Cecil County Postcards

Almost everyone enjoys looking at old postcards from Cecil County. Several local and itinerant photographers were plying the trade to produce these tiny early 20th-century time capsules.

Ed Herbener

One of the most prolific was Edward Herbener, a Newark photographer. The Newark Post said in 1910: “Mr. Herbener is one of the pioneers in the postcard 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. . . .”

Herbener, whose business flourished during the height of the postcard craze, produced many of the county’s photo postcards, and we are fortunate that he was such a prolific artist.  Many are over one hundred years old, and these old views provide a visual record of day-to-day life, solid visual evidence of the past.   In this era, photographers were few and far in between, and many people did not own cameras, so images were not as common as they are today.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, we met Mr. Herbener’s grandson.  He was a retired college professor living in Michigan at the time.  He gave us a copy of this card, a selfie if you will.  The self-portrait shows Edward Herbener at the East Newark Station on the B & O Line.  The real photo card was an advertisement mailed to alert customers that he would be in their area soon.

It read:  “I hope to get away from here soon and will be in your town in a few days with a full line of seasonable goods, including a nice assortment of local pictures.”

Many of his cards were what deltiologists (the formal term for postcard collectors) call “real photo” views. The bulk of cards of this era were produced in large quantities on a printing press. “Real photo” cards were not reproductions. They were black-and-white photographs printed on postcard paper, so a much smaller number of these were produced.

From Conowingo to Warwick

From Conowingo to Warwick, Ed Herbener traveled Cecil County, producing his real photo postcards. Probably, he printed just a dozen or so photographs for a customer in some village store in an out-of-the-way community such as Pilot or St. Augustine. The larger commercial shops tended to focus on places where they could sell hundreds if not thousands of their images, with pictures of the courthouse, churches, streets, and other public buildings in the county’s major towns.

Mr. Herbener’s postcards provide an over one-hundred-year-old visual record of day-to-day life in Cecil County, providing solid visual evidence of the past.

Ed Herbener at the East B & O Railroad Station in Newark. He is preparing to leave on a trip to taken pictures for postcards.

For additional Herbener photographs, visit this link on Cecil County History on Facebook.

Sources & Notes

1. Miller, G. Newark Historical Society — Newsletter. Vol. 1 No., 4. 1983, February. Edward Herbener: Newark Photographer. DE: Newark
2. Old postcards can be approximately dated by examining the card. Here’s a helpful site to provide some information on that. https://www.fortlewis.edu/finding_aids/images/M194/PostcardDating.htm
3. This is the first in a series on Cecil County postcards. Look for additional installments on other photographers, and dating postcards.