Market Square

1905:

2015:

To: M. G. Francois
30 Rue de Bonneval
Chartres
France

Postmarked: Houston, Texas April 1, 1905
Stamp: 1c Blue Green Ben Franklin #300 [x2]

From: Thomas Muat, Brunner near Houston [Stamped]

Postcard were all the rage at the time, and Muat had perhaps learned of Mr. Francois through a postcard collecting group.

Dundee, Scotland, is where Thomas Muat was born and there married Henrietta Kerr and had two girls before emigrating to America in 1889 with his sister Laura. They settled in Houston where Laura married George Seipel, a carpenter who settled in the First Ward on Hickory Street near Houston and Crocket. Thomas found work as a bookkeeper and found residence just across White Oak Bayou in Fifth Ward.

With his international roots, it was natural that soon Thomas found the early 20th century hobby of exchanging postcards irresistible, and he had a penchant for international images. To expedite the exchange of so many cards he had an address stamp made bearing his new address in Brunner, a western suburb of Houston where he lived at 4106 Washington (near Jackson Hill and Bonner).

As Head Bookkeeper at Peden Iron & Steel he maintained contacts all across the West, so when a chance to move to Arizona Territory came, he jumped. His sister and daughter Johanna, recent wife of Charles R. Butow, a master plumber, stayed behind in Houston. Bisbee, County seat of Cochise County, was one of the richest towns in the West, built literally on top of one of the largest copper deposits in the world. Part of the Sonoran Desert habitat, it could not be more different from Dundee.

Thomas and family settled into their new home and became part of the community. In Houston, his daughter Johanna was widowed by 1917, and rejoined her family, becoming, first the bookkeeper, then wife of Charles Wesley Allen, who had built Allen Block, an office and retail center. Henrietta died in 1927 at 71 years old and Thomas died in 1928 at 68. They are buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Bisbee surrounded by much of their family.