Methodist Episcopal

Methodist Episcopal Church

23 June 1909. Travis Park Methodist Episcopal Church was built on this site in 1880, with the spire added in 1902.1. 517 Navarro: North Façade of the Harmony Club; 515 Navarro: H. P. Drought & Co., Investment Bankers]. 2. Travis Park ME Church balcony wing. 3. 220 Travis [Sunday School?]. 4. 222 Travis. Henry Burdick (26) auto mechanic (r); 220 Travis. Thomas F. (46) & Josephine (37) Coffey; he worked as a solderer (?) at Alamo Printing Co., 601-603 Market St. (h) 2.

10 November 2025. 1. Towers at the Majestic, 222 E Houston St.; 2. Travis Park Methodist Church, 230 E Travis St.; 3. Sheraton Gunter Hotel 311 N St Mary's St.; 4. IBC Centre [Apgo Group; Vesant Health; Vision Works; Liquid Web] 175 East Houston St.; 5. Stephenson Building for Children, Travis Park Methodist Church, 230 E. Travis; 6. Gold´s Gym / Travis Park Lofts, 214 E Travis St.; 7. IBC Bank, 130 E Travis St.; 8. Frost Bank, 111 W Houston St.

Postmarked:   23 Jun 1909; San Antonio, Tex.
Stamp:   1c Green Ben Franklin #374

To:   Mrs. C. H. Kappmeyer
   1916 Circle Court
   Chicago Heights. Ill.

Message:   Dear Mrs. Kappmeyer. Many thanks for the pretty postals. Wish you were all here in old San Antonio enjoying this grand hot weather with us. It is surely very pleasant. Lovingly Mabel Wilson.
   Remember us to Mr. Kappmeyer.

Mabel Wilson seems to be a member of a postcard exchange club in which members traded postcards of mutual interest. Sometimes members became pen-pals and perhaps even friends, but since Mabel lived in the Southwest US and her correspondent lived in Chicago it is not clear how they might have actually met, The recipient, Nina Cox Kappmeyer was a native of Indiana, and her husband Charles Henry was from Will County, IL. It seems most likely Mabel and Nina were acquainted only through their postcard exchange activity.

Mabel Anita Tiffany was born 19 Nov 1887 in Socorro, New Mexico, daughter of Isaac Sherwood Tiffany (1857-1890). Isaac was born in 1857 in Knoxville, Tioga County New York, and after earning a law degree, he clerked for a US consul assigned to Barranquilla, Columbia. It was there that he contracted TB, and to recover his health in a dry climate he moved to Socorro, NM about 75 miles south of Albuquerque. In Socorro in 1885 he married Elizabeth Dixon Posey and practiced law with his new father-in-law, Reuben Thornton Posey (1830-1901). Isaac died 23 July 1890 at the age of 32 from consumption leaving his widow to care for their three small orphaned children: Irene Mildred (4), Mabel Anita (2), and Sherwood Isaac (6 months). The widow likely turned to her parents, Reuben Thornton Posey and Eliza Dixon Posey for shelter and comfort. This carried through to 1900 by which time Eliza was head of household with her four children and mother Letitia Posey. Eliza was divorced from her husband (Edward?) Quinlan. Not with the family was Letitia’s husband, Reuben Thornton Posey, who cannot be located elsewhere. Reuben died in 1901 at an uncertain location.

By 1908 Eliza married Darwin Strong and they had a son Merton, who was with the family as they moved to San Antonio. TX where they all lived at 210 Porter Street about 2 miles southeast of downtown, including her husband (Louis J. Wilson) and 2 sons (Louis and Douglas), mother and step-father (Darwin and Eliza Strong), grandmother (Letitia Posey), half-sister and half-brother (Annie and Merton Quinlan, later claiming his father as Darwin Strong). Her husband, Louis Jefferson Wilson, worked as a window dresser for Saul Wolfson Dry Goods Company downtown at 413-421 W. Commerce.

Mabel moved a lot during this period; her son Louis Anthony Wilson was born in 1905 in Albuquerque, Bernalillo, NM. Her second son, Douglas Paul Wilson was born in Yuma, Yuma, AZ in 1907. By 1920 they had reached Southern California where she worked as a nurse and lived at #1212 37th Drive in Los Angeles about a block west of the University of Southern California. She was estranged from her husband Louis J. Wilson, who worked as a shipwright in San Pedro west of Long Beach.

All the family seem to have continued to live in California. Before 1950 Mabel married August Herman Beisner (1878-1959), whose death at 81 left her a widow. Mabel died in 1970 at age 82 in Orange County, CA. She was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, Los Angeles County, CA; August Herman Beisner had been buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles County, CA, a similar sounding but distinctly different cemetery 6 miles to the west. Her first husband, Lewis Jefferson Wilson 1878-1942 seems to have died where he was born in Yuba County CA, but no burial record can be found online.