CHESAPEAKE CITY — Feb. 26, 2022 — As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth day, we stopped by a hilltop south of Chesapeake City as the fading light of this final Saturday in February gave way to evening.
This is an area where the Ukrainian community in northeastern Maryland had its beginnings so as Americans join in solidarity, worrying about the safety of people in Europe as the conflict escalates, we paused here for a few moments to reflect on the unsettling news for the Ukrainian community and the world. It had hit too close to family and friends of many in the Chesapeake City area.
St. Basil’s Ukrainian Church in Chesapeake City on Feb. 26, 2022
These industrious, hard-working people established their homes in northeastern Maryland on the field, woods, and farmland alongside the C & D Canal and imported their traditions to the community. This strong culture and heritage remain in this corner of the State today.
Around 1911, Bishop Soter Stephen Ortynsky of Philadelphia announced plans for a convent and orphanage at Chesapeake City and purchased 700 acres of land to encourage settlement of emigrants from Ukraine, according to “Ukrainians in Maryland.”
As the population grew, religious services were held in homes, but on Aug. 26, 1918, Paul Wasylczuk donated land for the church. With Rev. Basil Petriwsky in charge, “the carpenters, Alex Korchak, John Hrabec, Michael Breza, and Alex Hotra, assisted by every available parish hand,” erected the church, the place of worship opening about 1920. For years, priests visited from other parishes, but in 1930 Father Stephan Chehansky was appointed to reside in the parish.
In addition to working their parcels, many men worked for the Corps of Engineers on the C&D Canal expansion in the 1920s.
St. Basil’s Ukrainian Catholic Church continues to serve as the spiritual and cultural center for the Ukrainian community in this area today.
“St. Basil’s Parish has furnished two priests and two sisters to the Ukrainian Catholic Church: Bishop Basil Losten, Rev. Stephen Hotra, Sister Barnarda (Anna Arkatin) and Sister Tharcillia (Sophie Arkatin)
Sources:
Historical information from the Ukrainians of Maryland by Stephen Basarab, Paul Fenchak, Wolodmyr C. Sushko (1986)
Ukrainians of Greater Philadelphia by Alexander Lushnycky, Ph.D. (2007)
When Cecil County appointed a female peace officer in 1961, she became the first woman to perform police duties here. This commission prompted attention from the regional press, and after the county clerk swore in Odette “Skip” Scrivanich, a Baltimore reporter in search of a story, came looking for the “lady constable.”
The newspaperman asked at the courthouse where he could find her and a county commissioner said, “She’s down at Red Point, but don’t fool with her. She’s tough.” When the man visited Red Point Beach, the clerk at the general store informed him that the constable was teaching physical education in Baltimore at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. Returning to Baltimore, he finally caught up with her at the college gymnasium.
Cecil County Constable Odetta Scrivanich
After telling the journalist that she had been a physical education instructor at various high schools in Baltimore before coming to Notre Dame, she remarked that there ought to be more teachers who are police officers and more police officers who are teachers. “You have a tone that’s medium firm. Then there’s a full stare, a one-half stare, or a glance, all techniques in maintaining discipline,” she explained. “A police officer can use them successfully.”
When the law enforcement officer was on her beat, Red Point, she was at “the beck and call of everybody all the time,” she explained. I’m called out at 3 o’clock in the morning to stop a fight between campers, quite a beach party, or take care of people who are drunk and disorderly. She said of teenage rumbles: “If I can get rid of the adults and the big brave men who think they can take care of things, then I’m all right. I can’t depend on belligerence and strength. I try to talk the adults into running along. Then I talk to the boys, and it usually works.”
Of course, the calls happened at night when she was trying to sleep, Skip observed. “Once, I was called out to find a prowler some ladies said was about. In the dark of night, I faced a woods, made a clickity-clack with my revolver, and shouted, ” Come out with your hands up. No one came out.”
Constable Servinanich said that if she ever had to shoot, she’d use her rifle as she had pinpoint accuracy. She reported that she had won several championships on the Penn State Rifle Team. “I keep building a reputation by practicing at galleries and carnivals. I let everybody know I’m still in practice.”
“Once, a boat almost ran down some people. I started spreading the word around that if that guy came back, I’d shoot a hole in him where it would do the best. I took the rifle down to the beach and stood in front of everybody. Word spreads fast. He didn’t come back.”
She emphasized that she had never had to use her revolver or rifle and very little of her judo, which she learned from an ex-marine at Johns Hopkins University.
At Red Point, she mostly had vacationers, which she summed up this way: “When people go on vacation, they’re out to have a ball and leave their common sense at home.
Constables
For much of the 20th century, constables augmented the Cecil County Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff in Elkton had three or four deputies in 1960 to run the jail 24 hours a day, provide court security, serve warrants, and answer police calls. Thus constables were appointed in various places throughout the county to provide a local police presence and take care of law enforcement matters in their local area. In the 19th century, the system had been much stronger–each election district had constables appointed to serve that area. But that more formal system when the constables did much of the policing work in the outlying areas was starting to fade in the 1960s. Constables were official law enforcement officers and had policing powers, having been appointed to maintain peace and order. Skip was the law at Red Point Beach.
Source: The Constable is a Woman and an Expert with the Rifle, Evening Sun, May 24, 1961
Rusty Brandon, night house supervisor at Union Hospital (Source: Rusty)
Rusty Brandon managed the overnight shift at Union Hospital for forty-five years. Her all-night routine started in 1953 when she assumed responsibility for supervising healthcare services for the Elkton Hospital on the late shift.
Arriving a little before the 11 pm staff clocked in, Rusty received a report from the evening supervisor. Then she made phone calls to fill staffing shortages, examined patient charts, and checked for special instructions from the administrator and director of nursing—all things to be taken care of immediately as those long nights got underway.
After Nurse Brandon finished the preliminaries, she made rounds to ensure that exterior doors were locked and visited nurses’ stations to confer on any medical issues that might come.
Babies and emergencies came at all hours of the day and night. So as the lone house supervisor, she covered unstaffed units such as labor and delivery and the operating room. If something came up, she was more or less on her own. Also, all admissions went through Rusty.
By 11 pm in those early decades, clinical specialties and support services—radiology, lab, and housekeeping—clocked out before midnight. While struggling with all these duties, the work was often interrupted if someone buzzed to get in at the loading dock, as Rusty was the only circulating person in the facility.
On these minute-by-minute shifts, nothing was routine, as the house nurse also provided coverage in the “accident ward.” Every so often in the wee hours of the night, the buzzer at the locked emergency entrance chimed as someone needed urgent medical help. The ringing heard throughout the hushed hospital sent Nurse Brandon rushing to the first floor to let in a suffering person. Then, she got to work as an emergency room nurse since the staff member for this unit clocked out at 11 pm.
Also serving as the Elkton ambulance dispatcher, she answered the phone when someone needed emergency transport. While passing through silent corridors to monitor operations, the emergency phone occasionally rang, the jarring jingle interrupting the pre-dawn calm that had settled over the hospital.
After getting the address and finding out about the urgent situation, Rusty glanced at a Singerly Fire Company duty roster. This list provided the names of the Singerly volunteers on call for that month, first responders such as Jack Jamison, Speck Slaughter, and Henry Schaffer.
After Rusty dialed the crew, Singerly took it from there, so she returned to the floors. That was until the first responders radioed in to say that the ambulance would arrive in a few minutes.
That message caused Rusty to rush down and unlock the accident ward to receive the incoming patient. Once the sick or injured person arrived, she triaged the patient, deciding if the case needed a doctor immediately. The 1947 University of Maryland School of Nursing graduate handled care until doctors arrived for morning rounds. If the patient required a physician immediately, she called the on-duty practitioner at home and waited while she cared for the serious cases.
After providing emergency care, it was back to making rounds or running to do this or that—perhaps a delivery person was at the loading dock. Or Dr. Hsu arrived early and was at the main entrance waiting to get in. Doors had to be locked and unlocked, and in the years before, there was a security guard, she doubled in that role.
Finally, with the first light of day, it was time to get the morning report ready and hand the multifaceted job over to a cluster of people as they clocked in: charge nurses, supervisors, administrators, medical technicians, operating room staff, central supply personnel, custodians, and clerks.
Nothing was routine on those lonely overnight tours—the needs changed hour by hour, and Rusty handled whatever happened. And she was on her own, waiting for the dawn and that cadre of dayshift supervisory and operational staff.
After forty-five years in this responsible and demanding job of taking care of the healthcare of Cecil Countians during the overnight hours at Union Hospital, Rusty finished the final stint in 1998. A lot had changed since the young nurse, a few years out of school, began her career: doctors and nurses staffed specialty departments around the clock; helicopters rushed trauma patients to shock trauma; and security guards and support staff relieved the night supervisor of those chores.
Although technology, pharmacology, specialization, and Union Hospital changed, there was one reassuring, consistent element to inpatient care in Cecil County. It was Nurse Brandon. Over a career that spanned five decades, Rusty Brandon had worked under four directors of nursing and became a fixture in Union Hospital and Cecil County. The variety of tasks the nursing supervisor had to master was enormous in those early decades.
In November 1906, the Oblate Fathers of St. Francis de Sales announced that the religious order had purchased the Edward Taylor Farm at Childs for $9,000. Formerly the Dunott farm, it comprised about 210 acres.1
A 1910 postcard of Soyhieres Hill, Childs. This Oblates’ Novitiate opened in 1907
Plans for the seminary called for the construction of substantial buildings devoted to religious instruction, the Midland Journal reported. The first building was to be a three-story, brick or concrete structure, including a chapel, living room, dining room, dormitories, and other necessary quarters to accommodate about 40 students.
The project was the outcome of efforts by the Rev. Peter P. Arnd of the Immaculate Conception Church in Elkton.
On June 8, 1907, the Cecil Whig reported that about fifty students and professors from “The College of Oblate Fathers, Wilmington” visited their new home on the seminary farm at Childs Station. They would take up quarters here permanently on the 20th of June 1907 2
The Rt. Rev. John J. Monaghan dedicated the “Novitiate of the Oblate Fathers of St. Francis de Sales on Oct 6, 1907. 3
A woman stands on Milestone 15 on the Mason-Dixon Line. It is just east of Goat Hill. (Paul Hoffman Photo, in the collection of the Maryland Center for History & Culture)
More than a century and a half after Mason and Dixon drew the boundary line separating Pennsylvania and Maryland, the question about the location of the border got entangled in a federal prohibition case. The wrangling started after Deputy Sheriff Joseph Short and Federal Dry Agent John M. Spicer raided a moonshine plant near Goat Hill northwest of Rising Sun in October 1928.1
The British surveyors had settled the dispute for the Penn and Calvert families in 1768. Nonetheless, in the roaring ‘20s, the uncertainty of whether Archie Akers produced rum north or south of the state line vexed officials.
The raiding officers charged Akers with manufacturing alcohol, a violation of the federal Volstead Act. However, when he appeared in court in Baltimore, legal wrangling arose over the timeworn geographical question. Did the alleged crime happen in Pennsylvania or Maryland? Who had jurisdiction?2
Those were the legal uncertainties that puzzled the court. Akers was unsure, the Baltimore Sun noted. He knew he resided in Cecil County because he paid taxes there, “But there was the tradition that the line ran close to his domicile,” Akers testified. But how close was not certain.3
As lawyers and the judge mulled over frustrating legalities, they hit upon a solution—order the U.S. Government to resurvey that part of the line. That would settle the controversy, making it plain which court had jurisdiction.
When the men re-ran the line south of Goat Hill for the court, “Pennsylvania won—or lost—by a margin of a couple of hundred yards,” the survey showed. Moreover, this “disclosed that a certain deputy sheriff of Maryland transgressed his jurisdiction when he aided prohibition officers in entrapping the man,” the Sun .wrote.
While taking precise measurements, the men noticed an old British quarried stone, Milestone No. 16, one of the originals placed by Mason and Dixon in 1766. It was in an isolated hilly area north of Ridge Road, at the south edge of the 440-foot high Goat Hill, a summit in Chester County that descends into Maryland.4,5
Having settled the peculiar legal dispute, officials transferred the case to the Philadelphia District of the Federal Court, according to William Childs Purnell, assistant United States District Attorney. If the shooting affray had not complicated the case against Akers, he could have tried it in Maryland as the federal Volstead act permitted presentments in any jurisdiction, he explained.
But when Akers held the raiding officers at bay for some time with his repeating rifle, that complicated the prohibition case as both incidents occurred entirely on the Pennsylvania side, the redrawing of the line showed.
Goat Hill is shown on the U.S. Geographical Survey Topo Map (2019)
CHARLESTOWN – NOV. 25, 2022 – Friday, as a rainy, gray morning gave way to the warming sunshine of a late autumn day, they laid Robert (Bob) Earl Phillips to rest at St. John’s United Methodist Church Cemetery, where family, friends, town leaders, and the fire company gathered to bid farewell. Born on March 6, 1922, when Warren G. Harding was president, the popular 100-year-old civic leader passed away on November 21, 1922.
Growing up in Mechanics Valley, he attended high school in North East where he met Rebecca E. Cooper. After they married in 1943, the couple made their home in Charlestown. Bob Touched many lives as he and his wife, Rebecca, who passed away in 2018, embraced various causes and interests.
In 2016, Bob Phillips sits on a bench the town installed to recognize his contributions to the community.
Fire Company Founding Member
After flames damaged two houses in January 1948, he helped establish the Charlestown Fire Company. Engines from North East and Perryville had to travel a distance to answer the alarms, so the community wanted first responders stationed in the town.
Back in 2014, we interviewed Bob Phillips and Pete Williams, another charter member, about these challenges for the Volunteer Trumpet, the newsletter of the Maryland State Firemen’s Association. They recalled that volunteers turned out to erect a single bay station and raise money to start the company. Bob was a master craftsman, so his practical skills were used as carpenters, masons, concrete finishers, and electricians purchased the materials, laid the foundation, put up the walls, and finished the interior of Station 5.
Building the Charlestown Firehouse in 1948 (Photo Credit: Charlestown Fire Company)
The firefighters purchased a second-hand engine, a chain-driven 1927 Mack, from the Brooklyn Fire Department (MD). The Kennedyville Fire Company now owns it. In those early years, Elizabeth McMullen took emergency phone calls at her home as a radio network hadn’t been established, they recalled. At all hours of the day and night, if an emergency call came in, she answered the phone and ran to the station to ring the alarm. Throughout his life, Bob maintained his membership in the Charlestown Fire Company and was one of the last surviving charter members.
Community Leader
The centenarian was also active in the town’s government and about every other aspect of civic life. Besides serving as President of the Board of Commissioners for several years in the 1950s, he held posts on the election board, historic preservation district, and many other committees. The couple worshiped at St. John’s United Methodist Church, where Bob served on the Board of Trustees. He was a life member of Masonic Lodge 48, the Historical Society of Cecil County, Colonial Charlestown, and many other groups.
Toward the end of the funeral service, The Rev. Mary Brown asked mourners if anyone wanted to offer a few reflections. Former Town Commission President Steven Vandervort stepped forward. He noted that whenever he faced a vexing problem, the path forward being unclear, he talked with the former elected leader. Mr. Phillips helped him clarify the options and solutions as Bob would say, oh, this is how we handled it years ago. His advice was helpful as Bob, one of the town’s strongest advocates, was a positive, practical, solution-oriented mentor who understood the backstory of the challenges the municipality faced.
Internment was with fire department honors at the Charlestown Cemetery.
On this day, our thoughts turned to the delightful afternoons when we spent an hour or two in Charlestown talking about the community and the town’s past. Bob Phillips and Becky were wonderful people. Every community should have a Becky and Bob. They had the best interest of Charlestown and Cecil County in mind in everything they did. They cared deeply for the community, and their contributions will be remembered.
For additional photos of our visits with Bob and Becky, click this link.
A fireball erupted over the train wreck. (Photo: Charles Stockman)
ELKTON, Oct. 31, 1965 — On a morning when most people eagerly looked forward to the playfulness and pranks of Halloween, the day got off to a frightening jolt. In the pre-dawn darkness, as a Pennsylvania Railroad Train rumbled through Elkton, 41 of the 118 freight cars derailed at the edge of Hollingsworth Manor. Some were tank cars filled with toxic chemicals and liquid propane.
Suddenly, The Sunday tranquility in the county seat was jarred by the noise of the train wreck, the explosion sending huge flames and dangerous smoke into the sky.
While Elkton Fire Chief Slaughter mobilized his forces and requested aid from as far away as Wilmington and Aberdeen, an enormous explosion sent a towering mushroom-type fireball into the sky. Soon 100 firefighters were on hand, struggling to contain the spreading flames.
At about 7 a.m. the chief ordered an urgent, mandatory evacuation for parts of western Elkton. The Sunday morning DJ working the early shift at WSER took to the airwaves, broadcasting the urgent alert as National Guardsmen went door to door to ensure residents departed immediately.
By 1 p.m. Singerly Fire Company had the train wreck under control, but the fires continued to burn throughout the night. A spokesperson from the railroad said, “it was the worst wreck he had seen in the last 20 years because of the location and the danger from the burning cars, which were filled with poisons and liquid petroleum gas.”
Deadly Gas on Freight Train, the Salisbury Daily Times reported on Nov. 1, 1965
For More Information
For additional photos of the 1965 Elkton train wreck, see this album on Facebook.
As the Vietnam War escalated in 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson more than doubled the number of inductions as the Army needed more young men. To enable local selective service boards to meet this new quota, President Johnson signed an order on Aug. 26, 1965, that modified selective service requirements at midnight.1
One of the amended regulations made any man getting married after that eligible for the draft on the same basis as a single man. Broadcasters carried the unwelcome news about the loss of the often-used exemption or deferment precisely at 5 pm that evening.2
This set off alarm bells for Baby Boomers as more young men faced the prospect of going to Vietnam or immediately seeking a way to avoid the conscription call. Only a few hours remained to dodge the draft since men between the ages of 19 and 26 who got married later than midnight would be just as liable to the call as single men.
A Vietcong flag captured during fighting in Vietnam was presented to the Mayor and Commissioners of Elkton in January 1968. Holding the captured Vietcong flag on Jan. 3, 1968, are, left to right, town commissioners Henry A Shaffer and Charles I. Merrey; Warren Boulden Jr., who presented the flag; commissioners Clifton M. Jacquette Jr. and Arthur Rudy, and Mayor Kenneth Wilcox. (Source: Cecil Whig, Jan. 10, 1968
The answer was Elkton’s well-known marriage mill, many thought. So as the clock ticked all too quickly toward midnight on that Thursday night the phone at the Elkton Police Department started ringing incessantly. Within the first hour, the police fielded dozens of local calls and over 25 long-distance calls from anxious young men wanting to come here to get hitched immediately.3
A London paper, The Guardian, picked up on the sudden buzz in the historic, old colonial town. They said, “Those love calls were eventually turned over to the man who runs the fire alarm system at the police station.” They had called the marriage bureau, but the courthouse closed about the time the airwaves carried the newsflash so the only government agency answering the phone at that hour was the police department and the dispatcher at fire headquarters handled those calls for the two officers patrolling the streets.
Not wanting to waste precious time, many more headed hastily toward the county seat in Northeastern Maryland. Also, an hour or two before midnight, a charter plane with a couple aboard landed at Lovett’s Airfield, at the edge of town. No one had told the couple that instant marriages in Maryland had slipped away long before these young people were born, the Sun reported.4
“This true story . . . is proof of the power of legend and late moves,” the Baltimore paper editorialized. “The old Elkton marriage mill was modified by a 48-hour waiting law in 1938 and hasn’t been itself since; yet last year 8,000 couples nearly all from out of state got spliced in Elkton, whose name always seems to be popping up on reruns of romantic comedies of the thirties. What one wonders, did these bemused children think of as they took off again? Elkton had turned out to be a fable . . . Trailing clouds of disillusion they set out for more hospitable climes in search of a marriage mill, and arrived, we trust, too late to leap from the frying pan into the fire.”
They didn’t know that a change in Maryland law ended the town’s quickie marriages business years ago or as the London paper remarked, Elkton had “lately been polishing up its image.”
Still, the disillusioned hope to avoid Vietnam. It was only four o’clock in Chicago, three pm in Denver, and two o’clock in California. In Las Vegas, the marriage chapels were besieged with business, other papers noted.
Young men no longer had to worry about Vietnam when the U. S. Government once again started requiring them to register with the selective service in 1980. This circa 1980 photograph shows young men registering at the U.S. Post Offie in Elkton. Postal Clerk Ray Stevens is handling the registration for the selective service.
Endnotes
U.S. Draft Call Double, United Press International, July 28, 1965[↩]
Marrying to Avoid Draft, ABC News, Feb. 1, 2001[↩]
Alistar Cooke, “Speedy Matrimony the Better Part of Valor,” The Guardian, Aug. 28, 1965[↩]
“Still it calls,” The Baltimore Sun, Aug. 28, 1965[↩]
Elkton was the place for quickie weddings for much of the twentieth century as eloping couples rushed here for hasty ceremonies. The town’s marrying parsons worked overtime to accommodate the trade, performing over 16,000 marriages one year in the 1930s. While officiating day and night, some turned their homes into 24-hour chapels.
This highly profitable nuptial business created a hum and bustle for Elkton as the “honeymoon express” delivered cupid’s hurried business to the Train Station. The license bureau, marrying ministers, cab drivers, runners, and everybody else concerned with assisting cupid worked to please the eloping couples.
This colorful story of the matrimonial business where everything was made easy for those wanting to tie the knot in Elkton is presented in a captivating talk by Historian Mike Dixon at the Cecil County Public Library on Tuesday, October 4, 2022, @ 6 p.m. Click this link to go the library registration form for the program of Elkton weddings.
Marriages are made in Elkton (Source: Life Magazine, May 31, 1937
As part of our occasional series on historic structures in Cecil County, we visited one on Main Street in Elkton, the former Cecil County Public Library Building, which has watched over Main Street for centuries.
The town’s Main Street has a strong cluster of 18th and 19th-century structures and 135 E. Main Street is one of them. The former bank building continues to bustle with activity as the county’s hub for arts and culture.
The old bank building at 135 E. Main Street around 1912. It now serves as the hub for arts and culture in Cecil County.
The building reflects three historic periods of construction, according to the Maryland Historic Trust. It was built in the second quarter of the 19th century to accommodate a bank and cashier’s quarters. The Cecil Whig reported that the building on East Main Street had been constructed by “General James Sewell for, and occupied by a branch of the old Bank of Maryland1.” The first floor had a large front banking area, with an interior office/meeting room behind the lobby, and a thick masonry vault for safe storage of money and valuables. The upper floor provided residential space for the cashier.
Later in the 19th century, The National Bank of Elkton operated out of here beginning around 1873. The cashier, Charles B. Finley, and his family resided in the living quarters on the second floor. The new owners replaced the gabled roof with a mansard roof and other exterior alterations were made to the rectangular structure.2
The third period of construction occurred in the twentieth century. In 1922 the National Bank of Elkton moved to North Street, after occupying the structure since 1873.
Shortly after that, it became a private home when Henry H. Mitchell acquired it in 1925. The long-term mayor of the town resided in the home until his death in 1955. During Mayor Mitchell’s ownership, the southeast porch was enclosed and a decorative stone wall was constructed along the front sidewalk.
The Friends of the Library of Cecil County purchased it from the Mitchell estate so it could serve as the library headquarters following the mayor’s death. Ernest A. Howard, a benefactor of the Historical Society, made a significant donation to the Friends so they could acquire the building and he stipulated that the owner had to provide a home to the Historical Society.3
Four years after that, a two-story wing was constructed on the north and west sides of the building through the generosity of Mr. Howard. The Library made several significant changes and when the library relocated to Newark Avenue around 1987 the space was turned over to nonprofits.
Today 135 E. Main Street serves as the hub for arts and culture in Cecil County. The Historical Society, Arts Council, and Land Trust are headquartered here.
