Category: Uncategorized

At the end of dusty old farm lanes, in overgrown fields, and along the shoreline you sometimes trip across largely forgotten Cecil County Cemeteries.  They’re there because of the practice that prevailed from the founding period, which set apart a portion of the estate as a burial lot.  That custom faded as burial in the churchyard became the custom and commercial graveyards evolved in the 19th century. Lots of these lonely parcels have been lost to time since they were never marked on maps and as people moved away from the original properties memory faded with the passing of generations.

One of these long-lost cemeteries is located at the top of the Elk River.  Abandoned to nature centuries ago, it is hidden in the woods under a thicket of weeds and scrubs. Near where the high ground begins to give way to the shoreline there’s a scattering of headstones for members of the Henderson family. This prosperous family, making its wealth from transportation on the Chesapeake, built a fine mansion near Frenchtown. Those old cold stones, many of them broken, aren’t visited often, except for an occasional hunter venturing past the family burial plot. But, curiosity led a reporter to walk through this silent spot in 1881; he mentioned tombstones for Hannah Henderson 1777, Francis Wallace 1785, and Amelia Henderson 1815.

The old Sewell family burial vault at Holly Hall is one people often inquire about, but it has been lost to time and development.  Located near the early 19th-century mansion, it was on a grass-covered hill overlooking the Elk River, one county newspaper reported in 1898. At one time this was a peaceful spot, but today traffic whirls past on Bridge Street while parking lots, fast-food places, and stores have crowded in from all sides, covering most of the ground.  Nothing remains to mark the family graveyard.

Elsewhere genealogists in search of information will find cared-for family plots. One of those is located north of Elkton on a high spot overlooking the Big Elk Creek. Members of the Gilpin Family rest there. Although a burial hasn’t taken place on this ground for centuries, a well-maintained brick fence surrounds this final resting spot and it is cared for by area residents.

There are plenty of others in an area with a history as long as ours.  However, the Cecil Whig remarked in 1881 that many of these graveyards had long since passed away and the ground they once occupied was under cultivation, “leaving nothing to mark the spot covered by them.”

These old gravestones, dating back to the county’s founding period, tell the tale of our history. They hold vital, irreplaceable clues to our past for historians and genealogists so we must care for these remaining relics of what came before us. One area researcher, Gary Burns, has done his part to help out in this area. In doing months of fieldwork, he has documented over 29,000 burials in cemeteries across the county, including many little-known family and church burial grounds. Click here to go to his work.

The Whigonline channel on YouTube has a video clip from the 150th anniversary ribbon-cutting in Rising Sun.

Rising Sun officially kicked off its Sequicentennial Celebration today with a ribbon cutting at the town hall and an open house in the museum.  As brilliant April sunshine warmed the audience, the sense of an appreciation for the past was obvious as remarks by Mayor Cox and others indicated.  The enthusiastic crowd that had gathered provided additional evidence that Rising Sun is a place that values its history, while it grows in the 21st century.  Nearly two generations have passed since the town last held similiar activities 50 years ago on the centennial of the incorporation of the municipality.  Congratulations to the town of Rising Sun for a great start in celebrating this milestone in 2010. 

Editor’s Note:  Thanks to Tari Moore for providing these photos of the celebration. 

 

The vintage baseball team, the Elkton Eclipse, has announced its 2010 season playing schedule.

April 25th – Elkton hosts “The Chopper” Tournament at elk
landing to kick off the 2010 season. 12 teams from 5
states will be represented!
May 2nd – vs. Havre de Grace at Elk Landing
May 16th – at Talbot
May 22nd, 23rd – Delaware Festival
June 13th – at Diamondstate BBC (Delaware)
June 20th – vs. Diamondstate at Elk Landing
June 27th – at Potomac (11am), at Arundel (3pm)
July 3rd – at Flemington in Cape May, NJ
July 17th, 18th – Gettysburg 19th Century Base Ball Festival
July 25th – vs. Chesapeake at Elk Landing
August 8th – vs. Arundel at Elk Landing
August 15th – vs. Philadelphia at Elk Landing
August 22nd – at Havre de Grace
August 29th – Maryland State Tournament at Jerusalem Mill
September 18th – at Williamsburg
September 19th – at Fredericksburg
September 25th – Rising Sun 150th Anniversary Celebration
October 2nd, 3rd – Mid-Atlantic League Playoffs

Cecil County has a long and rich love affair with baseball going back more than a century, with its share of “local boys” making good in the Big Leagues. On Friday, April 30, from 5 to 8 p.m., sports fans of all ages are invited to experience the best years of county baseball all over again as part of “Cecil’s Field of Dreams,” a new exhibit at the Historical Society of Cecil County that celebrates our baseball heritage.

For the exhibit opening, members of the Elkton Eclipse Vintage Base Ball Club will be on hand in their late 1800s-era uniforms to portray players from the sport’s earliest days. The Historical Society will be exhibiting some interesting sports-related items from its extensive collection, featuring team photographs and memorabilia that includes vintage uniforms, autographed items and more.

All county baseball players past and present are invited to come out and reunite and reconnect with former teammates.

“What a great way to relive your baseball glory days with friends and family,” said Paula Newton, president of the Historical Society of Cecil County. “Sports is sometimes overlooked as an important part of our local heritage, which is why we want to make this exhibit a fun learning experience for the whole family.”

County resident James Crothers will be discussing his new book “History of the Rising Sun Little League” and signing copies. (This book was excerpted recently in the Historical Society’s publication, The Inkwell.)

Drawings will be held for Blue Rocks tickets and baseball cards, and there will be free Cracker Jacks, hot dogs and peanuts for hungry baseball fans.

This event is free and open to the public. The Historical Society of Cecil County is located at 135 E. Main Street, Elkton, Md. For more information, please call the Historical Society at 410-398-1790 or email info@cchistory.org.  Visit the Historical Society online at www.cchistory.org.

Before the first shovel of earth was moved to dig the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal about 1824, there was a tiny village about three miles east of Chesapeake City.  Called Bethel or later Pivot Bridge.  It was clustered around an old Methodist Church built in 1790 and an ancient burial ground.  When the waterway opened across the Peninsula, the ditch bisected the village separating  residents from each other and the church, school, and the store.  The 18^th century church was replaced by a newer edifice in 1849.  Built by John Pearce at a cost of $3,000, it was dedicated in December of that year.  Thirty people lived in Pivot Bridge and James R. Kirk had a store there by 1902 the Polk Directory notes.  For a few brief years (1892-1893 & 1905-1907), villagers had a post office operated by James R. Kirk, Sr.

The community had about a dozen dwellings, one dry goods and grocery store, one wheelwright, and blacksmith shop, and a public schoolhouse.  Business was flourishing there, the Cecil Whig reported as there were no rum shops.  The school was under the charger of the teacher, Mr. W. C. Lake.

Arrangements in the intersected village worked satisfactorily for about 100 years, but eventually early in the 20^th century the federal government acquired  the canal and started widening the route.  Considering that Chesapeake City wasn’t too far away, the Army Corps of Engineers decided to abandon the Pivot Bridge crossing.  Residents of the hamlet strongly objected, pointing out that for centuries the road the government wanted to scrap had been the main highway for the Peninsula.

From its origin as Indian trail, it had served the people first using carts and wagons and then automobiles.  Moreover, farmers on the south side would have to use the railroad depot at Mount Pleasant, DE  for shipping products while their neighbors 200 feet away could send their product to Elkton.  The freight rate from Delaware was almost double that of Elkton.  The church had an average attendance of 75, more than 50 coming from the other side of the canal, a trip of 12 miles they noted.

The pleas failed to move Uncle Sam, the government noting that two places with spans, Chesapeake City and Summit, weren’t far.  By March 1925 the pivot bridge had been ripped out, although as a concession the government put in a “rowboat ferry.”  Still those wanting to visit the quaint Bethel Cemetery on the banks of the C & D Canal were “forced to drive along a rough slag road.”  When the protests continued the Corps of Engineers decided the sensible thing to do was to convert this slag road into a concrete highway.  In Sept. 1928 P. D. Philips & Brother of Salisbury, MD. moved heavy equipment to the vicitninity and started grading for a concrete road from the Pivot Bridge to Chesapeake City at a cost of nearly $119,000.

By the 1960s the canal needed to expand again and most of the remaining structures, including the church, were demolished.   Today Bethel Cemetery Road stops abruptly at the canal’s edge, and little remains to inform the 21^st century travelers that a thriving hamlet once existed in this area.  Where the old burial ground remains at the edge of the canal, a tall simple cross memorializes  the church and the relocated graves.

The Harford Dagger, a citizen journalism website providing “news with an edge,” recently published an interesting piece about a fatal explosion in Bel Air as that town prepared for the trial of H. Rap Brown in March 1970.  That article caused us to remember the tension caused by those times in Cecil County, so we put together this quick piece.

———–

Maryland was on edge in March 1970 as violence spilled into streets and bomb blasts rocked the tranquility of the night in rural county seats.  The fear grew after H. Rap Brown made an incendiary speech in Cambridge urging African-Americans to burn down the troubled town one summer night in 1967.  Gunfire erupted in the streets, two blocks of the Choptank River town burned to the ground, and Brown and a police officer suffered minor gunshot wounds.   Brown was charged with inciting a riot.

As the time for the case neared in 1970, the proceedings having been moved to Harford County, a wave of blasts swept across Maryland.  On March 10^th, about 1 a.m., a car containing two militants, associates of Brown, blew to bits near the state police barrack in Bel Air.  Twenty-four hours later, minutes after midnight on March 11, a blast ripped open the old  Dorchester County Courthouse.

Shocked by what was occurring, Governor Marvin Mandel alerted the National Guard and ordered tightened security in public buildings around the state.   Cecil County Sheriff Thomas Mogle and his small force of deputies responded swiftly to the order. The men went on 12-hour shifts, and special officers were called to supplement the thin blue line.  The Sheriff said he had been warned through special intelligence of impending protests aimed at the local draft board, IRS office, and courts.  “They are going to bomb and destroy the judicial system.  Why else would the governor issue the order?” he told a reporter.

Amid this, Maryland State Police reported that 7,000 blasting caps were stolen from Ordinance Products, a North East company that made hand grenade triggering mechanisms.  The commander of the barrack, Lt. Charles L. Andrews, said there was no connection “at this time” between the theft and the two blasts.  The Lt. was familiar with the Harford County situation because the 44 troopers from his barrack and the Conowingo Post were helping with security in Bel Air.   “We wonder what might happen Monday when the trial resumes,” he said, “and view it with some dread.  We feel we’ll be able to cope with any situation that might develop, however,” he told the Wilmington Morning News.

Already nervous public officials heightened security in Cecil County after an anonymous female telephone caller dialed the jail to report that a bomb was going to go off at the courthouse in Elkton.  Before the call two deputies stationed in the building heard a “hammering sound,” and when they went to investigate, they saw a Chevy speed away. With tension already high, the sheriff called for assistance of other police agencies.  Residents near the county building were routed out of their homes in the pre-dawn hours while demolition experts from Edgewood Arsenal searched the building.   Nothing was found.  The phone call caused more of a stir, and the Cecil Democrat reported that ten deputies and one K-9 dog were on duty in and around the courthouse the next business day.

The pre-dawn threat failed to materialize, but in the wake of the fatal car bombing 33 miles west of Elkton and the explosion at the Dorchester County Courthouse in Cambridge, the building was closely guarded until the trial was over.

A new exhibit showcasing the history of baseball in Cecil County opens at the Historical Society on Friday, April 30th at 5:00 p.m.  The exhibit includes memorabilia, photos, a baseball players reunion and a book signing by James Crothers author of “History of Rising Sun Little League.”

On Booth Street in Elkton there’s a small nondescript masonry block building adjacent to the George Washington Carver Leadership Center.  A few days ago that structure, which presently houses the school system’s maintenance office, was the subject of an investigation by historian Susan Pearl who is working for the Maryland Historical Trust. 

Susan is out tracking down Rosenwald Schools across Maryland.   In the era before Brown versus Board of Education, African-Americans schools in the south were generally inferior.  Thus the president of Sears, Julius Rosenwald, wanted to make a difference in education for young people in needy segregated communities so he established a foundation that encouraged the building of up-to-date schools in the south between 1917 and 1932.  

Working with the Fund’s archives at Fisk University Susan determined that the Foundation built one in Cecil County.  It was in Elkton and according to the University records the school constructed in 1926 was a five-teacher building that cost $7,600 and the Rosenwald Fund contributed $1,300 toward the project. 

While Susan was in Elkton, she searched historical society files, examined board of education records, checked maps, and studied school board financial records for the period.  The data shows that there was a much earlier frame structure on this parcel by about 1892.  In the 1920s and the 1930s, there were additions to the building, which served as the African-American School in Elkton until the current administration building opened as a modern school for students.   I’ve talked with a number of people who recall attending classes in the older building, which eventually became the maintenance shop once the county integrated the school system. 

There’s still some work to do on this investigation and we’ll look forward to seeing Susan’s final report cataloging these schools throughout Maryland.  In her investigation here she found records clearly documenting the $1,300 contribution to Cecil County’s African-American School children.

More on Schools for African Americans in Cecil County

An Old Schoolhouse in Warwick

Undergraduate Thesis Examines Desegregation in Cecil County

Cedar Hill — A Surviving One Room Schoolhouse

Mt. Zoar Colored School

A Quiet Old Schoolhouse — Mt. Zoar

 John Damond of the Enoch Pratt Free Library will present a program called “A History of Shopping through the Sears Catalog at the Cecil County Public Library, Elkton branch on March 17, 2010, at 7 p.m.  Take a trip down memory lane and see the fashions and prices through the years using pictures from old department store catalogs during this free program.  Starting with the 1930s and ending in the present day, you will see how clothes, furniture, appliances, toys, and more changed decade by decade.  You will also see how the value of the dollar changed.