildings serving in various capacities, standing on its own, with nothing but dirt lots on all sides, is impressive on its own, but the pithiest facets of this item’s provenance pertains to its sender and the message she inscribed. Sent to Gloucester, Massachusetts by a woman named Alda whose husband (presumably), Ned, lived in Building 35. The message on the back is as follows:
April 30th, 1914
Dear Elizabeth,
It is truly lonesome with all the men gone to the Border. I haven’t decided yet whether I should break into housekeeping, but I think I will until they come back from the Border. Lots of love to Mother and Father.
Alda
The deployment she refers to was probably in response to an edict in which President Wilson ordered the seizure of Vera Cruz, Mexico’s customhouse and guns for accepting ammunitions from an incoming German ship, and the US Army’s Fifth Infantry Brigade commanded by Brigadeer General Frederick Funston was sent to the region to oversee the resignation of President Huerta and the establishment of the Carranza government, all of which occurred during the month of April, 1914.
The little history-geek in me practically devours ephemera like this with fascination; an expansive spectrum of San Francisco and national history in one tiny postcard, in a mere few lines. The Presidio and all who were stationed here were such an integral part of the expansion and protection of our borders–something which is hard to fathom given almost a century of relative calm these California shores and our landlocked borders. Brig. Gen. Funston’s name is emblazoned on street signage all over San Francisco in memorial of his “heroic” actions when the city partially burned to the ground after the 1906 Earthquake (I use heroism loosely here: he protected thousands of civilians in tent cities on military grounds, but he was also the genius responsible for stringing TNT through buildings and blowing them to smitherines in order to rob the fire of its fodder but in reality only spread the fires that much further). Woodrow Wilson’s orders were proactive and pragmatic (as pragmatic as foreign relations that involve a bordering country’s armament can be), an indication of what would come throughout and after WWI.
Filed under: At The Archives | Leave a Comment
Tags: 1914, cavalry, correspondence, military, postcard, Presidio of San Francisco
No Responses Yet to “At the Archives: Protect Our Borders, 1914”