Victorian trade card album from DeVall’s Bluff, Arkansas

In the late 1870s, DeVall’s Bluff was a tiny “one-horse town” with a population of about two hundred people.  It had three stores, a sawmill, a post office and a drugstore.  The druggist was Samuel S. Lovejoy, who had been born in New Hampshire and moved to Arkansas after the Civil War.

Sam had a daughter named Mary Elizabeth, born in Arkansas in 1869, who apparently started her trade card album in the mid-1870s.  Like many young girls of the Victorian era, she was interested in flowers, perfume, pretty bric-a-brac and greeting cards.  She pasted these things into her album, just like most of her schoolmates, but hers was a bit different.  Her dad was a druggist, so she had access to many trade cards from drug companies that manufactured what we would now call “quack medicine”

The album is typical, measuring about 12” by 16” and containing approximately twenty pages.  Each page has been plastered on both sides with a patchwork of trade cards, calling cards, holiday cards, die-cuts, advertising items, cigar and bottle labels and calendars. 

These cards have all been removed from the album are now being cataloged and researched.  If you are interested in following the adventure, feel free to click on “Follow”, leave comments, or both.