This was a beautiful wedding postcard that was sent to me recently by a friend to go into my collection. It doesn’t tell us who the bride and groom were but it does tell us the recipient of the card, Mrs Mudd, Gt Finborough. Great Finborough is in Suffolk, England. I believe the photo was taken around 1907-8, loving those gorgeous hats.

Was it someone in the family that sent this or friends? “What do you think of our faces” or could it even have been sent by a member of the family or friends living abroad? Maybe that’s why the stamp had been taken because it was different?

It didn’t take me long to find Mrs Mudd in Great Finborough, she was from a farming family who married into a farming family and the first record I saw of her was the 1901 census as a widow. She was the only Mrs Mudd in the area and as I thought the Wedding photo was taken around 1907-8 it had to be her surely.

After William’s death, Martha carried on running the farm and in the 1901 census is described as a Farmer. She had her daughter Edith Sarah aged 30 and one of her sons Thomas William aged 28, her two youngest children, still living with her on the farm. Also, she had a Stockman called John Baker aged 77 who was actually Martha’s brother, and a young lodger called Henry Martin aged 12 who was born in Middlesex. Towards the end of 1901, Edith Sarah married Henry Williams, also a Farmer in the village of Buxhall, very close to Great Finborough. They had their first child a boy called Henry Victor shortly after Edith’s mum Martha died in 1910 he sadly died the same year as a young baby, but then some good news as they had a daughter born on 11 December 1913 called Victoria who was still with her parents in the 1939 register records, they lived at Oak Cottage, Combs Lane, Gipping, Suffolk. Victoria was working as a shorthand typist for the Tithe Collector. Martha Eliza’s son Thomas William married Eva Chaplin in July 1911 after the census, Thomas was a Farmer at Higher Green Farm, Great Finborough. They had a son Thomas William born on 13 December 1920, they were all living together at the time of the 1939 register, father Thomas William now a retired Farmer and his son Thomas William junior was a Gardener and they had moved over to Lexden, Essex about 35 miles from Great Finborough. Thomas William Mudd junior himself married in the summer of 1942 to Winifred Mary Holmes, he served in WW2 in the RAF as a driver and I was thrilled to come across this super Wedding photo of him and Winifred on a public tree on Ancestry. They both passed away in 2001 but it looks like they had three children so more descendants of our ‘Mrs Mudd’.

Mrs Mudd was born Martha Eliza Baker in 1828 in Thurston, Suffolk, her father, Edmund, was 31 and a Farmer and her mother was also born Martha Baker (maybe her parents were related?) Martha Eliza had three brothers John Edward b1825, William Edward b1826 and Thomas b1833. Martha Eliza married William Mudd on 6 August 1852 in Combs, Suffolk. They had nine children (See below). Martha Eliza died on 23 April 1910 in Great Finborough, Suffolk, she was 82 years old, and was buried there in St Andrews churchyard as was her husband William.

This is Martha Eliza Baker and William Mudd’s family group that I have on Ancestry. If you want to see the small public tree I have compiled, here’s the link: Martha Eliza Baker/Mrs Mudd family tree

If the Wedding photo was a family photo it surely has to be one of her grandchildren’s marriages? I have made a start on the marriages of Martha and William’s children and have also been able to add some of their children but it looks like there may be quite a few, too many to be able to work out whose photo it could have been.

This is a slightly better closer scan of the photo.

I came across this small article about The Postcard Craze when I was searching for any information about the make of the postcard photo above Union Postale Universelle.

“The turn of the century saw the golden era of postcards. An article in the Standard (a British newspaper) from August 21, 1899, read:

“The illustrated postcard craze, like the influenza, has spread to these islands from the Continent, where it has been raging with considerable severity. “

With multiple daily pickups and deliveries (up to 12 times per day in large cities!), postcards were effectively the text messages of their time. It was cheap and convenient to send them, and postcard obsession reached its peak in the Edwardian era with billions of them being sent every year.” This I found on https://worldpostcardday.com/history

Till next time then…….