On Wednesday, February 15 at 5:30pm, Kevin Johnson, photo archivist for the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine will present Brooksville Maine: The Postcard View; Selections from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company” at the Brooksville Free Public Library. The slide show and talk will consist of a short film about the postcard company as well as the historical views of Brooksville and surrounding towns. 

The Eastern Illustrating & 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 the Penobscot Marine Museum and continues to grow as more negatives that "escaped" from the collection are located and acquired.The collection is being digitized and more than 90,0000 thousand images can now be viewed on the museum's website in their online database. www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

This event is free and open to everyone. Join us to help celebrate Brooksville's bicentennial anniversary!