[Collection of Real Photo Postcards, Photographs, and Printed Pictorial Postcards Relating to the Missionary Teaching Work of Lula Jackson, Featuring Subjects in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico]

[Various locations in Guatemala and Mexico, 1923. Very good.. 145 real photo postcards, photographs, and printed pictorial postcards, thirty-eight with manuscript notes on verso. Minor wear overall. A wonderful collection of images featuring the people and places involved with the educational missionary work of Lula Maud Jackson (later Tolosa) of Birmingham, Michigan. Jackson was a Baptist missionary teacher at schools in El Salvador, Cuba, Mexico, and Guatemala before returning to Michigan in the early-1920s. Not long after her return, Lula married an El Salvadorian minister named Ramon Alberto Tolosa in Michigan on June 26, 1923; apparently Tolosa moved to Michigan to be with Lula, and thereafter established the First Mexican Baptist Church in Saginaw, where he remained as pastor until his retirement in 1975. The present collection of photographs feature numerous people and places Jackson knew during her time in Latin America.

The collection contains a few photographs that appear to include Jackson, but the great majority show various native settings and subjects, including the children she was teaching, pictured in class group shots. Most are not captioned, but many of these images are dated in 1921. The images feature students at play, fruit vendors carrying large baskets, churches and other buildings, and more. Almost forty of the images, however, which are mostly portrait postcards or photographs, include inscriptions to Lula on the verso from the numerous named subjects. All of the captions are written in Spanish. Seventeen of these identify various subjects in Mexico by name, including multiple members of the same family in one case. One postcard is covered completely on the verso with the musical notation and lyrics of a song called "Ven a El pecador!" Two of these postcards were actually postmarked to Lula in Cuba while she was there in 1916 and 1919. Eighteen of these annotated real photo postcards were sent to Lula by her soon-to-be husband Ramon Tolosa, all but one in either May or early June, 1923 before the couple married later in June of that year. At the time, Ramon was working in Tampico, Mexico, from where he sent all of these postcards. The postcards are not postmarked, indicating Ramon may have sent them inside other letters; plus, the captions contain straightforward descriptions of the subjects and settings of the postcards, and not the personal correspondence that might be expected from two people about to be married. All in all, a diverse and personal collection of images of Mexico kept by a missionary teacher from Michigan to memorialize her earlier work there, offering several avenues for further research. (Inventory #: 5584)