Group of Holiday Tourists at Pen-Mar in the 1880s
This photograph, one panel of a stereo pair, taken in the 1880s. It is marked on front #558, Pen-Mar and Blue Ridge Scenery, Western Maryland Railroad. The back of the card has a long list of titles, but the numbers go from 401 to 517. Several of the titles are for the Pen-Mar area, where the Western Maryland Railroad had developed a resort in the late 1870s. The village of Pen-Mar was established to support that park, with hotels and services. It is on the border, straddling the Pennsylvania-Maryland line.
Notice how this image shows several young girls, all of varying ages and heights, but with nearly parallel hemlines. The length of the skirt was not standard, but its height above the ground was — so as girls grew their skirts were styled progressively longer.
Notice too that the right-most man and girl next to him are both standing partly within a railroad track — the train appears to have passed within about one meter of the hotel. That man also wears a railroad company cap, though straw boaters seem more popular with the youngsters. Those ladies who are wearing hats have very large brimmed styles, for shade from the summer sun.
The photographer for this image is marked on front as H. Frank Beidle, though on back the name is repeated and spelled H. Frank Beidel. The latter spelling is more common for this photographer, who was born Henry Frank Beidel about 1856 in Pennsylvania to German born parents, Henry C. and Catharine Beidel. The younger Henry had just one sibling, a sister named Laura who was about two years younger.
All of the records for both Beidel families was found strictly within two adjacent counties in South-Central Pennsylvania, Franklin and Cumberland. That is appropriate, as both the town of Shippensburg and the township of Southampton, which surrounds it, span the border of these two counties. In 1860 the family was living in Southampton township, Cumberland county, and the elder Henry worked as a wagon-maker. By the 1870 census they were living in Franklin county. In the 1880 census, when the younger Henry was in his early 20s, the elder Henry was again in Southampton township, now working as a store clerk, and H. Frank Beidel was already working as a photographer in Shippensburg.
It seems probable that H. Frank Beidel learned photography from a relative, as Craig’s Daguerreian Registry notes an L. S. Beidell in Chambersburg in the mid to late 1850s — about the time H. Frank Beidel was born. Chambersburg is only about 10 miles southwest of Shippensburg, and was the city where H. Frank Beidel spent the latter years of his photographic career.
Beidel took photographs, including stereoviews, in Shippensburg from about 1880 to 1890. He is last noted there in the 1889 directory. In 1891 he appears in Chambersburg. In the mid 1890s he married Annie, and in about 1896 their only child, Hester Beidel, was born. Annie died sometime between the 1910 and 1920 censuses, as she is listed in the former, and H. Frank is listed as a widower in the latter. Annie continued to live with her father at least through 1930, the last mention of them we have found. H. Frank Beidel was still active as a photographer in Chambersburg in 1930 when he was in his 70s.
