Image Collections – CCHS

Images were always the ultimate goal throughout my research of Lincoln Cemetery. While later I would find some images in the Dickinson Archives, I did my primary image research at the Cumberland County Historical Society.

I started by finding a image collection on Lincoln Cemetery that was part of their image collections. It is labeled Lincoln Cemetery “Jim Bradley Photos.”

George Lane Headstone - Lincoln Cemetery

The folder contained three pictures from a photographer named Jim Bradley, each taken on November 5th, 1971. This was right before the headstones were voted to be removed for good. I later verified the picture of George Lane as definitely buried there, even though his name doesn’t appear on the lists. I have his burial record that I will publish in another post. The second picture is more of a landscape image of the cemetery. In the third picture, which I did not publish, it is the same landscape, but with Reuben Smitley standing by the graves. Smitley was superintendent of the Calisle Parks and recreation board and that image is also available at CCHS.

Lincoln Cemetery - 1971

In a Lincoln Cemetery dropfile at CCHS, I also found the maps that I said that Cavenagh had mentioned and Aaron Feldman-Grosse and Donald Koide had published in CCHS. The maps explain how the known gravestones were distributed around Lincoln Park, how the park is positioned on Pitt and Penn St., and the designs that Koide and Feldman came up with to recommend for landscaping. It is unclear in my research of which maps were made by Cavenagh and which ones by Feldman. Though I hope to figure that out in the near future. There is also a map that shows how the park is laid out today in path form.

The two maps on the bottoms should be the map that was attached to Susan Cavenagh’s appendix. It is what Feldman based their concepts off of above. This map was also found in the same dropfile and shows where the graves were all position with circle markers which can be used in concert with the grave listings above.

Lincoln Cemetery Concepts

Lincoln Cemetery Concepts

Lincoln Cemetery Concepts

Lincoln Cemetery Concepts

Susan Cavenagh's Gravestone Ma

Susan Cavenagh's Gravestone Map

Jonas Kees

Lastly, I went to the two photo archivists at CCHS and asked for help in researching for any photos on either Lincoln cemetery or black Veterans from Carlisle in general. Unfortunately, they said that they only have about 30,000 or so of their 500,000 photos on their searchable database. Nevertheless, the three of us sat there with my laptop list of soldiers and we all entered search after search for a possible hit. We exhausted the list, but found some possible leads on Richard Howard and John Peck that I did not have time to explore into.

The archivist did help me pull an image list of African American pictures from around the civil war time. One really helpful image collection was the “Johnson Collection,” which contained the above image of Jonas Kees. The collection would be great for others to look into if they want photos of African Americans during this period. The whole file was donated by a family and claims that Kees lived in Carlisle. However, once again, I need to do more research to find out what his background story is.

I know that Kees was not on my list for those in Lincoln Cemetery, but there were many black soldiers buried at Lincoln that were unknown and at Union Cemetery that I did not do very much research into. As of now, that wraps up my image research at CCHS, until I can go back after spring break.

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