Our fabulous postcard collection is growing! A year ago, we reached half a million postcards; we now have over three-quarters of a million — all available free! Did you know that you can share your vintage postcards at Geneanet?
One year ago, we celebrated the half a million mark of our growing Postcards collection. This past year, we have added another quarter of a million cards!
Let’s begin by noting that postcards uploaded to Geneanet are vintage only; few if any are more recent than the 1960s. Most of them have been uploaded by Geneanet members over the past 20 years, while others have been added by us from public repositories such as the Internet Archive and museum and university collections. Access to all postcards is freely available!
Find postcards at Geneanet through keywords, place names, and categories:
- Town and Village
- Religious Monument
- Public Monument
- Landscape
- Misc
- Castle
- Costume and Tradition
- Transport
- Event
- Military
- Industrial Monument
- Occupation
- Sport
- Humour
- Animals
You can try searching a range of years, but keep in mind that many postcards are impossible to date accurately and so may not appear in search results.
Visit your ancestor’s village
Postcards are a great way to connect to your European ancestors. Visit the villages of your forbears, the places of worship where they were married, the ports they sailed from. You may see monuments and landmarks that were familiar to them; you may even see traditional peasant clothing styles!
Many postcards have a dynamic map lower on the page showing locations of nearby places with a postcard. This is a great feature for exploring a town!
(Right) Now and (Back) Then
Many special places are still with us, not destroyed in fires, wars, or natural calamities. Our Now and Then feature lets you match up a modern photo with an old postcard. Online, visitors can move a slider between the old and new image. Use our handy smartphone app!
Upload a postcard!
Do you have any old postcards? Why not upload them to Geneanet, where others can see them? Read our article explaining how to do that and upload your postcards here. Use a scanner (not a smartphone) and be sure the longer side of the image is at least 1280 pixels; visit our forums if you have any questions!
Link a postcard to your family tree
It’s easy to link any postcard to one or more ancestors in your tree: underneath the postcard, click on Link to/Unlink from your family tree, then enter the name of the person in your tree. Voilà! the postcard will appear in the ancestor’s profile page alongside other media files.
4/1/23
Fergus Falls, Minnesota
4/1/23
I have a collection of over 200 postcard of the area of new Jersey, USA in which i grew up. Actually, my mother started th collection as a child in the 1930’s. The cards reference the area as far back as 1890. New Brunswick NJ is home to Rutgers University and the birthplace of Johnson and Johnson medical companies. George Washington and his army passed through the city 3 times during the revolutionary war (although their are no photos of that period there photos of the memorials and statues). I have already photographed the collection with my iPhone. They are promised to the New Brunswick Historical Society housed the town’s library. Is there a simpler/easier method of capture and uploading 200+ images than using my scanner (which as less resolution) The post care captured on a copy stand with proper lighting laying on a black velour cloth. You see they are in 2 photo albums and I’m loath to remove each one again as it did take me several days. Can you use these semi professional ,JPEG files even though they were captured with an iPhone 13?
Thanks in advance, David
Answer from Geneanet: Please send a couple sample images to archivalrecords [at] geneanet.org , we will tell you if the quality is OK and if so, we will give you a special upload access to our server.
4/1/23
Really Excellent
4/1/23
excellent collection !!!