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As Elkton continues it decades long effort to revitalize what the Cecil Whig characterizes as a once bustling “’bygone’ Main Street,” that “seems deserted most days,” an editorial in the paper notes that what is most needed is “town leadership willing to make unpopular choices — men and women willing to take a risk towards making real, immediate change.”    This column came about following a discussion at a town workshop about the need to do something about “the vacant or blighted buildings dotting the town.”  The decline is multifaceted but in particular the impact of county government moving out-of-town and the economic collapse of the past five years are sources of the problem, the Whig wrote.

Commissioner Charles Hicks, taking note of conditions around the municipality, urged his colleagues to not worry about a “popularity contest” and make decisions that protect the community.  “Something needs to be done. I think it’s about time.”  The Whig agreed, saying that the paper hopes his passion is a sign of things to come.

The status of Elkton’s attempt to reinvigorate Main Street and improve the central business district has been the subject of in-depth reporting and editorials periodically for a long time now.  Seven years ago, the editor said something similar in an opinion piece titled “County Seat Due a Major Overhaul.”  Here’s part of what they said in that old column.  “Elkton continues to have a problem with abandoned building sites . . . that hamper efforts to revitalize the town.  . . County government officials are working on a plan for relocating some county offices.  It’s a shame some of the abandoned building properties in Elkton cannot be utilized for future county government office sites.

June 16, 2012 — On a beautiful late spring Saturday, the Callisto of Rochester, VT. Is serenely moored in the C & D Canal anchorage basin at Chesapeake City.

Cecil County Public Library, Aug. 4, 2012, 7:00 p.m.

Join us for a celebration of the famous Appalachian folksinger and songwriter, Ola Belle Reed! Ola Belle’s son, David Reed, and other local musicians will play her music and tell her journey story from the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina during the Great Depression north to Cecil County looking for work. This remarkable woman was honored by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Smithsonian Institute and the Library of Congress for her contribution to American music before her death in 2002. Come and hear great music from one of Cecil County’s own, Ola Belle Reed.

Location: Chesapeake City Branch Library 2527 Augustine Herman Hwy Chesapeake City, MD 21915
For more on the Ukrainian community in Chesapeake City see this post on the orphanage

Native Cecil Countian, Bernard Purdie, will share his musical journey story. Mr. Purdie was the first African American to enroll at Elkton Public High School. He then went on to an internationally renowned music career and is the world’s most recorded drummer, having worked with such music greats as Aretha Franklin, Miles Davis and B.B. King. Mr. Purdie will share his stories and his music during this one-of-a-kind evening.

The Historic and Architectural Review Committee meeting scheduled for Wednesday, June 27, 2012 has been cancelled due to a lack of a quorum.  The meeting will be rescheduled for early July, the Town of Elkton announced.  We’ll update readers once a new date is announced.

A non-profit affordable housing group was on the agenda to discuss plans for the old 1870s Cecil County Jail.  Click here for more information on that project.

A non-profit affordable housing group, the Home Partnership, Inc., is interested in purchasing the old 1870s Cecil County Jail from the county for $400,000.  The developer wants to transform the building into 50 affordable apartments for seniors in downtown Elkton, the Cecl Whig recently reported.A reprsentative of the group will appear before the town’s Historic District Review Board on June 27th at 6: p.m., to discuss concept plans for the 1.12 acre pracel.  This zoning board is charged with protecting Elkton’s architectural and cultural resources.  At that time, the developer will probably present his plans for developing the 50 apartment unit structure at 214 North Street.

When it was built in 1871, the sheriff’s home and jail was hailed as a state-of-the-art monument to law and order, a credit to the county. Considering that it replaced “a so-called jail” where notorious types were “chained to the floor,” it probably wasn’t hard to make that claim.  For those who ran afoul of the law there were 20 cells at the new prison, surely enough to “accommodate any demand that Cecil county culprits,” could place on it, said the Whig.  Sheriff Thomas, the first official to turn the key and swing open the wide heavy grated iron door, let in his “house guests.”

In the years to come, those cells would have their own stories to tell and the jailhouse walls would stand as silent witnesses to more than a few tragic scenes.  Out in the old jail yard, more than one man would draw his final breath while at the end of the hangman’s noose.   One early spring day in 1912, as the county felt the first tentative nudge of the approaching season’s warmth, a cold-blooded shooting in the outer yard snuffed out the young life of a Cecil County Sheriff. The incident took place when Sheriff J. Myron Miller attempted to take a pistol away from a trustee who had refused to obey an order.

Somehow the place managed to outlive its usefulness to the county in a mere 128 years, so a modern detention center started sprouting out of a corn field at the edge of town early in the 1980s. Then in January 1984, in a secret nighttime operation, Sheriff John F. DeWitt moved inmates from the jail to Landing Lane.

One era had ended but another one might be getting underway for a structure that has been on the market since 2009.  The Elkton Historic and Architectural Review Board will get to weigh in on this matter at its public meeting in June.

The last direct link to an important period in Cecil County’s past was lost when 93-year-old Henry Jackson died at his home outside Perryville on a cold November day in 1939.  As a teenager he ran away from home to serve in the Civil War, enlisting in the Union Army for three years with Snow’s Battery.  After surviving the horror of Antietam and other engagements, he was discharged in 1864.

During a long life, the soldier who was growing old watched the ranks of his comrades, men who knew the madness of that time, thin.  By the early 1930s, there were just a few old soldiers around Cecil who recalled frightened, brave boys in blue hastily forming ranks to march into harms way.  The first-hand memories of those years, a time that called for the best from comrades, were rapidly fading as were the sad thoughts about comrades that fell on bloody, distant battlefields.  Seventy five years after the bloody war staggered to a close, Private Jackson was laid to rest, the last local survivor of that unforgettable time.

This information about Henry Jackson comes from the Mahoney Civil War Inventory of county soldiers and the newspaper files at the Historical Society.  In the 1960s, the Mahoney file established a register of men from Cecil County who fought in the war.