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For the full story on the 2013 annual meeting click here. 

AUTUMN IN CECIL COUNTY– Here are more photos of autumn’s beauty in Cecil County, as the colors of fall are near their height for the season.   Click here to see earlier photos.

Today was a perfect day for getting out an enjoying some of the beauty of Cecil County, historic and natural.  The leaves are bright with fall’s color in many areas, especially when the sun is shining.   So with the color near its most brilliant for the season, I decided to head up to the northeastern corner of the county, to travel to some out-of-the-way spots near the Mason Dixon Line, which established the boundaries for Pennsylvania and Delaware.

 

 

 

 

 

On this fine autumn Saturday members of the Historical Society of Cecil County gathered for the organizations 82^rd annual meeting.  The crowd socialized, heard annual reports, elected officers, talked about the past, enjoyed dessert, and participated in some excellent historical programming, during the afternoon.

President Paula Newton opened the assembly with remarks about activities this past year.  After the reports and election of new officers President Newton honored Lucia G. Demond with the presentation of the Ernest A. Howard Award.  The Society presents this prestigious recognition to individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the preservation of Cecil’s heritage, working in significant ways to promote, protect and preserve the built environment, folkways or relics of earlier times

Lucia, the sixth recipient, teamed up with her husband, Nick (a former president), contributing countless volunteers hours to benefit the county and the society.  Constantly working to shed light on the area’s past they broadened the work of the Society, which included increasing hours of operation and contributing numerous historic manuscripts with great research value.  In addition the couple was active in heritage preservation with other local organizations such as the Upper Bay Museum.  “We thank Lucia for her tireless lifelong effort to protect and preserve our historic resources and for serving as an ambassador, promoting the County’s heritage,” President Paula Newton remarked.

About the time the last photos had been snapped two youngsters from the 1860s burst into the meeting, excitedly shouting that the Civil War Chaplain, the Rev. Joseph T. Brown, was coming.  Rev. Brown served as a chaplain to the Maryland 6th Volunteer Regiment, and he was returning home to Cherry Hill, fresh from Libby Prison and the all too vivid memories of major battles.

It was now time for the audience to get involved as the excited youngsters urged them to hurry up and greet the returning veteran.  So as members spilled outside on this beautiful Saturday afternoon, they heard a voice off in the distance signing an old Methodist Hymn.  As the man walked toward the assembly, everyone soon saw that it was the Civil War Chaplin returning from Libby Prison.

Following greetings and handshakes from old friends who had been separated for some time, the tired veteran of major battles lead the crowd into the Cherry Hill United Methodist Church, where he took the pulpit to share first hand stories.  The account, mixed with great emotion, was from a man who had survived the great conflict and he told about selecting prisoners to be executed, hearing about the assassination of President Lincoln, and the experiences of terrible battles.  Periodically the Methodist preacher led the assembled audience in the signing of old hymns and those beautiful sounds filled the sanctuary.

Once Rev. Brown finished telling his Civil War story and interacting with the crowd, the Libby Prison Minstrels, a group of Civil War musicians, shared songs of the Civil War, using instruments of yesterday and today.  It had been a fine afternoon of inspirational true stories, participatory history, and special music as the members peeked into the daily life of a chaplain during the war.

Notes:  The Civil War Chaplain was played by Rev. Hubert Jicha of North East United Methodist Church.  The two youngsters from the 1860s were Riley and William Graham; and the script for the living history program was written by Eric Mease.   

December 8, 1963, was a slow night for broadcast journalist Joe Mosbrook, working the Sunday evening shift at WDEL in Wilmington.  Nothing particularly remarkable filled the Delaware airwaves as Joe ripped network copy off the teletype, made phone calls to get updates on things around New Castle County and read weather reports about a December thunderstorm passing through Wilmington.

But that changed at 9 p.m. when phones suddenly started jangling in the newsroom.  Worried callers asked about a sudden large fireball illuminating the night, while others blurted out that they watched a large jet go down in flames near the Maryland/Delaware state line.  The journalist started working his sources, trying to piece together whatever early information he could get from emergency responders, airport representatives, public officials, and witnesses.

Unnerved people wanted information and in the early 1960s the place to turn for fast-breaking events was radio.  So when something happened people tuned up and down the dial as stations had a local staff of reporters covering a market and could deliver information efficiently and rapidly.  Newspapers published twice a day and television, with heavy not so movable equipment, just didn’t have the portability we are familiar with today.  This was the golden age of radio news, but things were beginning to change as television got ready to turn listeners into viewers.

Two hours after the first alert when out on civil defense radio networks, Joe had a full, preliminary report for NBC’s News on the Hour at 11 p.m., summarizing what was known at that point.  He continued providing Network feeds from WDEL until 1 a.m. that morning and was back on the air again at 7 a.m. to update the local audience and the network. The final piece is from 7:30 a.m.

After listening to Joe report on the dedication of I-95 and the Kennedy Assassination for WDEL, we recently exchanged messages with the veteran reporter.  He dug through his collection of old tapes an found the coverage of the Elkton Crash, which he made from WDEL.

The Delaware broadcaster had grown up in Wilmington and started at WDEL in 1961.  He was the news director there until 1967, when he moved to NBC News in Cleveland to work radio and television for 35 years, retiring in 2002.    Joe still does a weekly jazz history feature for Cleveland’s NPR outlet.

Notes

A remembrance program will be held on Dec 8, 2013.  Click here for details.  Also be sure to click on the individual time segments to hear Joe’s news reports.  We thank Joe for allowing us to use these 50-year-old news pieces and they will be added to a remembrance archive.

As decades slip all too quickly by once young soldiers grow old.  While aging the defenders often recall their battles, remembering stirring times until that final voice is silenced.  That time was rapidly approach in 1896 for soldiers of the War of 1812, when the Utica Morning Herald reported that only fourteen pensioners remained.

In that group was a Cecil County centenarian, Elijah B. Glenn.  He had been born at Carpenter’s Point in August 1796.   Glenn was the “last survivor of the ‘Old Defenders who saved Baltimore from the British attack” in September 1814, according to the Cecil Democrat.  He died on July 25, 1898, at 102 years of age at the home of his granddaughter, Mrs. John E. Barcklow in Newark, NJ according to the New York Times.  The private joined the Maryland Militia when he was 18, serving in Captain Peter Pinney’s company, the 27th Maryland Regiment, which fought at the Battle of North Point.

The Port Deposit Chamber of Commerce has entered the high-tech heritage tourism world by piloting a new product, becoming the first Cecil County destination spot to offer walking tours delivered over a wireless network.  Strolling throughout the historic town nestled between granite cliffs and the east bank of the Susquehanna River, the past comes alive for curious types, tourists, and residents as the present meets the past.  While ambling along a street with fine buildings from an earlier time, visitors dial in on a cellphone to hear engaging and informative narrations.

The buildings in this river town have always seemed as if they were just waiting to tell lively stories of the past and that was done traditionally with a walking tour pamphlet.  Now the earlier eras speak to the passerby.

Port is an ideal town for an afternoon walking tour on a beautiful autumn day (or anytime really) similar to this one.  So be sure to visit soon, but don’t forget to bring along your digital devise.  The recorded messages, all brief (less than two minutes), describe events from the past and the points of interest.

The phone number is 585-546-1776.   There are eleven stops and callers select what they want to listen to by dialing the stop number on the keypad.  Small signs posted around town alert visitors to the locations.

Thank you Port Deposit Chamber for helping make Cecil County history more broadly accessible on an audio that gives everyone a chance to hear a lively and engaging personal tour of major historic spots and events around a town that has so much history waiting to be shared.  This pilot product was developed earlier this year in order to help the Chamber learn about navigating the process of working with these emerging products and it will enable them to enhance the tour over time.

The Historical Society of Cecil County is holding a remembrance program on Dec 8^th 2013, as it will be fifty years since Pan American World Airways Flight 214 crashed outside of Elkton, killing everyone onboard the jet.  As we honor the memory of those on the flight and the first responders who answered the urgent call that stormy night, families from throughout the nation are traveling to Elkton on this date.

The Elkton Comfort Suites has partnered with the Society to offer an exclusive discounted rate to those traveling to Elkton over the remembrance weekend.  If you are attending the programs and need overnight accommodations feel free to check with the Comfort Suites.  Tell them you are attending the “Cecil County Historical Society Program,” and they will make the special rate available to you.

The Society thanks the management of the hotel for helping support this important program as families return to Elkton on this weekend in early December to the remember the tragedy that touched so many lives in so many ways.

Beginning after the Civil War, the Army Corps of Engineers worked to maintain water access to communities located at the head of navigation of many rivers on the Chesapeake. That ongoing struggle, extending well into the 1900s, required constant effort as the Corps mapped waterways, carried out dredging, removed shoals, and built dikes, making the waterways navigable for sailing and steam vessels.

For places that had grown steadily because of the location at the top of a waterway, silting the river beds was a problem, making them nearly unreachable via the traditional routes, except on high tide.  These centuries of labor generated a lot of helpful technical reports, many of them done by engineers, and those old original records are often available to help understand the passage of centuries along a stream.  As the Corps superintended the dredging, they produced pages of notes, sketches, hand-drawn maps, letters, official correspondence, and official documents.  Many surviving manuscripts are stored safely away in the Philadelphia Branch of the National Archives.

The North East River was one of those watercourses that received attention.  The Engineers did a detailed examination of the waterway for the House of Representatives, surveying it to its head in 1937.  The United States dredged a channel of 6’ feet depth to the Davis Wharf in North East in 1893, at a cost of $5,140, “exclusive of an expenditures of $15,500 under prior authorizations.”  At this point, commercial interests desired to have a channel 10 feet deep to a point 300 feet above the foot of Church Street, ending in a suitable turning and anchorage basin.  If the Government would agree to do this proponents offered to “furnish necessary rights-of-way and spill-disposal areas, construct a public wharf, and contribute $100 toward the cost of improvement.”

Noting the value in this work, the report said there were 1,500 inhabitants, principally engaged in the manufacture of brick, insulating products and baskets, processing of vegetables and fish, and the repair of boats.  The nearby areas were devoted chiefly to farming, although a number of summer residential developments are located along the lower reaches of the stream.  The commerce of the harbor for 1935 consisted of 10,000 tons of fish and 500 tons of salt at a fish-pickling plant near the lower town limits.

If the work was performed, it should lead to the receipt of substantial quantities of petroleum products, building materials, fertilizers and miscellaneous freights with saving in transportation costs estimated at $3,750, the authors estimated.

Another study in 1910 noted that the town of 1,000 had a taxable basis of $500,000 and was governed by a board of five commissioners.  It contained one bank, a grade and high school, a newspaper, two hotels, three churches, two brickyards, a shirt factory, a basket factory, a cannery, three fish-packing houses, a charcoal kiln, a flour mill, an electric light plant, a boat building, and a cooperage plants.  One railroad passed by the town.  Twenty-eight sailing craft and 92 power boats were owned here, 75 percent having a capacity of 10 tons or less.

Water transportation was limited to one 35-ton power boat, drawing 5 feet of water, which plied between North East and Baltimore.  It had to wait for flood tide to pass over the bar, which was causing a failing off of profits.

Additional examinations were conducted in the 1870s and 1880s, and these manuscripts, especially those highly detailed maps drawn so long ago, help answer many of our questions about the time and place.

H. W. Sherman, one of the assets acquired by the Federal Government with the purchase of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, was retiring from the Army Corps of Engineers in 1953.  The 70-year-old administrative assistant spent 48 years on the waterway, having started with the corporate owner of the route across the Peninsula in 1905.

It was a lock canal when Herman moved from Philadelphia to Chesapeake City to work as a clerk.  “You should have seen the barges coming through in those days,” the retiring employee told the Baltimore Sun.  “They were long and loaded with lumber, pulpwood, and pig iron.  There wasn’t any oil in those days, but there was wine.”

It was a toll route, and every vessel paid as it moved through the first lock.  “Big shippers posted a bond so their barges could move through without any holdup.  Each week drafts were sent to them for payment.  If they failed, the bonds were seized.  The small operators paid cash on each voyage.”  In 1912 Mr. Sherman became a collector, picking up the cash at the first lock.  “In those days, because the locks were small,” he relates, there were teams of four mules to pull barges through.”

He added that the only other person associated with the canal still alive in Chesapeake City was Harry Borger, a mule driver and later a steam rig operator.

The veteran employee noted the changes:  “It’s a good thing we haven’t had to worry about tolls with all this big traffic moving through.  Think what it might be checking up on the big lots in the freighters that have been using the canal.    The 70-year-old planned to stay around Chesapeake City, where he had spent his last 48 years, working in his huge flower garden and cutting the shrubbery around his white frame house in Chesapeake City.

The times had changed on the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal.