By Suzanne Hodgson
Staff Writer

Some say a picture is worth a thousand words, but if that picture is on the front of a vintage hand-written postcard, it’s worth a lot more to a group at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunk.
Amber Tatnall, a member of the Seashore Trolley Museum library committee, has brought together volunteers from all ages to help archive historic trolley postcards found in the trolley museum and post them online.
“It’s stories of people, stories of towns and stories of cars themselves, that’s what the museum captures. They [the cars] become almost like people,” said Tatnall when discussing the archival project.
The stories of the cars have led Tatnall on a historic journey through pictures and short, handwritten notes.
“It’s historic detective work,” Tatnall said.
One set of postcards led Tatnall’s daughter through the life of a young man. She first found postcards from a family writing to friends about their young son and was able to follow the trail of postcards as he grew up.
“You would think postcards are no longer relevant, but look at what Post Secret is doing,” Tatnall said.
Post Secret is an ongoing art project founded by Maryland resident Frank Warren in 2005. Warren invites people from across the world to send him anonymous postcards with personal secrets written on the back, or displayed through art on the front.
Tatnall said that while most of the backs of the postcards are blank, she still gets a “wow factor” from the familiar settings of the pictures or radical changes that have developed since the postcard’s picture was printed.
While the postcards show trolleys from all across the country, Tatnall has been focusing on archiving trolleys following the railways up through Maine.
Once a month, Tatnall works with a group of volunteers at the York County Community College library, where she is the director of library and learning resources. Volunteers work in white gloves with large magnifying glasses to go over each inch of the postcard picture for clues that link the past to the present.
Clues include street names, store names and recognizable landmarks. Volunteers also work to date each postcard – a challenge if the card was never mailed – with the help of a five-page guide compiled by Tatnall on how to identify dates by the look of the card.
Beginning in 1898, for example, American publishers were allowed to print and sell postcards with the inscription “Private Mailing Card, Authorized by Act of Congress on May 19, 1898.” The private mailing cards were produced from 1898 to 1901 until the era of a new postcard with an empty back began in 1901.                   Volunteers range from high school students finishing volunteer service to people fulfilling community service hours. However, Tatnall’s core group of volunteers are men who restore the cars at Seashore Trolley Museum.
O.R. Cummings, who has written 50 books on trolley history, can tell the date of a postcard just by looking at the trolley on the front of the card. Cummings donated more than 20 albums containing most of the postcards and pictures being archived by volunteers.
Tatnall’s interest in trolleys first led her to join the museum as a member in 2007. She soon discovered its library would need repairs if the library committee was to save some of the collection, which Tatnall said is invaluable.
“There is no heat, no air-conditioning and the roof leaks,” Tatnall said.
The committee rented a storage box and began removing everything from the library into storage. It was then that Tatnall came up with the idea to archive the postcards.
With so many boxes filled with pictures, leather-bound journals and maps showing old trolley engineering plans, Tatnall realized the collection of postcards in the trolley library could be a reachable goal and was something the small group of archival volunteers could accomplish.
For now, volunteers have been archiving by date, title and detailed description. One volunteer has entered all the information on the postcards into the Maine Memory Network Web site to preserve history online.
The New England Electrical Railway Historical Society, the society that runs the trolley museum, recently received a $1,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, based on an application sent in by Tatnall, to help fund the purchase of archival supplies and an intern to help mount the postcards onto archive paper in a  photo album to help preserve the postcard collection.
Tatnall also said the museum is currently working toward developing a plan to build a new library for the museum so they can safely display the history of the trolley.

Staff Writer Suzanne Hodgson can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 233.