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In the middle third of the 20th century, many Cecil County towns had theaters. One of those enjoyable places was the “Cecil,” the Cecilton theatre, where nightly shows (except Sundays) were offered in air-conditioned comfort on a beautiful, wide-screen. The theater had been built as a school, but the property became surplus property once the…

Someone recently asked us about the old hotel in Warwick, and we promised to share some information about the Gillespie House. In the 19th century, Warwick was a lively place with several merchants taking care of the trade from nearby Cecil County farms. One of those businesses was Samuel Gillespie’s Hotel. In 1868, the Middletown…

Cecil County once had many thriving villages, each with a cluster of homes, a few shopkeepers and tradesmen, a schoolhouse, a physician, and almost everything one needed for daily life. While most of these places continued into the 21st century as residential communities, they no longer hummed with enterprising commercial activity the way they did…

Harford Community College is offering a talk and continuing education course on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. It involves three sessions starting on May 5, 2022, at 1:30 p.m.. The first is a classroom lecture and that is followed by two field trips to towns along the C & D Canal. The course is presented…

The nation was deeply saddened and shocked when news flashed around the world that President Roosevelt had died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the Little White House in Sulfur Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945. The president’s body was transported by train from Georgia to Washington, D.C., for a state funeral. Afterward, the fallen leader’s…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…