The President's Letter - July 2025

By: Ryan Bowman, HAHS President

July 5, 2025

An Eastman Kodak advertisement from the early 1900’s featuring the “Kodak Girl.” Note the folding Cartridge Premo camera.

From the president:

There is a family heirloom in my collection that is a mystery of sorts. It must be almost 100 years old at this point, but quite honestly, I’m not sure how it came to be in my possession. When you’re a history buff, and a genealogist of your family, things like that just tend to end up coming your way. I’m sure many of you out there know what I mean. This lack of knowing the source from which it has come is not the question. What it contains is the real mystery.

It is a common roll of Kodak 120 film. A model that I learned on the darkroom.com website was originally introduced by Eastman Kodak for its Brownie No. 2 model camera in 1901 and was the main format for amateur photographers and beginners’ cameras like box cameras at the turn of the 20th century. It was very popular until the inception of 35mm film in the mid 1920’s which would become the dominant format for both amateur and professional photographers alike by the 1950’s.

Amazingly enough, the 120-model film is still available for use today. What makes this one so special, however, is that it has been exposed. For the non-camera people out there, that means it is full of images. Maybe. Photos from the past. Perhaps photos of Bowmans long since gone. Or if images have survived, that at least is a very strong probability.

I love the idea of not knowing what is on the roll, but I have knowledge passed on to me of the original owner. Mary Caroline Bowman, known affectionately to the family as “Mamie” was my great grandfather’s older sister. Born in 1887, one of eight children to James Benjamin and Margaret Rebecca Mehargue-Bowman, Mamie was a bit of a Renaissance woman in her time.

In the early 1900’s she was an independent working woman who put in nearly 40 years of service at the National Cash Register Company in Harrisburg, was a wonderful cook, helped on the family farm her entire life, was active in church, an avid collector of family announcements from local newspapers, and along with other interests, became active with the new medium of photography as a young woman. Though she never married, it was this last hobby that allowed her to leave her mark on the history of the Bowman family. Mamie was a perfect example of what came to be known as a “Kodak Girl.”

The “Kodak Girl” was a marketing icon developed by George Eastman's Kodak company in the late1890s to promote the user-friendly Brownie camera, targeting women consumers. Portrayed as fashionable, independent, and adventurous, she frequently appeared in magazine advertisements and other media, engaging in photography as a hobby and documenting her experiences. The Kodak Girl played a significant role in making photography accessible to the public, especially women, and contributed to the broader cultural movement toward snapshot photography in so many American households. Mamie left hundreds of such photos for our family that have been passed down through the ages. Photos that have helped document our Bowman heritage.

A photo from the early 1900’s of Mary Caroline “Mamie” Bowman along with her Eastman Kodak No. 2 Folding Cartridge Premo camera and the exposed roll of film that was the catalyst for this article. Photograph by Ryan Bowman.

I was overjoyed when I once again stumbled onto Mamie’s Eastman Kodak No. 2 Folding Cartridge Premo camera complete with the original instruction booklet in my collection a few years ago. It is worn from use, but overall, in wonderful shape and seems to be in full working order. When I began to study more about the history of that particular Kodak model and just how common it was though, I became much more intrigued with that exposed roll of film. After all, there are thousands and thousands of antique cameras out there for purchase if you’d like. What is on that film, however, is one of a kind and irreplaceable.

Recently, that roll of film with its unknown potential got me thinking about a trend I’ve noticed in the past 10-15 years. That is, the lack of photos anyone has developed into prints. In this digital age when we take more photographs than ever before, I dare say they are images that will never be passed on to future generations. Backing up this overabundance of digital copies we create on exterior hard drives or the cloud is a great practice, but I fear will fall short in the test of time as these out of sight, out of mind files drift away with changes in technology or are simply lost to the passage of time because family members haven’t shared their whereabouts.

The loss of such gems would prove a great detriment to the historical legacy of American families. A fault easily fixed if they are stowed away somewhere in a dusty box, waiting to be found.

So, print your photos. Not all of them of course. Your posterity doesn’t need to know what you had for dinner on Wednesday night, but they may certainly wish to see the faces of those generations who came before them. There are few things greater than a family gathered around a kitchen table with a box full of old photos, passing them back and forth, sharing stories, meeting their ancestors, and making their own plans to preserve the past for the future. And then pass it on.

Just like Aunt Mamie.

Ryan Bowman

July 5, 2025