Sixteen local authors will share their latest work at the Elkton Central Library on Saturday, June 22, 2013, from 1-4pm. Meet and greet your favorite local authors and have the opportunity to discuss the writing process, explore inspiration, and check out some of their latest work!
Listen to live readings, buy local autographed books and enter the prize drawing. Readers and aspiring writers of all ages are encouraged to attend. The following genres will be represented: Inspirational, Children’s Literature, Local History, Cookbooks, Self-Help, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Horror, Romance, and Native American Fiction.
Meet the following authors: Michele Chynoweth, J.R. Coffey, CC Colee, Milt Diggins, Cathy Gohlke, Karin Harrison, David Healey, Terrie McClay, William Prins, W.P. Rigler, Richelle Rodgers, Vernon Schmid, Becky Titleman, Pam Tomlinson, Pat Valdata, Ken Wiggins.
Call 410-996-5600 x481 for more information or visit Cecil County Public Library’s website: www.cecil.ebranch.info
The old Sassafras River Drawbridge, the vital link between Georgetown and Fredericktown, had been around for 51 years in 1968, when a Whig photojournalist did a piece called the “The Keeper of the Bridge.” The tenders that June were D Raymond Hill of Kennedyville on the dayshift and Harry Redding of Galena on nights. They were responsible for raising and lowering the structure during that busy summer, letting boats pass through.
he Sassafras River Bridge between Fredericktown and Georgetown, the link between Kent and Cecil counties. Source: Cecil Whig, June 1968D. Raymond Hill, the bridge tender at the Drawbridge between Cecil and Kent counties.
The current issue of Cecil County Life, a Chester County Press publication, has an informative article about a historical investigation focused on understanding centuries long transformations on the land at the Fair Hill Natural Resources Management Area.
Emily Kilby decided to make a scholarly, in-depth study of this place in northeastern Cecil County, a couple of years ago. The interest in digging into long unexamined records from earlier times, something that would require weeks of work, grew slowly as she strolled the area. On those leisurely visits, accompanied by her two dogs, she noticed surviving artifacts, including stone ruins, crumbling foundations, unexplained trenches, and other fading but visible markers of human activity.
Puzzled by those vestiges, she decided to find answers to her questions. At first, according to the article, Emily thought it would be a quick search, but in doing preliminary work the curious park-goer found “there wasn’t much.” No one had previously undertaken much of a study so “I decided to do it myself,” she noted.
Her initial work started at the Historical Society with 19th century maps, which highlighted the nature of the land at different points in time. Once the cartographic baseline was visualized, she followed the holders of the land back through time and owners as generations came and went. The retired magazine editor spent lots of time doing fieldwork too, visiting the ruins to document and collect visual data. The checking of estate records and wills and much more followed.
At the Hagley Library in Wilmington, her due diligence really paid off. William duPont started piecing together his country estate, “purchasing parcel after parcel of land – nearly 8,000 acres in all – beginning in the late 1920s” There she found the 1931 inventory for his estate. Modern technology such as Google Earth also supported the in-depth investigation.
Emily has given two standing room only talks on the subject at Fair Hill as over capacity crowds were drawn to each event. People were anxious to hear about the copious amounts of information she had collected. She had tapped into an audience of local history enthusiasts, genealogists, park supporters, conservationists, preservationists, and the horse-industry crowd.
Called “Investigating Fair Hill’s Past,” be sure to check out the interesting piece written by Carla Lucas. By taking a serious, scholarly approach to an important subject, while collecting and interpreting a large body of primary source materials, Emily has added greatly to our scholarly understanding of the past in Cecil. These types of comprehensive studies of an area with so much heritage just waiting to be carefully examined are important.
There are also a number of other engaging articles in the issue of Cecil County Life Magazine, too. Thanks Carla for an interesting article. And thanks Emily for undertaking and sharing the careful work done with this scholarly examination.
The ruins at the BeeHive near the Fair Hill Natural Resources Management Area
Forty-five years ago, on Sat., June 8, 1968, Robert F Kennedy’s Funeral train made a long journey from New York City to Washington, DC. As it passed through Cecil County, thousands of people lined the tracks, and when the train rolled through North East, 15-year-old Michael Scott was there with his mother.
His father elected a couple of years earlier as the first president of the Cecil County Branch of the NAACP, couldn’t be there as he was a track supervisor for the railroad. He had to make sure the special train got safely through this section. It had already encountered trouble in North Jersey as an approaching locomotive had struck mourners lining the tracks as the two engines neared each other and those waiting to pay their respects failed to notice the freight coming in the other direction.
That awful year, with so much sadness in the nation, isn’t something that people who lived through the period will ever forget, and the Washington Post has a feature about that troubling time 45 years ago. The paper has interviewed people who recalled that day. In Cecil County, they talked with Michael Scott about his recollections and the things that were happening with Civil Rights in Cecil County as the times were changing in the 1960s.
Edward Richardson (wearing part of his Civil War uniform) and his wife Fanny Sturges on the occasion of their marrigage. Photo courtesy of Susan Richardson-Sanabria and The Salem County Cultural & Heritage Commission Blog, 7 Steps to Freedom.
The Salem County Cultural & Heritage Commission recently launched” 7 Steps to Freedom,” an interpretive program using cell phones, mobile technology and the internet to explore African-American History and the Underground Railroad in Salem County, NJ. The commission also has a blog to share information and there is a post that readers of Window on Cecil County’s Past will find of interest.
Edward Richardson, a former slave from a Cecilton plantation, was born Oct. 15, 1841. After escaping on the Underground Railroad to Salem County, he settled in Woodstown. There, aided by Quakers, he established a new life and served as a member of the United States Colored Troops in the Civil War. .
A relative researching the soldier’s life in 2011 told Today’s Sunbeam: “I am humbled by the faith and perseverance that my great-grandfather demonstrated in orchestrating an escape from a Maryland plantation where he had been born to make his way in unfamiliar territory as a fugitive, find work, become a soldier and return to marry, support and raise a family. According to oral history he was a very hard worker and somewhat of an entrepreneur who managed to purchase a thrasher so that he could make extra money using the machine o thrash other farmer’s crops as well he his own.”
Last Christmas we were on a holiday house tour in Woodstown and while the host showed us through one of the properties I noticed this old piece of framed school board correspondence on a wall. A closer examination showed that it was signed by Edward Richardson.
By-the-way, we have listened to the commission’s new tour and it is excellent, giving us an informative introduction to the African-American Heritage in Salem County, NJ.
After a heavy thunderstorm moved through the area Monday, causing a heavy June downpour, the evening sky cleared up on Newark Ave., Eventually the tranquility of evening settled over the station that had been busy answering alarms as the front passed through Elkton.
Cecil County Sheriff’s Office Inspection, July 1967, Source: Cecil Democrat.
Sheriff Thomas H. Mogle, Jr., has lined up the members of his department for an inspection in July 1967 and the Cecil Democrat’s photographer was on hand to take picture. About this time, the new sheriff was outlining the challenges he faced with providing around the clock law enforcement with such a small force. A number of the men are special deputies, meaning that they were either volunteers or perhaps worked part-time. In this era Cecil County Law Enforcement agencies maintained a large corps of volunteers to supplement the small number of certified officers.
The Cecil Democrat published a series in 1967, interviewing local officials about moving Cecil County forward in the last third of the 20th century. In the nearly 50-year-old chat with Sheriff Thomas H. Mogle, Jr. he sketched out the minimum needs for effective law enforcement in the county.
The Sheriff’s Department required a minimum of 55 personnel to handle all its functions, including answering complaints, patrolling, serving papers, providing court security, and maintaining the jail, the county’s top lawman noted. That force included 27 road officers, with one assigned to each of the nine election districts, around-the-clock, as a patrol beat. “They would answer complaints and could do a great deal to prevent crime.”
Eight men should staff the 100-year old jail so two deputies would be on duty. “There are just not enough people in this office. When four phones ring and the office is full of prisoners being brought in, one man behind the desk can’t handle it all. We need a turnkey and someone on the radio and telephone.”
Judiciary related duties for the Circuit Court and the magistrates required eight men to handle courts and serve papers. There was also a need for two secretaries and a part-time matron.
One of his problems was hiring and keeping qualified personnel. A deputy in 1967 made $1.50 an hour ($4,000 a year) while a clerk for a magistrate received $2.00 an hour. The Sheriff estimated annual starting pay should be between $6,000 and $7,000.
The reporter estimated a budget of $279,000 for annual staff and when asked if this wasn’t rather high, the former state trooper said, “it isn’t cheap but nothing worthwhile is going to be free.” He also noted that there were other costs, as there should be county owned cars and 13 were required. (The agency fought a long battle to get patrol cars and those vehicles were still a year away.)
Harford County had county owned patrol cars and 24 men in their Sheriffs’ Dept., he noted. They have “police running out of their ears; they have police departments in Bel Air, Aberdeen, and Havre de Grace, they have the state police, and they still hire 24 men for a county-wide police force.”
“Of course the county would be getting a lot better service in return for the expenditures. With a force similar to the one outlined we could almost wipe out crime in this county,” the sheriff suggested. When asked what he felt his chances of getting some of the men and equipment were, especially in light of the new economy moves the commissioners were making, he said: “Neither I nor the next six Sheriffs in this county will ever see this.”
He concluded that he wouldn’t run again unless drastic changes were made for the “betterment of the people and the police force. I thought I could help the county. I didn’t realize what the situation was in this office, I couldn’t. . . . No individual or political group or organization will dictate to the Sheriff’s Department while I’m in office. There’s too much politics entering into these things. That’s why there’s friction. I’m no politician.”
Noting the situation he inherited, he said, “There was nothing here when I came, not even a flag. I’ve ordered a flag and pole now. It will cost $55 and if the county refuses to pay for it I will.”
In the next paper, Samuel duPont wrote in to support the “overworked sheriff and his underpaid, overworked men” as he noted that “the sheriff has had five men to work with (Aug. 1967). Imagine, just five men to cover the entire county, with its hundreds of roads and hundreds of square miles! this doesn’t mean five men per shift, but five men althogher. Now, start figuring three shifts a day (You want around-the-clock police protection don’t you ?). There are “two few men, too much work — and then we have the gall to criticize our sheriff and his deputies!” We don’t even provide our men with official cars, as most other counties do. We’ll soon be “expecting them to shake tambourines on street corners for contributions, like the Salvation Army folks. We have refused the sheriff sufficient manpower.”
Sheriff Thomas H. Mogle, Jr. operates the radio at the old jail on North St.
Now that the weather forecasters are finally calling us to shake off these cooler days as a warmer period arrives , Chesapeake City will be humming with visitors as the summer season approaches.
Following a couple of serious fires on Main Street in 1891 that forced Elkton to telegraph the Wilmington Fire Department for aid townspeople decided to establish an efficient firefighting organization. In the waning months of that year, plans were quickly put in place for the William M. Singerly Fire Company and in January 1892 the organization was formally incorporated. To put things on a sound footing, the members started raising funds to purchase equipment to replace those aging veterans of fights with many blazes, the aging old hand pumpers. Before January 1892 faded the company had a steam engine, two hose reels, and a hook-and-ladder.
The ladder was the first piece of that kind in Cecil County. Upon deciding to purchase this piece, the company went to Middletown and Dover to inspect units used in those Delaware towns. That examination resulted in the company ordering a truck from Gleason & Bailey of Seneca Falls., NY. It arrived in Elkton on Monday, January 18, 1892.
At an early hour on a Saturday morning twelve days later, the truck answered its first alarm. Residents were awakened by the ringing of the courthouse bell and the cry of fire as the destructive flames were consuming a frame buildings on the south side of Main Street. The volunteers grabbed the ladder unit and the old hand pumpers and rushed to the scene a few doors east of the courthouse. The steam engine wasn’t in service yet.
After that the hook-and-ladder was on the scene of most blazes in Elkton but by the end of 1914 it had answered its last alarm. On New Year’s Eve 1914, it was resting securely in the closed up paint shop of M. S. Barrett & Son on Bridge Street, waiting for a fresh coat of paint. As people looked forward to the start of another year, shouts of fire went up. A blaze had erupted in the paint shop and by the time Singerly arrived the building was blazing fiercely. The entire building and its content were lost on the last day of 1914.s
