History: Signed, Sealed, Remembered

Photo gallery: 

Signed, Sealed, Remembered

A picture is worth a thousand words. And, if that’s the case, local collector Doug Massey has acquired hundreds of thousands, all hidden behind the crisp graphics of his vast postcard collection depicting Greenville in black-and-white, color, and sepia-toned print.

Massey can’t pinpoint the exact reason for his collector’s zeal, only to say (quite passionately), “It’s just a passion with me. This is history. This helps you to go back and see what Greenville was all about. And how our parents saw Greenville and our grandparents.”

And certainly his fifty-two-year-old home with antique furniture and timeworn ephemera, from old matchbooks to phonebooks to restaurant menus, speaks for itself. But it’s his Greenville postcard collection that he considers his treasure—with 257 cards framed and 330 ready for framing.

Massey, who splits his time between running a successful recruiting business and scouring eBay or area auctions, claims his postcard purchasing began on a whim seven or eight years ago. Then what began as a minor hobby blossomed into an all-consuming craft. “I am involved in my postcards every single day,” he proudly admits.

Though it appears as if he’s acquired duplicates, the collector’s quick to point out: “The clouds are different here, the bricks slightly changed there.” Ninety-five to 97 percent of his collection dates from 1898, when the first cards were printed, to 1950, and all are of linen stock. Most have images of Greenville’s main buildings and streets, from the historic Poinsett and Ottaray hotels, to the viaduct of a pre–Falls Park, to nostalgic views of Main Street (with Woolworth’s, Kress Department Store and soda shop, and Ivey’s Department Store). More rare are his early 1900s finds of area merchants and oxen resting on a pre-paved road.

But that just skims the surface. He has dozens of the campuses of Furman University and Greenville Woman’s College, as well as a 1907-postmarked card of Chicora College—presumably from a female attendee writing of weather and goings-on.

Because, at one time, postcards were a means of touching base before the days of text messages and instant photographs. Now, to Doug Massey, they are time capsules, each wholly different in illustration, print quality, and sentiment: tools to unlock what Greenville was, and to understand where it’s going.