In recent years, researchers seeking to interpret history have increasingly recognized the value of photographic collections. Such images provide us with important information often available nowhere else. Visually accurate, they often have the power to evoke a time long since lost.
Unfortunately, retrieving these important pictures is often difficult due to lack of cataloguing systems or other "finding aids"; usually there is a need for item control. Over the years the photograph collection at the Cumberland County Historical Society has received valuable assistance from two sources. The late Mr. Roger Todd made enormous contributions in the research and organization of the Albert Allen Line Collection, a major portion of the Society's holdings. Due largely to his efforts, most of the 3000-odd glass plates are numbered, identified, and catalogued. Mr. Todd also provided the Society with a series of work prints from the Line negatives, which have proven immensely useful to researchers. Recently, a grant project has resulted in further improvements of storage conditions and an expanded retrieval system. Now that much of the dust and confusion have been swept away, potential researchers can be provided with specific information on the available collection.
It is estimated that the photographic resources at the Historical Society number nearly 10,000 items. Eight collections make up the majority of the Society's holdings, and these vary in size, from one of over four thousand items, to the smallest ones, which contain only a few dozen photos. While most of the images are original prints and glass plate negatives, the rest of the material covers a wide spectrum of photographic types, including representatives of many different periods in the evolution of the medium. There are lantern slides, stereographs, nitrate negatives, postcards, cased photographs and a small group of tintypes. Each of the collections listed below provides the researcher with a unique view of our country's past.
The Albert Allen Line Collection. Probably the first collection acquired by the Cumberland County Historical Society, this is also the largest single collection at the Society and the one most used in research and publications. Albert Allen Line (1850-1928) was a professional photographer in Carlisle for over 50 years. He was born in Dickinson Township in 1850 and attended the district schools, then went on to Dickinson College. In 1869, his family moved to Carlisle where, the following year, he began studying photography with Dr. C. L. Lockman, one of the earliest photo artists there. Albert Line was only nineteen when he opened his first studio in Carlisle. Over the next half century he recorded the town's changing face on several thousand negatives and prints. With Charles Himes, a Dickinson College professor, Line established a summer school for amateur photographers at Mountain Lake Park in Maryland. Besides his photography business, he was very active in the community and served as secretary at the Cumberland County Historical Society. When he died in 1928, his photographic works were donated to the Society, where for many years they were locked away in a safe.
Line was interested in everything relating to Carlisle and the surrounding area. His photographs cover a wide spectrum of the town's life from the 1870s to the 1920s. The Albert Allen Line Collection consists of around three thousand glass plates including early wet plates as well as the commercially made dry ones, and several hundred original prints. Of particular interest are the pictures of Carlisle businesses decorated for Old Home Week in 1924 or for the Sesqui-Centennial in 1913. Important also are early pictures of Dickinson College and the Square. For the use of researchers, many of the glass plates have been copied and indexed and placed in a special work print file cabinet. They are filed by subject and numbered for easy identification. Main subject headings are, "Groups", "Individuals", "Indian School", "Dickinson College", "Buildings", "Street Scenes", "Interiors", "Out-of-Town Scenes", "Out-of-Door Scenes", "Miscellaneous" and "Old Views". Included under the last category are several Civil War era photographs of the burning of Chambersburg, attributed not to Line, but to his mentor, C. L. Lockman.
In 2008, the daughters of John S. Steckbeck donated his research collection to the Cumberland County Historical Society. Steckbeck was a professor of physical education at Dickinson College from 1946-1955. He was also a backfield coach, track coach, swim coach, and a trainer for the college. When he was not busy with sporting events, he spent his time with music.