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Lots of people remember the day America turned 200 years old,   July 4, 1976. There were all sorts of special parades, concerts, fireworks, and programs in communities across the nation. It was a big deal in Cecil, too, with plenty of Bicentennial celebrations on the long holiday weekend for the once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.

Working that July 4th, Elkton Police Officers carefully chronicled the passing of Independence Day in the department’s official blotter.  Officers Strickland, Smith, Blake, Pease, and George kept a careful watch on the county seat, during a 24-hour tour, coming and going off 8-hour shifts as people enjoyed the festivities.

Considering how big the celebrations and parties were, it was a remarkably quiet holiday in Elkton.   There were a few fireworks calls and a couple of burglar alarms, but only one or two cases of disorder to mar the festive occasion.

Given the slow day, someone had time to do a little doodling on this public record, the Elkton Police Blotter. The pages, all except this one, lacked color and sketches. But an officer, getting into the spirit of ’76, wrote “Happy Birthday America,” and decorated the page with colorful artwork and lettering.

So just as our little colonial doodler in an early age, sketched on a Cecil County tax schedule, someone did the same in 1976 on this public record.

A few decades ago these volumes were added to the collection of the Historical Society of Cecil County and are available there.

Although tax season is over for most Americans now that we are a couple of days past April 15^th, it doesn’t mean that records generated for annual levies long ago aren’t of interest. In fact, one of the Historical Society of Cecil County research volunteers, Jo Ann Gardner, has been pouring over volumes of those financial transactions, carefully checking the rolls for personal property inventories, tax liabilities, addresses, and the names of people living here in earlier centuries.

Gardner isn’t an auditor with the Internal Revenue Service pouring over what might appear to be mundane pages. She is a library volunteer, helping a patron from Colorado who is trying to identify some long-ago, elusive ancestors in the public records.

Although those citizens from the past may not have been thrilled to pay the county levy, someone looking for evidence for putting together a family tree can be delighted to find ancestors listed in those aging, financial schedules written in a flowing script. While there are many ways to go about family history research, these often neglected vital governmental documents, have great value for historical and genealogical information. Gardner has been at it for some time going page by page through the volumes as the colonial, early federal, and 19th-century tax records at the Society are extensive.

The other day while pouring over those yellowing pages, with an auditor’s eye for detail, she tripped across a surprising item penned in the detailed, dry listings of figures, inventories, assessments, and levies. The county clerk (or someone) did a little fancy doodling, drawing a well-dressed man and also the face of another person. Perhaps it was just a little absent-minded sketching as the clerk sat silently listening to the commissioners review the assessments and make adjustments while waiting for them to complete their deliberations so he could permanently record the details in the county’s public record.

Gardner has named her colonial sketch artist, “Yankee Doodles Dandy,” and in those lists, tabulations, and levies, sources that have great potential for the genealogist probing for that elusive ancestor, “Yankee Doodles Dandy,” stands out. And the over 200-year-old random drawing has been getting lots of attention, as it adds a little color to the public record.

Nearly forty years ago, the County Commissioners determined that our local heritage keepers should also serve as the county archives for records that no longer have day-to-day relevance, but have historical value.

Whatever the case, we have had many doodlers in our nation’s history, as great leaders and others have been known to draw on the margins of a sheet during meetings.  So the county clerk from the colonial era was in good company as he performed that most essential function, official recording the business of Cecil County while also taking care of filings, pleadings, dockets, and legal instruments.

For more on doodling in public records

Doodling in the Elkton Police Blotter as the Nation Turns 200-Years-Old

This is National Public Safety Telecommunications Week (April 13-19, 2014), a time when the United States honors the professionals who answer 911 calls and dispatch emergency responders. While the nation thanks public safety communicators, Window on Cecil County’s Past pauses to tip our hat to the County’s 911 calls-takers, dispatchers, and technicians who maintain our emergency communication system.

These men and women are on the front line of every urgent situation in Cecil, dealing with life and death situations 24 hours-a-day, 7 days a week. They answer thousands of calls each year, coordinating the response of police officers, paramedics, fire fighters, hazmat technicians, medevac helicopters, and much more to incidents, while also providing guidance and instruction to citizens until first responders arrive. Their service is greatly appreciated.

At the same time, we pause to remember the four professionals who were the pioneer emergency communicators in Cecil. On Monday, October 2, 1961 at 12 p.m. sirens all across the county sounded, marking the beginning of professional, centralized communications as “fire headquarters” was on the air.

The Whig explained the operation. “It will be manned around the clock with trained personnel who have a knowledge of every piece of emergency equipment in the county, where it is located, what it can be used for, and the method for dispatching it without loss of time.”

Four fulltime county employees staffed the 24/7 operation. The one dispatcher alone on the shift juggled the telephone calls, handled radio traffic, and kept the FCC log. The “chief operator” Jack Cooke, was assisted by “operators” Rosemary Culley, Marie Cooling, and Jim Penhollow. Robert Eversole served as a relief operator.

Jim Penhollow recently recalled that it was a couple of days before the first emergency call came in. The times sure have changed and public safety communications has grown more complicated with each passing year. The week is sponsored by the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO).

We salute our public safety communications professionals, current and past.

Spring has finally arrived on the Upper Chesapeake and at old Rev. Duke’s Log House things were busy on this sunny Thursday afternoon as the temperature approached the mid-60s.  It was a perfect, early April afternoon as Arts Council volunteers tilled the soil on the front lawn for a community garden.

For additional albums, see this Conowing Post photo album on Facebook.

To drink or not to drink was the question at this month’s program at the Historical Society of Cecil County as the organization examined the days of temperance, prohibition, speakeasies, bootleggers and Bathtub gin. Afterwards everyone was invited to a secret rendezvous at the Bootlegger’s Ball, over at the North Street Hotel. There the guests toasted the repeal of prohibition and socialized after the talk. To help the “drys,” those temperance and teetotaler types, catch the spirit there was temperance run, a nonalcoholic beverage that even the saloon smasher, Carrie Nation, would approve of. So it was bottoms up for everyone as we remembered the “noble experiment.”

Here’s a brief YouTube video of scenes from the Bootlegger’s Ball.

From the Cecil County Public Library
Date: 4/8/2014
Start Time: 7:00 PM

Library: Perryville Branch
Location: Meeting Room

to register click here.

The author of a biography about the chief engineer of the C & D Canal, John Randel, Jr. will speak at the Historical Society of Cecil County April 12 at 2:00 p.m. “An eccentric and flamboyant surveyor,” Randel was “renowned for his inventiveness” and his irascibility.

After “drafting and executing the street grid plan for Manhattan,” he took on other important engineering projects. In 1823 the accomplished surveyor was hired to oversee the building of the Canal. But after the Company dismissed him four years later, he filed a wrongful dismissal suit, collecting a staggering settlement of more than $5-million in today’s dollars.  With that, he bought a 1,000 acre estate, Randelia, in Cecil County, the New York Times notes.

Marguerite Holloway, the director of Science and Environmental Journalism at Columbia University has written for Scientific American, Discover, the New York Times, Natural History and Wired. While researching the eccentric engineer, she spent days in Cecil County, working at the Historical Society and visiting the land Randel traveled.  “I am really thrilled to be talking at the Society.  It is where my quest for Randel really took hold,” the professor remarked.  There she found newspapers, the Martinet map, and journal entries from the diary of Judge McCauley.

“The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel, Jr: Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor,” was published in 2013 by W. W. Norton & Company. Illustrated with dozens of historical images and antique maps, it is an absorbing story about a fascinating man. “Marguerite Holloway offers up a well-deserved biography of the chronically aggrieved and litigious visionary,” the New York Times writes. “Professor Holloway . . . deftly weaves surviving fragments of Randel’s life . . . with a 21^st century scavenger hunt by modern geographers to find the physical markers of his work.”

Date:       April 12, 2014 at 2:00 p.m.

Location:  Historical Society of Cecil County, 135 E. Main Street, Elkton, MD.

Admission: Free

Social historian Mike Dixon will present an engaging presentation on the evolution of crime, punishment and police work in the region.  This engaging talk will examine old county jails, headline-grabbing criminal escapades of long ago, discontinued methods of punishment, and unheralded peace officers.

Registration is required.

Date: 3/24/2014  at 6:30 p.m

Library: Chesapeake City Branch

Contact: Chesapeake City Branch Library, 410-996-1134

There was lots of inspiring talk about old Elkton during the middle third of the 20^th century at the Historical Society of Cecil County this afternoon. Remembering those lively, youthful days was Evelyn V. (Vaggi) Scott, the 80-year-old daughter of George D and Mary G. Vaggi, who purchased the Howard Hotel, a long-established downtown business in 1923.

The place bustled with activity as waitresses served fine meals, the bartender dispensed drinks, and overnight guests booked comfortable rooms. This was long before Interstates and dual highways bypassed town centers and hotel chains sprouted up along those new roads.  In that earlier age, traveling salesmen, families making their way up or down the east coast, and others passing this way came right down Main Street.  There on this busy thoroughfare, Mrs. Scott grew up in the business, maturing, going off to college, and eventually marrying and moving to Michigan. Her parents decided to retire in 1973, when they sold the well-known establishment to the Ruth family.

It was a pleasant walk down memory lane, as Mrs. Scott recalled stories while looking at photographs of earlier times in Elkton.  Thanks Mrs. Scott for sharing your narratives and for donating so many fine pictures and materials to the Society.

The Society taped part of the interview and will stream a portion of it later, along with samples of the donations.  By-the-way, Mrs. Scott was back in Elkton as the property is now in the hands of new owners and they are creating an Irish Pub at this old landmark, which has anchored downtown for centuries.