Reflections on Yesterday — Cecil County History
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 20th 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.
The Genealogical Research Guide for Cecil County, Maryland (revised edition) by Darlene McDowell McCall is an informative out-of-print title packed with guidance and information for anyone starting on genealogy in the county. Last updated in 1997, it served as a good starting point for anyone seeking to discover records and sources.
The last edition of this twenty-year-old volume was published just as the Internet age was starting to transform research. Records, in the mid-and late-1990s, were paper or microfilm based, requiring a visit to the courthouse, the Historical Society, State Archives, or some other special collections library.
Of course, in the passing decades, we have seen a revolution in research methods as records became available in digital repositories for online access. But still, the methods and records groups one needs to access to investigate genealogy haven’t changed. The transformation has been in the way we access the records as the research strategies have largely remained the same.
Since the title still provides insightful guidance for anyone beginning on genealogy in this area, the author recently gave the Historical Society of Cecil County permission to publish it online in the Society’s virtual library. Here is the link.
Remember it is a publication from 1997 so many of the addresses and locations of records have changed in the age of the World Wide Web. But you will find helpful pages addressing the types of records you need to access to dig into family history and the types of insights you will be able to extract from primary sources. Too, there may have been additions to collections.
Thank you Darlene for allowing us to place your helpful work online.
This year the Water Witch Fire Company of Port Deposit marks an important milestone in the department’s history, a half-century of EMS service to the community. It was in the autumn of 1964 that the Company purchased its first ambulance, a 1957 Oldsmobile from the Union Fire Company of Oxford.
With that important enhancement, much speedier emergency medical service was provided to residents of the fire department’s territory with an ambulance housed in the center of the Susquehanna River town at Station 7.
To support the service, an ambulance membership drive was started with subscribers contributing $3 a year. The secretary-treasurer of the fund, Russell McFall, was the first member and Port Deposit Mayor Hubert F. Ryan and Ambulance Captain William H. Keetley were on hand to accept the donation. Anyone wishing to subscribe to the ambulance service as instructed to contact McFall at DR 5-7271.
The Historical Society of Cecil County wraps up the winter 2013-14 speakers’ series with a particularly lively event as the group taps into a fascinating period when Americans gave up the legal right to drink intoxicating beverages. Taking on this watershed event in the roaring ‘20s, “Pass the Rum: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,” and the Bootleggers’ Ball, examines the “noble experiment” from a local perspective, as the Society wraps up another successful year of public programs.
The lecture by Mike Dixon, a social historian, looks at attempts to regulate the consumption of alcohol and rid America of crime and vice. While most people are aware of prohibition in the 1920s, the attempt to regulate behavior extends far back into the County’s past, as wets and drys battled over booze. Although the program pays deeper attention to the modern era, the period when the nation, the State, and Cecil struggled to live with the 18th amendment and prohibition agents fought illegal activities, it takes a much longer view. But after the entire country went dry at midnight, January 16, 1920, when the federal government corked the flow of alcohol, the nation entered an intriguing chapter in history, a long dry spell. Colorful stories, of rum runners, moonshiners, bathtub gin, intriguing personalities, complicated politics, organized crime, outgunned lawmen, and the anti-saloon movement fill this period.
After enjoying the informative program, get your secret password for free access to our after-hours rendezvous from one of the flapper girls milling about. “With it, you will easily gain entrance to the Bootleggers’ Ball at the North Street Hotel as we toast the repeal of prohibition, celebrate and socialize after the talk,” the program host, Beth Boulden Moore, noted. “Come dressed in your finest flapper girl dress or moonshiner/bootlegger attire to win a fabulous prize. Or just come as you are to enjoy the afternoon.”
Musical entertainment will be provided by the infamous Boxturtle Bob, and perhaps he will even spin a few unique Cecil County tunes. Light refreshments will be provided and alcohol will be available for purchase from the bar. To help the “drys,” those temperance and teetotaler types, catch the spirit, the Society will have complementary non-alcoholic beverages that even the Saloon Smasher, Carrie Nation, would approve of, Bathtub Beth added. So for thirsty guests it will be bottoms up for everyone.
Don’t miss this lively program as we wrap up another successful year of talks exploring Cecil’s heritage.
When: Saturday, April 5th at 2:oo p.m.
Where: Historical Society of Cecil County, 135 E. Main Street, Elkton, MD
Cost: Free
Afterwards: The bootleggers ball a chance to toast the end of prohibition, celebrate and socialize at the North Street Hotel, Elkton. See Bathtub Beth and the Flapper Girls for the free password to get into our after-hours rendezvous.
While we’ve been occupied with the long winter of 2013-14 and these many snowy days, it was just last summer that we saw a number of severe thunderstorms pass over Elkton. One July day in 2013, as the National Weather Service issued a tornado alert for Cecil County, threatening, dark clouds hovered over Rev. Duke’s Log House while a dangerous front passed over the top of the Chesapeake. This old house has seen the passage of centuries and many storms so it was just another day for this historic property.
Program: “Archaeology of the War of 1812-Battle of Caulk’s Field.” Dr. Julie Schablitsky, Maryland State Highways Administration, Chief Archaeologist.
Abstract/Preview: Under a moon lit night on August 31, 1814, British Sir Captain Peter Parker engaged American Lieutenant Colonel Philip Reed in battle on an open field in Kent County, Maryland. After an hour of artillery and musket fire, the British, suffering heavy casualties, quit the field. Dr. Julie Schablitsky, under a National Park Service, American Battlefield Protection Program grant, completed a metal detector survey across 80 acres of agricultural fields to learn more about this pivotal battle. She considered military tactics, landscape, and artifact locations to reveal tro0p locations, an American encampment, and the battlefield boundary. Dr. Schablitsky will present the results of this investigation in this program.
Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Time: Open for refreshments at 6:30. Speaker program begins at 7:00 pm.
Location: Historical Society of Cecil County, 135 E. Main Street, Elkton, MD
Thirty people interested in researching old houses and land records stopped by the Historical Society of Cecil County this afternoon to hear Wendy Webb and Darlene McCall carefully explain how to dig into such things.
The two professional title searchers shared their special skills and insights related to combing through deeds, mortgages, tax records, real estate documents, wills, and other public records. Conveyances, metes and bounds in deeds, and all the things that are crucial to understanding and documenting a property were things they touched on.
Taking a team approach, Wendy demonstrated how to navigate Maryland’s online property resource such as those provided for assessments and taxations and the land records. Darlene did a case study on an old Elkton property, which she research and documented. The audience had lots of questions for the two professionals.
Thank you Wendy and Darlene for an excellent workshop and for sharing your professional insights.
As you travel around northeastern Cecil County, you notice the name all over the place. On the road heading north from the county seat (Route 213), almost making a straight line for Pennsylvania, signs let you know that you’re rolling along on Singerly Road. When the shriek of an Elkton fire engine or ambulance punctuates the calm of the day, the vehicle markings inform you that it is an emergency unit from Singerly Fire Company. If you are near Union Hospital searching for a parking spot, glance at the street signs. Singerly Avenue is what some say. Pause to pour over a county map, and you’ll notice that there is a place called Singerly.
It is not a popular name for a community or for that matter a wide spot in the road. According to the people who keep track of such things, the U. S. Geological Survey, there are only two other places named Singerly. Compare that with Elkton, Perryville Rising Sun. or Cherry Hill. There are a dozen or more of each of these across the nation. As for localities called Singerly, there is what the survey calls a “populated place” in Cecil County and another one in Virginia.
It is not even a common family name. A search of a couple of national telephone directories on the Internet leaves no question about that. There is one living somewhere out in Ohio.
The road, the street, the fire company, the “populated place,” how did this infrequently cited name become so common here? If you are a student of history or just someone with a bit of curiosity, perhaps you have wondered about this too. So let’s look at the record to see if we can explain its origin.
One day in 1880, a prosperous-looking gentleman from Philadelphia stepped off the afternoon train at Elkton. He climbed aboard a carriage for a trip to Providence, where he carefully examined an old paper mill on the Little Elk Creek. It had “gone to wreck under the weight of years,” the Cecil Whig reported. This stranger soon procured the title to the property and set out to build a modern paper mill on the site. It was not too long before a passerby on the road from Andora to Fair Hill, looking down into the “beautiful and picturesque valley,” observed a small village, in the midst of which was a busy mill, the newspaper noted.
The visitor was William M. Singerly, the editor and publisher of a popular one-cent daily newspaper, the Philadelphia Record. And he was a wealthy industrialist. He owned about a thousand houses in the city, operated a huge dairy farm there, and had major interests in manufacturing operations.
Having “pitched his tent amongst us,” the industrialist purchased a wharf and ground along the Big Elk Creek in Elkton, where he constructed a pulp mill four years later. For many years the “quiet and staid old town has been undisturbed in its slumbers by the busy hum of manufacturing industry but now there was another great Singerly boom,” the newspaper observed. He was providing work for nearly 200 men at the two factories.
His mills were about nine miles apart. When he built them, the road connecting the two factories was one of the worst in Cecil. At his own expense, he “piked” the route, covering the greater portion of it with crushed stone. After it was built the Whig said it was confident that there was one good road in the county if no more.
With his enterprises growing here, he erected a handsome summer cottage for himself just a few blocks from the railroad station, over near Bow and Cathedral streets in Elkton. The handsomely furnished cottage cost about $15,000 to build, an enormous sum for that era (that is about $300,000 today).
There was some criticism of the capitalist, a few saying that he paid lower wages than other mills. This was not true for William Singerly paid all the skilled laborers $2.70 per day and the unskilled men $1.25 per day, the Whig wrote.
The last spike was driven on a new railroad across the county, the Baltimore and Ohio, in 1886. Near where the tracks cross Singerly Road, the Company built a Queen Anne Style Station and named it after the newspaper publisher. Mills along the busy Little Elk Creek hauled goods to the station for shipment to city markets.
One Sunday evening in 1898 distressing news flashed across the wires from Philadelphia to the county seat. William M. Singerly, the man who had brought a significant measure of prosperity to the county, had died suddenly of “tobacco heart.” The next day, the headquarters of the Singerly Fire Company was draped in mourning. It was a testimonial to a man who had supported the fire company with liberal donations at the time of its organization.
The street he lived on, a place tucked in alongside Route 213 near the CSX tracks, a major state highway, and the fire company that he contributed money to have helped keep the name of William Singerly well known in these parts.
