Tea Room Postcard #20 -- Maple Grove Inn and Tea Room (St. Johnsbury, Vt.)

When I came across this postcard online and purchased it, I was intrigued because of the pretty, serene setting and also because, well, I love maple flavored candies and treats. They go very well with tea, I find. And I couldn't imagine such a place would still be in business today, but I was absolutely delighted to find the enterprise continues as Maple Grove Farms of Vermont. (Go here to see what they're up to today.)

This postcard was mailed in 1929 to a John H. Sargent of Manchester, N.H., and it reads, "Dear John, I hope you got home all right yesterday. Were you very late and was it foggy? I am all right, have been down street this morning. Aunt Minnie." Sweet! And then the Maple Grove Farms website directed me to this 1927 article, which tells of the business' beginnings thanks to a lovely woman named Katharine Ide Gray. (If you read the first paragraph, you'll no doubt spot the sentence that made me bristle!) Happily, the magazine writer concludes by noting of Maple Grove Tea Room founder Katharine Ide Gray, "Only a woman with a versatile brain, a wealth of imagination and the executive ability of a genius could conceive and maintain a business of such magnitude and multiform character. But more than all this, Mrs. Gray maintains a household with apparently the greatest ease and efficiency which not only commands the deepest admiration of her friends but quite thoroughly routs the one-time theory that a woman cannot 'keep house' and have a career at the same time." A fun, fun find!