St. Mary’s Church

41_image01The picture of St. Mary’s Church shown above presents one of the most striking examples to date of the statement made from time to time in this column that the story of how information for “Your Town and My Town” is obtained is often quite as interesting as that information itself.

When last week’s story of the founding of St. Mary’s Church in 1889-1890 was written, the writer made an extensive search for an early picture of the edifice to accompany the article. In the interval between the writing of the column and this one, the writer received a note from Mr. Harry Creutzburg, of Wayne, containing several postcards of old Wayne. The note explained that Mr. Creutzburg was lending them for use in this column. Mr. Harry Buten, of Merion, had sent them and Mr. Creutzburg felt sure he would be glad to tell me how he had obtained them and other old post cards showing various locations, some dating back to the 1890’s.

A telephone call from Mr. Buten was most informative. Though distinctly not a collector of old postcards, he has obtained many when purchasing stamps for his extensive collection. As one of the country’s best-known philatelists, Mr. Buten is now president of the National Philatelic Society.

Upon recently receiving several Wayne postcards from Mr. Buten, Mr. Creutzburg told the former that he was lending them to this writer for possible use in this column. His interest aroused, Mr. Buten phoned the latter last week in regard to his postcard collection. A thick envelope of Wayne postcards arrived in the next morning’s mail. The first picture seen was one of St. Mary’s Church, just the picture this writer had searched for last week. And yet not once had the fact of that search been mentioned in the call of the previous afternoon. To date this is probably the best example of the statement made in the opening paragraph about obtaining information for this column.