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…
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Cecil County’s Last Civil War Soldier Passed Away 75 Years After Conflict Ended
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…
The Smithsonian’s Journey Stories Coming to Cecil County July 13
Cecil County Arts Council, The Historical Society of Cecil County and the Cecil County Library are partnering to host a national Smithsonian Exhibit, Journey Stories, from July 13 -August 24, 2012. The Maryland Humanities Council has chosen the Arts Council as one of f…ive sites to host Journey Stories, which will travel throughout Maryland until January…
Cecil County’s World War II Generation Remembered in Oral History Project
From the Historical Society of Cecil County In honor of the 68th Anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II, the Historical Society is making the full text of the 2005 publication “Cecil’s Soldiers: Stories from the World War II Generation” available online. With support from the Maryland Humanities Council, the Society…
Keep Up With Cecil County History on Twitter
The Historical Society of Cecil County started tweeting last week as part of an initiative to tap into a cluster of additional social media outlets. Twitter, a micro-blogging platform, allows the volunteer group to send out brief notes up to 140 characters in length at any time. This, coupled with our other new media outlets, including the web, blog,…
Archaeologist Search For War of 1812 Fort at Elk Landing
Dozens of people from the Archeological Society of Maryland were at Elk Landing on this beautiful Sunday afternoon working to dig up new clues about Fort Hollingsworth and the pre-historic period at a strip of land located at the confluence of the Big and Little Elk creeks. The former farm and Chesapeake Bay port bustled…
After Decades of Legal Wrangling Elkton Marriage Mill Started Grinding a Little Slower
The Elkton marrying parsons and their employers, the taxi syndicate, were miserable in the autumn of 1938. These entrepreneurs fretted that Maryland voters might halt “weddings without waiting.” The threat came just as things boomed for the cabbies, as their chief interest was the wedding business. At one company, the Rev. C. M. Cope worked…
West Nottingham honors man who fought for kidnapped girls
From Souther Chester County Weeklies The West Nottingham Historical Commission in concert with Chester County Facilities and Parks paid homage to Joseph Miller, a man who was murdered while attempting to rescue two sisters who had been kidnapped by a slave catcher in the mid-1800s. Descendants of both Miller and the two girls gathered at…
Wright’s A.M.E Has Been a Part of Elkton’s History Since the 19th century
On a spring day in the middle of May, Wright’s A.M.E. Church, an old Elkton house of worship, looks good as storm clouds break and the sun begins to shine on the sanctuary. It has been a part of Elkton’s history since the early 1880s. It was dedicated in May 1882 by Bishop Layman and…
Archeological Society of Maryland Field School Opens at Elk Landing This Weekend
Press Release — Historic Elk Landing Foundation———————- One hundred and ninety nine years ago musket and cannon fire erupted from Fort Hollingsworth at the confluence of the Big and Little Elk Creeks. That skirmish between members of the Cecil Militia and British Marines and sailors kept Elkton from being burned. The invading British and the…