Category: Uncategorized

In the early decades of the telecommunications age, the rapidly expanding telephone industry was busy connecting far-flung places together with long distance cables.  The mechanics of moving signals over great distance required repeater stations and the rapidly expanding network required “plants” in larger towns.  So the Chesapeake and Potomac Phone Company, a branch of the Bell System, purchased the old foundry lot on the southwest corner of Bridge and High streets from Ed Molitor.

There it replaced an old frame dwelling occupied by Isaac Soloman with a substantial two-story brick building.  When the “new telephone exchange” opened in September 1917, the Company said it was making Elkton the headquarters for the Eastern Shore, as it established a common battery system to greatly improve the connection of through cables

In the next decade the advent of radio broadcasting required more hook-ups and more line capacity so American Telephone and Telegraph expanded in Elkton.  A contractor added a third story in 1928 as the room reserved for C & P when the building was erected had to be occupied.  The Elkton station was a repeater station between New York and Washington and recently a new cable was laid underground between those cities, the Whig reported in December 1928.

The next year the company stepped in to mark the town for aviators.  On the roof of the “A. T. & T Company Plant” large letters spelling out Elkton were put on the roof.  At night flood lights illuminated them so airmen could easily follow their progress.  There was a large arrow pointing north.  In September 1929, the “chief testboard man” was Harold C. Marsh and three of the company’s engineers from New York were here to supervise the installation.

 

In the years after World War II, community pools were the in thing, a great civic improvement providing a place to take a dip to cool off on scorching summer days.  Across the region, private-clubs, community groups, and municipalities opened those refreshing spots so young and old could find a little relief from the oppressive heat and humidity.

Here in Cecil wrecking crews made room for a pool in Port Deposit by demolishing Jacob Tome’s mansion in August 1948.  Once the lot was cleared, volunteers from the Port Deposit Lions Club got busy, excavating the space and digging out the rocks.  The eagerly anticipated attraction unofficially opened on July 15, 1950, and the formal dedication of the Jacob Tome Memorial Swimming Pool took place on August 26, 1950.

For decades after that, the sounds of laughter, splashing water, portable radios, and general merriment filled the street on the south end of town as people found summertime relief.   But by February 1981, the days for this place of summer were numbered.  The Cecil Whig reported it was “sink or swim for Port Deposit Pool” as the Lions Club approached the town about assuming responsibility for operations.  The town wasn’t interested in taking on the obligation, but needed time to consider things.  The Port Pool closed sometime after that.

On the eastern side of the county, the Frenchtown Manor Swim Club’s pool was well underway by the time summer rolled around in 1953.  While this was a private club, the facilities were turned over to the YMCA from 10 a.m. to noon free of charge to be used for swimming classes.  By August of 1953, John Irwin, the general manager, was able to announce that the club was open and interested people could secure a daily guest pass for a nominal cost.

So whenever the temperature soared in an era when air conditioning wasn’t as readily available, many people in Cecil County found life was a little bit better at the Port or Frenchtown pools.

On July 29, 1956, Governor Theodore R. McKeldin named Route 213, from Elkton to the Chester River, the Augustine Herman Highway to honor the famous early map maker of Maryland.  This ceremony, which included the unveiling of a highway sign, was part of a larger observance of the 286th anniversary of Herman’s entry into Maryland.

Dr. Juray Slavik, former Czechoslovakian ambassador to the United States and Miss Norma Svedjs, president of the Augustine Herman, Czech Historical Society of Baltimore also spoke at the event, which drew about 100 members of the Society.

The ceremony honored Augustine Herman, first naturalized citizen of Maryland and its first map maker, the Cecil Whig reported. “The Governor called Herman a surveyor, geologist, geographer, and linguist.”   For pay, he only asked for a “piece of your land, where I want to settle, to live, and to die,”  the Governor remarked.  “The Tract,” he continued, “and the river flowing by, he named Bohemia in honor of his native land.”

In June 1956, the town of Chesapeake City had just wrapped up the municipal election. Zachary T. Cooling was re-elected to serve a one-year term as mayor. Charles Schrader and Lewis Collins, Jr. were selected to serve as commissioners for two-year terms. Joining Charles Stapp and William Cooling, this team made up the Chesapeake City Town Council.

Over the past several years there has been an enormous increase in the number of historical maps that are available online.  These digital collections are a great aid for those seeking to understand the past, whether it is for a scholarly investigation, local history study, or genealogy project. While the maps, many centuries old, have been available in special collections repositories around the nation, the access was limited as trips to widely scattered archives and access rules created obstacles for some researchers.

Here are a couple of general starting points.  One of the best is  Old Maps Online, an easy-to-use web portal to historical maps in libraries around the globe.  It allows the user to search across a number of collections, via a geographical search interface.  Another strong one is the Library of Congress.  The products can be downloaded and the scans, which are of high quality, can be magnified, in most instances.  Some of repositories require you to register to get full access.

These and other research e-resources are truly revolutionizing the way we conduct historical research and are invaluable for those working in the past.  Here are some specific online Cecil County resources, which you should find helpful.

• The Library of Congress has Martenet’s Map of Cecil County (1858), It can be downloaded in a large format in order to magnify the product.  There is also the Atlas of Cecil County (1877)    It also has Fowler & Kelly’s 1907 birds-eye-view of Rising Sun and Elkton.

• The Enoch Pratt Library has a subscription to the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. From the 1880s until about World War II, the cartographers for this company visited towns across Cecil County regularly to update drawings and produce sketches at a detailed scale of 1-inch to fifty feet.  With these a researcher is able to observe the changes that took place with a dwelling or a community over generations.  You need a Baltimore City Library card to access the database online.  Here is a link to a union catalog (index) of Sanborn Maps published in Maryland.
• Topo Maps — Historical — This is a collection of historic USGS topographic maps, including those published for Maryland and Cecil County.  It includes products from 1898 and 1942.

Check them out the next time you are working on a project, regardless of where your inquiry takes you.  You will find many other maps of interest as you start searching these and other databases.

The other day someone asked about the history of a plain concrete block building located on county property in back of the old county jail on North Street in Elkton.  As structures in an old town like this go, it is a nondescript building that doesn’t grab any special attention.  But I promised to look into the records to see what the paper trail revealed.

In the middle of World War II,  Elkton needed a building to serve as a center for Boy and Girl Scout activities.  So troop leaders looked around and located some unused county land just off North Street in back of the jail.  Representatives of the Kiwanis Club approached the commissioners in February 1942, asking permission to erect a one story with basement structure on the space and the county agreed.  The Scout headquarters was dedicated on October 10, 1943.

In 1957  as the Cold War heated up the county needed a headquarters for its newly established Civil Defense Agency  so the building was handed over to the  disaster agency. as Director Ward noted that headquarters would be set up “in the former boy scout building near the jail . . . following completion of remodeling and repairs.”  The operation grew as Russia exploded a Hydrogen Bomb and the nuclear arms race took off.

A year or two after that a county-wide CD radio system was installed to allow emergency officials to communicate with fire stations and responding units during a disaster.  Each fire house had a base and 15 mobile units were installed on fire company vehicles. When the county created a planning department, it also shared space with CD

In October 1961, a 24-hour dispatch system went on the air, working out of the basement, to provide central radio control of equipment and CD operations.  The disaster response office was also stacked with crates of supplies to be used to help residents survive  a nuclear war.

In 1967 the dispatchers moved into a sub-basement below the newly opened courthouse addition and the building was used for live-in work-out prisoners to relieve the badly over-crowded jail. Once a modern Detention Center opened at the edge of Elkton later in the 1980s, county government used it for offices for the purchasing department and similar administrative functions.

As the sun edged lower in the horizon on this Friday evening in August and shadows started lengthening, the slowly disappearing rays created some attractive hues and a pleasing glow on the county administration building.  The deep blue sky in the direction of Delaware and a few white puffy clouds added a calmness to the tranquil scene about an hour before dusk as the county, state and U.S. Flag flapped in a steady breeze.

 

This evening I digitized a cassette tape containing a recording of a twenty-year old news special that aired on Elkton Radio Station WSER in 1993.  Thirty years earlier, on December 8, 1963, 81-people perished when Pan American World Airlines Flight 214 exploded over the town, so the station examined the tragedy.

In the long unheard recording, Chuck De Socio, the show host, interviewed local emergency personnel and witnesses.  Those included E. Rosemary Culley, the dispatcher who coordinated the response of emergency units and Judge Kenneth E. Wilcox, a Civil Defense Police Officer.  He also talked with Eva Muse, a witness, and to the Historical Society for background information.

Since the Historical Society of Cecil County is preparing to host a community remembrance program this December as fifty years have now passed, we have been interviewing people and pulling together materials such as moving images, photos, and sounds for the remembrance archive.  This digital recording will be added to our Flight 214 Collection and we are also sharing it online.  It is a long tape, running about 40 minutes, but you may listen to sections of it.

Also here is a link to a recording of Lt. Don Hash of the MSP, the first emergency responder to arrive on the scene, sharing his recollections.

The Freedom Riders started incursions into the sharply segregated deep south to confront Jim Crow laws in 1961.  For the campaign young people boarded buses heading into states where they tested a Supreme Court ruling that declared that separate facilities for interstate travel were unconstitutional.  But this era of protest also involved visits to northeastern Maryland as hospitals, restaurants, bars, theaters, motels, and other public places were segregated.

Cecil’s central location on the main route between Washington, D.C., and New York put it on the forefront of this protest movement.  Along Route 40 and Route 1 restaurants and gas stations also denied service to African diplomats and subjected them to the same Jim Crow humiliations as African-Americans.

At the height of the Cold War, this worried the Kennedy administration as it undercut efforts of the “Free World” to win friends in emerging nations.  Since an all-out effort was required to assure friendly and dignified reception for diplomats so the nation’s foreign policy wouldn’t be damaged, the White House created a special protocol section in the State Department.  Detailed to smooth out domestic public policy wrinkles the Soviet bloc leveraged to its advantage, the agency pressured roadside restaurants and gas stations to serve African diplomats.

From his summer White House in Hyannis Port, Mass President Kennedy made a personal appeal to end discrimination, the Baltimore Sun reported.  “In a telegram to a luncheon meeting of Harford and Cecil County community leaders, the president called for voluntary cooperation for an immediate end to segregation.”  Other federal officials appealed for support from some 200 prominent citizens of the two counties in stamping out incidents of racial discrimination, particularly against African diplomats.

After many places cooperated by serving diplomats, an enterprising reporter from the Baltimore Afro-American caused a stir.  Posing as a diplomat, he dressed in traditional African-garb while stopping at businesses along the highway.  In disguise he was warmly greeted and photographed, but when the journalist returned as an everyday person service was refused.  Many felt this was unjust since some citizens of the United States were denied equal treatment.

All of this sparked the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to piggyback on the federal desegregation efforts in Maryland. When attempts to change things stalled in the legislature, CORE launched a Route 40 campaign.  Four African Americans were jailed after refusing to leave the Bar H Chuck House in North East in Sept. 1961.  After being booked in at the Cecil County Jail, the “sit-downers” staged a hunger strike.  About 7 days later, the protestors were sent to Crownsville State Hospital for a mental evaluation but returned to the local jail the next day.  A week or so later, they paid a small fine and were quietly released.

Months later in November 1961, the promise of a massive Freedom Ride along the corridor prompted about half the restaurants (35) on the dual highway to begin serving everyone and CORE called off the ride.

But they promised to check on things soon.  In December 1961 some 700 freedom riders rolled up and down the road in northeastern Maryland demonstrating at 40 segregated restaurants.  The only violence of the day occurred when one newspaper editor punched his rival for photographing him arguing with a protestor,” the Baltimore Sun reported.  “Riders, restaurant owners, and police got along with one another much better than that generally.”  The ride had been ordered to fulfill a pledge to hit every segregated restaurant on Route 40 between Baltimore and Delaware.   Two arrests were made at one restaurant in
North East and another place in that town tried to avoid the protestors by charging $4 an hour for parking.

Keeping the pressure on the governor and the legislature to continue moving forward, the Freedom Riders returned a few more times.  In 1962 five protestors were arrested for trespassing at Rose’s Dinner in Elkton.

In March 1963, Governor Tawes signed into law a public accommodation law, making Maryland the first state south of the Mason-Dixon Line to ban discrimination in restaurants and hotels.  The law became effective after the 1964 election.

In Conowingo, two African students from the Union of South Africa were arrested for trespassing at a Tavern on U.S. 1.  While public accommodation laws had been passed, the Cecil County Sheriff said the place was a tavern and thus it didn’t fall under State or Federal public accommodation laws.  Eventually, the charges were quietly dropped, once the State Department got involved.  A few months later the Sheriff received a call to the same place and arrested three African-Americans from Lincoln University.  “Sheriff Startt said he didn’t know what was in the federal Civil Rights Act.  I work under State Law and I only know the state law,” the Baltimore Sun wrote.

While some incidents occurred after the law became effective in 1964 discrimination was no longer legally tolerated in Maryland restaurants and motels.

 

For more on the Freedom Riders also see Freedom Riders on Route 40