There’s a fascinating story behind the current exhibit of early 20th century photos at Lincoln County Historical Association’s Old Jail in Wiscasset, and Kevin Johnson is a key figure in it. Johnson, the photo archivist for the Penobscot Marine Museum (PMM) in Searsport, Maine, will tell all at a reception at the historic Museum & Old Jail on Federal Street on Thursday, Aug. 12 at 5 p.m.

Johnson’s slide show and talk will delve into the story of the The Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company postcard company and its photos of Wiscasset and its neighboring towns in the early 1900s. The presentation amplifies the photography exhibit, Lincoln County Through the Eastern Eye, that will be on display through the end of September.

Admission to the talk is free, but advance registration is requested. For more information, please visit www.lincolncountyhistory.org
 
Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company was founded in 1909 in Belfast, Maine by Rudolph Herman Cassens. Cassens’ goal was to photograph small towns and rural areas from Maine to California, producing real photo postcards that would be valued for promoting tourism. Cassens did not fulfill his dream of photographing the entire country, but his company did produce over 50,000 glass plate negatives of New England and Upstate New York between 1909 and 1947. The collection is full of historic businesses, family homes and local landmarks.
 
The images are fascinating on many levels. They take viewers back in time to when the roads were still dirt, horse drawn carriages outnumbered cars, coastlines were undeveloped, and elms lined the streets. The collection is now part of the archives of Penobscot Marine Museum and continues to grow as more negatives that “escaped” from the collection are located and acquired.

Copies of the book about the collection, Maine on Glass, will be available to buy. The PMM Photo Archive offers more than 100,000 images at www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org