Why Americans began sending Valentine’s Day cards: Victorian lace, handmade pioneer cards

A one-penny postal fee helped start the Valentine's Day card craze in Britain, and it crossed the Atlantic in the 1840s. A National Park Service article on the history of the card tells how Americans came to send them.

A historic valentine with ornate borders. Courtesy Library of Congress.

From Britain to New York

Sending cards grew popular in Britain in the early 1800s, triggered by a standardized postal fee of one penny for a Valentine's Day card. In the United States the day was not widely recognized: early 19th-century calendars mention the Saint's Day, but it was not yet popular. Starting in the 1840s the British trend caught on, and sending cards became fashionable in New York, then spread to other cities and to rural America. The mass-produced cards were mostly imported from Britain at first.

Victorian cards

Victorian valentines were elaborate, ornate pieces, typically trimmed with lace and other fabrics, and they often hid gifts. Some cost as much as $40 even in the 1800s. Cards followed popular trends, with themes such as "California: 1849" for the Gold Rush. By the mid-1800s people sent them to friends and family as well as sweethearts. Some cards were meant as jokes but could be quite cruel and disparaging, and those stayed popular into the early 1900s.

A card published by L. Prang & Co., Boston, 1882. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Handmade pioneer cards

Not everyone could afford such cards or reach the cities that sold them. Pioneers used what they had at home to copy the store-bought styles, and handmade cards became very common between 1840 and 1860. After the 1860s the number of handmade cards fell and, as in other industrialized markets, commercially made cards took over, a trend that continued into the 1900s and still shapes the holiday.

Sources

• National Park Service, National Trails Office, "Historic Valentine's Day Cards" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/historic-valentine-s-day-cards.htm); the article's activity links, its reference list and two thumbnails of other pages are left out; pictures courtesy of the Library of Congress as the article credits them; rewritten in hubnx's own words.