Maine postcard delivers history mystery

updated 1:48 p.m. ET Jan. 17, 2008

STRATFORD, Conn. - Officials have a history mystery on their hands in the form of a cellophane-wrapped postcard mailed from a post office long closed to a town manager long dead.

The postcard mailed from East Sumner, Maine, was postmarked Aug. 14, 1957, and bears a 2-cent stamp. It was addressed to the late Town Manager Harry Flood, who served from 1945 to 1963, and was written by a woman who must have been a friend since she only used her first name, Alice.

"Hi, enjoying this rather fallish weather. It was 44 degrees yesterday. See you next week," she wrote.

The post office in East Sumner no longer exists and Flood has been dead for nearly 40 years.

"It's a history mystery and it's fun to speculate," Stratford Mayor James Miron said.

A postal spokeswoman said it's possible that a collector sent the antique postcard to town hall. One clue is that it was tightly wrapped in cellophane.

Maureen Marion, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service region serving Connecticut, called it a "very, very rare and a true mystery."

"The likelihood that this postcard has been sitting in a building for 50 years is very slim," she said. "My guess is that some collector decided to send it to the town, or someone just found it in an old attic among a pile of letters or other documents and didn't know what else to do with it."

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