See my earlier post about the Old Witch House for more details on this house, which still stands in Pigeon Cove. Most accounts date the house as having been built in 1692 and some describe it at the first house built in Pigeon Cove. Accounts I have read say that the first settler of Sandy Bay, Richard Tarr, arrived here in 1690 with his wife and two children. This house, then, would be almost as old as the settlement of what is now Rockport.

A wonderful feature of this postcard is its misspellings. Instead of Old Witch House, it says “Old Nitch House.” Instead of Pigeon Cove, it says “Pigeon Cove.” I attribute these errors to the fact that it was printed in Germany. Somewhere along the way, something was lost in translation. The publisher of the postcard is The Metropolitan News Co. of Boston, Mass.

The postcard bears a postmark of Jan. 1, 1907. It is an undivided back postcard, which means it was published prior to 1907 (as its postmark shows). The postcard was sent to someone in Portland, Ore., with the simple message, “Wish you all happy new year.”