Comic Easter chick in top hat, Toulon, IL, 1909

About this postcard

A comic Easter greeting: a large yellow chick in a black top hat and a white bow tie cut from an eggshell struts across the grass, while three smaller chicks in hats huddle beside a wooden barrel behind it. A brick wall with a metal downspout stands at the left under a blue sky. The printed caption reads "Easter Greetings" and "His Easter Tie." Anthropomorphic chicks were a staple of the Easter postcard trade in the years around 1910, when the holiday greeting was one of the most heavily mailed cards in the United States. This one traveled a short distance within Illinois. Mary C. posted it from Toulon, the Stark County seat on the prairie, to her cousins in Rutland, opening with an apology for the long silence and mentioning that the family was busy putting in oats, the spring fieldwork that framed the season for a central Illinois farm household.