The address side of one of these postcards shows that the postal service between Jersey and the nearby French coast was much faster 100 years ago than it is now. This card reached its destination in rue Trichet, Saint Servan, next door to
Saint Malo on the
Brittany coast south of Jersey, the day after it was posted in August 1906. As Jerripedia editor Mike Bisson, who lives in Normandy, says: 'Today it can sometimes take a week or two for post to reach us from Jersey. Who knows what happens to it in between?'
In August 1906 a Madame Margantin in Saint Servan was sent a number of postcards from a friend or family member in Jersey. We assume they were sent to her as a collector, because none of them bore any message, save for the first sent on 22 August indicating that the sender was staying at the Hotel de l'Europe, and one sent to Monsieur Margantin indicating that the sender was finding Jersey 'more and more lovely' and did not want to leave 'despite the rain'.
Research in Saint Servan records shows that Madame Margantin was Marthe Caroline Marie Allemand, who married Albert Alexandre Margantin in Elincourt Sainte Marguerite, Oise, in the north of France on 29 August 1896. Albert was born in Saint Servan in 1859, and his wife, 11 years later in Clermont Ferrand, in south central France, a long way from their Saint Servan home or the commune in which they married. The couple did not have children