A new blog by Kyle Dixon, “History Surrounds You,” remembers Ellen Garrison Jackson, a freedmen’s Bureau Teacher working in the Port Deposit area.
Ellen Garrison Jackson “applied to the American Missionary Association as early as 1863 to serve as a teacher in schools for African American children in the south,” Kyle writes. “When Ellen’s application was approved, she was eventually assigned to teach in Port Deposit, Maryland. Davis states that Ellen taught two sessions of school daily along with running a night school for adults. It is also noted that she gave public speeches advocating for the rights of African Americans to an education and to raise money to pay rent for the school location, furniture, and supplies for her students. Davis also cites two incidents of resistance by members of the community including harassment by white children and the burning down of her boarding house in the middle of the night. During her tenure teaching in Port Deposit, Ellen became one of the first to openly challenge laws that were meant to protect the rights of African Americans. . . . .”
For women’s history month, we are sharing this post about the first-time women served on a jury in Cecil County.
Although women gained the right to vote in 1920, they had to push for equal rights when it came to jury duty. The new voting privilege did not automatically allow them to sit on juries, the Baltimore Sun reported: “Merely because she may help decide who shall be elected sheriff, court clerk, mayor or president it does not follow that she may also decide who is guilty of murder, arson, or wife-beating.”
The first time in the history of Cecil County women were selected to serve on the county’s petit (trial) jury for the September 1947 term of the court, the Cecil Democrat reported. Alice H. Kinter, of Chesapeake City, was the first county woman to be picked for the service, in a drawing made by Judge Floyd J. Kintner on Aug. 19, 1947. Other women selected for that term included Mazie B. Boulden, Beulah E. Gorrell, and Edith L. Wilson. By the way, there were also two African-American citizens, Lewis Williams and Harry Briscoe, on the jury pool for that term.
A postcard of the Cecil County Courthouse in the 1940s. Women served on a jury here for the first time in 1947 (Source: Personal Collection)
Recently we were asked if had any information on Elkton’s first and only television station, CATV Channel 5. Here’s our response.
“Mary Maloney was worried about her lipstick, and Harry Shivery forgot to take the coffeepot off the burner, but otherwise things moved along just fine when local television came to Cecil County,” The News Journal reported on Sept. 5, 1973. Things went so well that it wasn’t a minute after the first local “telecast had become history that one of the county’s true celebrities, Rodeo Earl Smith, called in his congratulations.” Maloney, then the president of the Board of County Commissioners, “came off like an old pro on camera,” with Shivery introducing her “as the First Lady of Cecil County,” according to The News Journal.
The county’s first local television show, produced and aired by Head of Elk Productions Inc., was on the air from downtown Elkton one hour a day in black and white. But soon color was added and local programming increased. Shivery was, according to Morning News reporter Robin Brown, a “television star; a newscaster; often a newsmaker; a scriptwriter; set designer and builder; ad salesman and producer; cameraman and crew; programmer; and handyman. He was everything a studio needed, but his versatility was a matter of necessity.”
The shows aired on channel 5 on Elkton’s first cable TV system, Madison Cablevision. Shivery got the idea after reading a local newspaper and thinking “that Elkton-area residents were missing something — a local television station,” Brown wrote in the Morning News in 1977.
Shivery’s visionary dream of bringing local television to the area came to an end in October 1977 when the broadcasts ceased.
Harry W. Shivery (center) hosts a show on his local television station at the studio in the mid-1970s. At one time broadcasts originated from a studio at the Howard Hotel. (Source: Cecil Whig Photo)
Women voters turn Charlestown election. (Morning News, Jan 14, 1921)
With the beginning of women’s suffrage in the autumn of 1920, the ladies of Charlestown promptly exercised their full responsibilities of citizenship by voting in the national election.
And when the annual Charlestown election came around for the town on January 13, 1921, they took to the polls in large numbers, casting more than one-half the ballots, the Morning News reported on Jan. 14, 1921.
“They opposed those who had been holding office for years and named a new set of men as follows: Horace Graham, Bayard Black, Isaac Heisler, William T. Henry, W. P. Morrison. Those defeated were Harry W. McKeown, Elmer Murphy, Marion Lewis, H. T. Heverlin, and W. E. Black.
NOTE — Thanks to Jeannette Armour for sharing this piece of research she did. The subject of women’s suffrage is one of our research interests and this was a fascinating piece.
It’s not exactly a big family holiday unless everyone gets together to sharp for bargains, but today is Presidents’ Day. To celebrate this occasion, we are looking back at a few times when the nation’s chief executives came our way. We’ve done this before, but since Cecil County has always been on the highway of American history, the great and the near-great, including many men who served as the nation’s leaders came traveling through. Thus in this post, we’’ continue our tradition of looking back at some visits of these men.
We’ve previously reported on our founding father, George Washington’s, frequent visits to Cecil on this holiday. By some accounts, we have noted that he was here 46 times. It’s not hard at all to pick up a local history book and see some sort of comment about the first president dining and lodging here or there in the county as he toured about.
We know, too that Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and John F. Kennedy all stopped here, along with Warren Harding and Harry Truman. In fact, Grant spent the night in Elkton in 1872.
Still, there are others, so let’s take a quick look on this Presidents’ Day at a few more:
The seventh president of the United States 1829-1837. Andrew Jackson rode Cedi’s first little railroad, the New Castle and Frenchtown, during his administration. Though less than 18 miles long and connecting the waters of the Chesapeake with those of the Delaware, it was one of the pioneer railroads in our country.
A poster advertising the Newcastle and Frenchtown Railroad. President Andrew Jackson traveled on this road. (Source: Cecil County Directory)
Our eighth president, Martin Van Buren, served the nation between 1837 and 1841. In the years before his election, the man from New York visited the McLane family estate in lower Cecil, known as Bohemia. He was there on July 21, 1829, Ernest Howard wrote in the Almanac of Cecil County.
One of Van Buren’s letters, dated July 15. 1529. published in part in Alice Miller’s “Cecil County. Maryland: A Study in Local History” said: “I shall leave here for McLane’s on Monday morning. Will stay there a day or two and return to Washington by Cape May.”
As modern times started allowing presidents to fly quickly over northeastern Maryland, sightings of the leaders on our roads and rails decreased. But once, during the administration of our 34th president (1953-1961), Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Cold War leader, was flying north to make a speech. As his helicopter departed Washington and started its trek northward, bad weather set in. The pilot landed at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where a motorcade stood by to transport him to the meeting. On that foggy day. up Route 40 came the general who faced Hitler during World War II.
So as you are out and about today, you might be traveling a route that was known to our nation’s chief executives. They often came our way.
This new local history blog, “History Surrounds You,” by Kyle Dixon takes up the subject of a largely unknown Cecil County Civil Rights Story from 1866. The Freedmen’s Bureau had assigned teachers at Elkton, Port Deposit, Rowlandsville, Cecilton & Chesapeake City, and one, Ella Jackson, challenged discrimination under the new Civil Rights Act of 1866
Kye writes, “During her tenure teaching in Port Deposit, Ellen became one of the first to openly challenge laws that were meant to protect the rights of African Americans. One of the first pieces of civil rights legislation included the Civil Rights Act of 1866. According to the United States House of Representatives History, Art, and Archives website, the legislation guaranteed citizenship to all citizens born in the United States and that they were guaranteed the right to the “security of person and property.””
“In the spring of 1866, Ellen took a train from Port Deposit to Baltimore on personal business. She was accompanied by Mary Anderson, a fellow Freedmen’s Bureau teacher at the Anderson Institute in Havre de Grace. When the two women were waiting to board a train home from Baltimore at the Train Depot for the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, they were asked to leave the waiting room by the station master, who claimed the area was for white passengers only. When they refused to leave, the station master physically removed Ellen and Mary.”
One night late in 1917 or early 1918, the electrical age arrived in Cecilton. As darkness descended, current flowed through wires causing lights to flicker on in businesses and homes, while lamps on poles illuminated streets. The Cecilton Electric Light and Power Company had launched this important undertaking in July 1917 when the investors told businessmen that they could shortly do away with oil lamps.
The four corners in Cecilton sometime in the 1940s. During 1948, electricity was extended to the rural areas of the First District. (Source: image from Library of Congress)
The managers working to displace old kerosene lamps were Wm. H. Brown, Dr. R. M. Black, Wm, H. Alderson, President; E. S. Short, and William Luthringer.1
A Fire Plunges Town into Darkness
About the time people started getting used to chasing off the darkness with modern electricity, a blaze erupted at the powerhouse. On that Friday evening in November 1920, the fire grew beyond what the employees and townspeople could control so someone telephoned the Middletown Fire Company.
The Delaware firefighters answered the alarm, rushing an engine over. Although it wasn’t possible to save the power company property, the firefighters stopped it from spreading to nearby buildings. That autumn night, the town plunged into darkness except for hastily located kerosene lamps. Consequently, the utility purchased a new electric light station and dynamo, bringing current back to town in a few months.2,3
To help with the expense, the Cecilton Electric Light Company planned a carnival to raise $2,500 for new machinery in 1920. But Rev. T. R. Van Dyke, pastor of the Cecilton M.E. Church “declared that carnivals were a great injury to the morals of any community and a most undesirable method of raising money.” The managers called it off as the minister went out among the people to collect the full amount. After finishing his rounds, Rev. Van Dyke presented the contributions to the town commissioners enabling them to make the final payment on the machinery.4
Nevertheless, the company held carnivals some years during the roaring ’20s, the big draw being an automobile they chanced off. In 1925, the managers made a profit of $1,153.72.5
Large Utilities Move In
As the industry matured and the Great Depression neared consolidation brought changes for rural utilities across the nation. The interconnected grids enabled small towns to receive service village generating plants couldn’t provide. In line with this, one buyer offered the Cecilton Electric Light and Power Company $11,000 in 1928.
Meanwhile, the Maryland Public Service Commission started investigating rumors about Eastern Shore offers. Luke Ellis, the agency’s fieldman, learned of multiple attempts by “undetermined interests” from Frank “Home Run” Baker, a former Talbot County Baseball Star. Overtures had been made to purchase the Trappe Electric Company,” Baker reported. These same buyers had offered the Millington Plant $70,000.6
Lower Rates Promised
Representatives of the undetermined syndicate promised “lower rates” through the transmission of current from the Conowingo Dam. But W. H. Taylor, president of the Philadelphia Electric Company said no contract or deal had been proposed to furnish power to any Eastern Shore utilities. The state advised that it wouldn’t allow prices in excess of the valuations to be paid as the public would “suffer through higher rates in the future.”6
Following the investigation, the Commission issued an order permitting a subsidiary of the Empire Public Service Corporation of Chicago, a utility operating in 14 states, to merge the small Maryland companies into its network in 1930. Ratepayers, the Commission said, would benefit from ownership by an adequately financed and managed corporation that would extend service and provide cost efficiencies to benefit the public. Operating as the Maryland Light & Power Company, this consolidated concern had acquired thirteen firms in this area, including Betterton, Millington, Trappe, Love Point, Somerset County, and Cecilton.7,8
Rural Electrification
A few more decades slipped by before farmers and residents in the outlying areas of the First District could chase off the darkness with a flip of the switch. While they waited for the current to flow, people met in Cecilton one afternoon in April 1939 to express interest in extending the lines.
During these years, summer developments popped up along the waterways, increasing demand. One of those seasonal resorts, White Crystal wrote in the community newsletter, the “Manor Messenger” in 1939 that the Beach stood at the threshold of another major improvement. “Prospects of getting electricity next year would mean running water, radios, electric stoves, good lighting, and a thousand of the conveniences that have been sacrificed by everyone for the fresh air, the sunshine and water,” the editor remarked. “We won’t have to say to our visitors, “We just camp out down here!” No with the advent of electricity . . . we will be able to say ‘This is our summer home . . . “9
But World War II got in the way. Finally, the first lines were energized in 1948 for those necks and remote farms in southern Cecil County.
Other Uitilies in Cecilton
By the way, Cecilton had two other utilities. One, the gas company piped gas to houses and streets of town by August 1904. Mr. Short, the owner, produced gas from a small brick gas house on the east end of town. Rudolph G. Anklam of Denton had built the acetylene plant and installed the mains in July 1904.10.
There was also the Cecilton and Earlville Telephone Company.
Endnotes
Public Service Commission of Maryland, Report. Report for the Year 1918, Case No. 1457, Korn & Pollock, Baltimore, 1919[↩]
Now that a blast of cold Canadian air is moving in, we started thinking about another time that an arctic blast held a tight grip on the area for an extended period.
It was the winter of 1852, the coldest in many years, and the temperatures dipped far below zero each night. This caused the mighty Susquehanna River to freeze over, disrupting transportation on the northeast corridor. In those days, a bridge hadn’t been built between Perryville and Havre de Grace, so a steam ferry, the Susquehanna, ferried passengers and freight across the waterway.
But with the river solidly frozen over from bank to bank, the movement of the railroad ferry was disrupted. This presented a major problem as traffic backed up.
The Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, Isaac R. Trimble, devised a solution. His expedient involved railroad tracks on the ice. This unique route opened on January 15, 1852, and It was in use every day through February 24, 1852, when the rails were removed because a thaw was coming on. Over 1,378 cars were moved over the ice, and regular traffic began again on March 3, 1852.1
Based on a drawing by F. F. Schell, a lithograph was produced by Thomas S. Sinclair of Philadelphia. It featured a view of the railroad tracks on ice across the Susquehanna at Havre de Grace. This was a popular item at the time and it was reproduced in several forms. The Adams Express Company arranged to get an imprint of it, too, and the company distributed the popular image to customers.2
Railroad tracks on ice across the Susquehanna River between Perryville and Havre de Grace. (source: Enoch Pratt Free Library)
Endnotes
Digitial Maryland, View of Railroad Tracks Across the Susquehanna, mcdcp179[↩]
Adams Express Co., Lithograph by Thomas Sinclair, 1852, Digital Library of Maryland[↩]
On the long journey between Philadelphia and Baltimore in the 19th-century, travelers looked forward to arriving in Rising Sun. There, the Maryland House provided some of the finest accommodations to be found in northeastern Maryland.
The Rising Sun Hotel a stop for tourists on busy Route 1. (Source: personal collection)
Recently an inquiry about a hotelier, S. C. Konigmacher, who briefly operated the Maryland House in the 1870s, had us looking into the history of these establishments. In January 1869, John Thompson opened a new hotel, the Maryland House. Replacing an earlier one destroyed by fire, the new house had 24 rooms and a concert hall or ballroom. It was one of the finest and largest establishments in Cecil County, the Oxford Press reported.
In 1872, another destructive fire, originating in the adjoining foundry, quickly spread to the hotel and its stables, destroying the buildings. The alarm was sounded around 11 p.m. but it was soon realized that the bucket brigade couldn’t check the spreading flames. Thus an urgent appeal for aid went out on the telegraph wires to Oxford requesting that the Union Fire Company load a steam engine on a special train and rush to Rising Sun. But at that hour the Oxford telegraph office was closed so the fire department didn’t get the message until the next morning, according to the Oxford Press.
After the 1872 blaze William Grason bought the Odd Fellows Building. His extensive remodeling included the addition of a third floor and attractive porches. Located on the site of the current town hall, it became the second Maryland House. S. C. Konigmacher was the operator of the Maryland House for a few years, in the early 1870s. In the 1870 census, he is listed as a hotelkeeper living in Rising Sun. He was an experienced hotelier for in 1869 he managed the opening of the Seaview House in Atlantic City NJ. Before that, he had managed the Ephrata Mountain Springs in Ephrata, PA.
Over the decades the hotel changed hands and new proprietors provided for weary travelers as the times changed. Early in the 20th-century roving tourists and their automobiles stopped for overnight stays as they made their way along the new highway, Route 1, which passed through the center of the town. . In 1916, G. R. Grason sold the hotel to W. B. Cooney for $5,500. Martin Keplinger and Carolina Keplinger of White Hall, MD took possession of the hotel on September 14, 1930. They planned to make extensive improvements, which included a new front to the building, an enlarged dining room, and other alterations, according to the Midland Journal.
Somewhere in this age, the Keplinger’s stopped using it as a hotel and focused on the restaurant. They also called it the Rising Sun Hotel. In 2000 the old hotel was torn down as the Town of Rising Sun erected a town hall.
Catching a show at the North East Theatre on Main Street was a popular thing to do for generations of people in central Cecil County during the middle third of the 20th century.
The North East Theatre circa 1950s or early ’60 (source: personal collection)
The first movie in town was owned by Albert J. Roney, Sr. and initially shows were projected at the GAR Hall, according to the “History of North East” published by the local history club of the North East High School in 1964-65. These were silent movies accompanied by a player piano. One of the early names of the movie house was “Cecil Theatre.”
At some point, Mr. Roney built the new facility on Main Street. According to the town history, the movies there were accompanied by an organ played by Ida Desosio. On May 18, 1929, the Cecil Whig announced that screenings in the movie house were the first in Cecil County to have sound and talking pictures.
When Mr. Roney received an appointment in 1937 as postmaster, he sold the business to John Smith. Mr. Roney died in February 1953, and his old theatre closed sometime around 1965. The last ads for shows we have located were published in the Cecil Democrat late in 1964, and in 1965, the theatre no longer had a telephone listing in the directory.
In March 1969, the Cecil Democrat reported that the North East Theatre was no longer there to greet visitors when they entered the town from Route 40 as it was being torn down. The paper added that the movie house had been closed for about five years and the building had been used for storage after the screen went dark.
The North East Theatre on Main Street was torn down in March 1969. (Cecil Democrat Photo, March 26, 1969 by David HIll)
