Reflections on Yesterday — Cecil County History
The old P.W. & B. Perryville Railroad Station looks rather fine on a late summer day as an Amtrak Acela rushes past. Built in 1904, the station continues serving commuters as about 14 Marc trains chug into the station each today and the conductors shout all aboard. Each morning the parking lots fill, and the old depot hums with activity with passengers climbing aboard for the morning commute to Baltimore and Washington.
One of our library volunteers, Steve Higham, has created a new online research resource to help those studying family and local history during the Civil War.
Here is Steve’s Description of the manuscript he worked with over the summer. “In the Civil War, the Federal government established quotas for each state as to the number of required enlistments. To meet these quotas, the states set quotas for the counties and authorized funds that the various counties could offer to entice volunteers to enlist. This payment (bounty) was paid to the volunteer at initial enlistment and a subsequent payment was made at a later date. In Cecil County, Maryland, most local enlistees received an initial bounty in September/October 1862 and the second payment (if still serving) was made later. A ledger was kept by Cecil County accounting for these bounty payments. The ledger indicated the name of the soldier, the locale and election district of the volunteer, his age, marital status and payee and payment date. Also shown is the date of the subsequent payment (if any) and the unit in which the soldier served.”
Here is the link to the Excel spreadsheet containing the names of the soldiers. Steve carefully scrutinized the 19th century handwriting, entered the data into a spreadsheet, photographed the appropriate page and linked it all together.
At Cecil County’s history and genealogy library, our volunteer librarians are working to use web-based technologies to increase the study and understanding of the area’s history. Thanks Steve for giving your time to create this digital research product.
By-the-way, he is working on other online research materials and we will announce those as he finishes working on them.
With autumn set to arrive in a few days, the bright harvest moon of September illuminated Chesapeake City and the C & D Canal this evening.
As a result of developing research materials for centuries many of the nation’s largest public libraries have vast collections of photographs and postcards from earlier times. These items, which are helpful to those digging into the past, have always been available, safely preserved and stored away for visiting patrons. But now access is greatly enhanced as many of these institutions implement online sharing platforms that support the organization’s mission by increasing access for education, research, and personal enrichment.
The Boston Public Library (BPL), following the example of the Library of Congress, is one of the institutions that has embraced this approach. It has about 86,000 images on the Commons. BPL’s photostream is organized into collections and sets. clustered by major topic and state. It has many historical treasures, including posters, postcards, labels, sheet music, trade cards, and much more. There are 189 Delaware and 380 Maryland postcards, for example.
The goal of the Flickr Commons is to increase access to publicly held photograph collections and provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge.
Check it out. You will find images there that will catch your interest as more institutions find innovative ways to share holdings found in the “world’s public photography archives.” Beyond making the images available on the Internet, visitors are invited to contribute to the public knowledge by adding tags and leaving comments.
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Flickr, Google and Others are Out to Catalog the World’s Public Photo Archives.
The blog Indicommons has a lot of additional information about the the Flickr approach. Check it out for details, but here are some points the site makes
Press Release – Cecil County Public Library
A multimedia program by journalist Nancy Lynch and Vietnam Veteran Rick Lovekin, who frequently corresponded with Lynch. From 1968-1972, Lynch ran a column in the Wilmington News Journal called “Vietnam Mailbag.” In 2008 she published a book of the letters. Lynch will share corespondences from local soldiers in Delaware and Cecil County.
Date: 9/17/2013
Start Time: 7:00 PM
Library: Rising Sun Branch Library
Contact Number: 410-658-4025
Presenter: Nancy Lynch
As the summer of 2013 fades away, this fine autumn-like Saturday presented the perfect opportunity to delve into the past that is all around us in our communities across Cecil County. Since I was in North East and the weather was perfect, I took a brief detour to Colonial Charlestown to roam some old streets while studying buildings constructed long ago. It is a fine place to contemplate our natural and built environments and the history that is all around us here as the attractive 150-acre historic district is well preserved.
With the arrival of October it is time for the return of the Historical Society of Cecil County’s popular winter 2013-14 speakers series. This year the county’s heritage-keepers open with “Elkton in the 1960s,” a talk by Milford Sprecher.
Delivered for the first time, it captures the spirit of those years locally, providing views and perspective of someone who came of age in the county seat during that pivotal time, a period of change in the nation and in Cecil County. The opening of I-95, integration, urban renewal, and tragedy all affected Elkton as it affected the nation.
On this enjoyable track back through time to a special place, Elkton and Cecil County, the speaker will share enduring memories that were acquired long ago. The talk is richly illustrated with dozens of local photographs from the 1960s, many of them rarely viewed.
Milford Sprecher was born in Elkton and educated in the local schools. He graduated from Western Maryland College and received his Master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. He currently lives in Takoma Park, Maryland and looks back fondly on his formative years in Elkton.
The free event takes place on Saturday, Oct 5th at 2 p.m. the Society’s library at 135 E. Main Street in Elkton. Look for additional topics on the first Saturday of each month during the cooler weather months.
Now that the 1960s are history and not just nostalgia the Historical Society of Cecil County is opening an exhibit this fall that studies and celebrates the happenings of that era locally. It was a time that brought many transformations to this corner of northeastern Maryland and our curator, Lisa Dolor, and a talented group of volunteers are capturing those intriguing times in gallery displays.
The museum staff has been busy pouring over some 40,000 local photographs, hundreds of objects from the decade, and the history books for a couple of months, planning the attractive interpretive panels. While this group of volunteers works on the creative, visual aspect for our special 1960s series, others are putting together lectures and articles focusing on the county during those ten years, a time when everything changed.
Look for a detailed update shortly.
If a Cecil County resident needed to call for emergency help back in the 1950s they had better have a telephone book handy or have taped the number to the phone. The process of reaching the correct call-taker during a fire or medical incident to request assistance was complicated. People had eleven different potential strings of numbers that might have to be dialed, depending on which of the county’s volunteer fire companies was responsible for the area.
Cecilton published three different numbers, depending on the time of day in 1951. At 8 p.m. another set was designated and if it happened that no one answered the directory said you could dial the operator.
It just wasn’t as easy as dialing those three easy to remember digits and having calls answered by professional public safety communications officers standing ready, around the clock, to efficiently aid callers in an emergency, while promptly getting aid to residents.
The Hagley Digital Archives provides online access to selected materials from the Hagley Museum and Library’s collection of images, documents, and publications. Although the organization concentrates on business, technology and Society, several of the record groups help researchers studying Cecil County’s past
The Zebley-Hoffecker collection is one example. The pictorial department added this records group of nearly 1,500 pictures in August 2012. The images were snapped between 1918 and 1944 by Wilmington Native Frank R. Zebley. Traveling all over the region, “Zebley photographed an enormous mix of subjects and places, including street scenes, rural views, parades, parks, public buildings, churches, beaches, rivers and bridges, automobile accidents, hotels, and estates, plus notable events . . .” according to a library press release. “This collection has long been a wonderful and well-used resource for local history researchers living in the Wilmington area, and we hope that many more folks will find and use the photographs now that they are available online,” Hagley adds. The finding aid and search engine takes you to images from the C & D Canal, Fair Hill, Bethel Church, Conowingo, and more.
There are other important virtual collection of text and images, which contain materials which should help researchers. Those include the DuPont Magazine and company correspondence. Some of the others are Nation’s Business, Dallin Aerial Survey Company products, and the Beers Atlas of Delaware. Here is the link for you to browse and search the Hagley Digital Archives.
