| Postcards: A Link to Cecil's Past |
| by Michael L. Dixon |
| Web Posted: December 1, 1997 |
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| The Society has a collection of postcards which provide strong visual documentation of Cecil County for nearly a hundred years. This holding may be of assistance, if you're exploring an earlier era or tracing the history of a building or house. With these cards, you can see how buildings or streets originally looked. In a set of the same view, buildings are erected and modified (or sometimes disappear), the horse is replaced by the automobile, new names appear on store signs, streets get paved, and fashions change. |
| Postcards are grouped into two primary types: One group, known as the greeting card, was mailed in celebration of a special day. The type most likely to help with local research is the picture view card. View cards depict street scenes, railroads, prominent and not so prominent buildings, sporting events, special happenings, disasters, and other aspects of everyday life. |
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| Our collection contains over 500 local views. Each card tells of some facet of the past. |
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| Our collection contains over 500 local views. Each card tells of some facet of the past. A nice series of shots show street scenes and "life and action" in Conowingo, the village now submerged under the backwaters of the Dam. The Elkton group provides a strong photographic record of a changing community and the many historic old buildings that no longer stand. At Woodlawn, exceptionally sharp pictures show day-to-day happenings at the annual camp meeting. In looking at the same view taken years apart, you can watch the street scene change -- many go from the horse-and-buggy era to modern times. These scenes of commonplace occurrences can make history come alive. |
| Disasters — floods, tornadoes, and train wrecks — are also captured on the early cards. When the B & O Railroad bridge collapsed in 1908, the "postcard man" snapped plenty of pictures. (The B & O cards were mass produced by a Baltimore distributor) He was back when "ice gorges" inundated Port Deposit's Main Street with ice and water. Three days after the "fire fiend" destroyed the Methodist Church in North East and threatened the entire town, Moore's Pharmacy had "postal card views of the fire ruins. "(1) |
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| Many of our cards are what deltiologists (formal term for postcard collectors), call "real photo" views. The bulk of picture cards were produced in quantity on a printing press. "Real photo" cards were not reproductions at all. They were black-and-white photographs printed on postcards. A caption was often hand-written or typed on the negative. Often of a more personal nature, "real photo" cards were produced in a limited number. A card to Miss Jennie Owens of Ridely Park, for example (post marked in 1906), has a typewritten message on the photo: "Home of Willis B. Gorrell Mayor of Perryville." |
| Before March 1, 1907, a message could not be put on the address side of postcards. (2) Short messages were scrawled in the front margin around the picture, but after postal regulations changed messages were penned on the divided back. |
| Signatures and messages on postcards help make them valuable for local study. Two cards of the "ice jams" of Port Deposit in 1910 illustrate this.One of large chunks of ice filling Main Street had a message from Mrs. M. N. to Miss Clara L.Gable of Baltimore. " ... I am still in Port Deposit and feeling much better. I wish you could come down and look at this stricken town. No pen could describe what it looks like. It is an awful sight. I hope this card will find your mother, Nellie, and you well. . . ." Mayme Pierce, in a card of a wrecked house, wrote: "Am writing this in a big hurry. Don't know if can read or not -- this house was carried in the middle of the street and then on down. Had big coal fire in it when it started. These two mass produced cards were published by I. M. Ottenheimer, Baltimore. |
| Cards of pleasanter times reveal more typical messages. Warren Burr's card of the "National Bank of North East" went to his friend B. T. Durding: "This is a picture of our bank where I am going to put my money for safe keeping: if I have any. I guess I'll have a little. Had my first quarterly conf. and they advanced the salary $100.00 and the outlook is very pleasant. I am delighted with place and people. I wish you were our near neighbor." One of the Providence Store and Post Office, dated October 23, 1911, was mailed to Miss M. E. Bouchelle, North East by M. M. N. "Dear Etta - We would love to see you. Can't you come up as we have the teacher of Providence School boarding with us. We have lots of Chestnuts around here. You remember we gathered them last year. Write some time." |
| An important date in postcard history is 1898, when private companies were permitted to issue their own postcards that could go through the mails at a one-cent rate. Passage of this legislation soon led to the postcard mania that followed. Large companies published postcards and photographers combed the world for scenes to record. Of more importance to students of local history, however, is the fact that there were hundreds of small, local publishers of postcards.(3) |
| Cecil Countians were regularly sending short messages and collecting view cards by 1905 -- that is the year local postal cancellations first appear in our holdings. Soon "Post Card Socials" were being held. Folks in Cecilton were invited to one at "the Parish building" in 1906. The admission fee of ten cents included a free postcard -- which you would exchange with others -- and coffee and cake (ice cream was for sale).(4) |
| Itinerant postcard photographers, lugging their cumbersome cameras in wagons, plied their trade throughout Maryland and the rest of the country in the early 1900s. In this area, the man who made many Cecil County cards was photographer Ed Herbener of Newark, DE. In 1910, the Newark Post said: Mr. Herbener is one of the pioneers in the post card business. He not only furnishes views of Newark, but makes views for the trade from New York to North Carolina. He has built up quite a business in this line. He also makes fancy cards.; And all this work is done in Newark. . . . . ." (5) Herbener, "whose business flourished during the height of the post card craze," produced many of Cecil's real photo views. |
| Assistant Librarian Betty Giovanazi has carefully organized our array of postcards. She arranged view cards by locality and greeting cards by seasonal representation. In the view card category, all of the incorporated towns are well represented; there are views of most smaller villages too. In addition, Mrs. Giovanazi created a finding aid which catalogues each card by its location and subject. |
| These old view cards of Cecil County, an almost one-hundred-year-old visual record of day-to-day life, provide solid visual evidence of the past, especially in the period when photographers were few and far between. |
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| BIBLIOGRAPHY |
| 1. The Cecil Star. May 13, 1911. Display Advertisement -- Moore's Pharmacy. p. 3. North East, MD. |
| 2. Time-Life Books. The Encyclopedia of Collectibles. Vol. Phonographs to Quilts. Postcards - Pictures for Personal Messages. PP 76 - 91. 1979. IL: Chicago, IL |
| 3. Miller, G. Newark Historical Society -- Newsletter. Vol. 1 No., 4. 1983, February. Edward Herbener: Newark Photographer. DE: Newark |
| 4. The Cecil Democrat. May 5, 1906, "Post Card Social. p 1. Elkton, MD. |
| 5. Semowich, C. J. & Thompson, E., American Association for State and Local History, Technical Leaflet 116, Post Card Collections in the Local Historical Society. TN: Nashville. |
