Cecil County Lynchings – A Dark Chapter in the Past

As the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project and the Reginald Lewis Museum are holding a day of remembrance, reflection and reckoning on Oct. 13, 2018, we are resharing some 2007 research we did on Cecil County lynchings.  This statewide conference is “meant to address our collective state history of white racial terrorism against African Americans.” the Museum notes, and part of that process involves creating a registry that lists all the murders.

Back in 2007, we researched these tragedies after attending a community discussion on this subject in Kent County where it was suggested that we take a closer look at the surviving traces of evidence from the past to see if these dark chapters had bypassed our communities or if there had been “a long silence” as often happened.  Local works of history — books and 20th-century newspaper columns — were silent on this matter, seeming to indicate that Cecil County escaped this dark chapter in the nation’s past.  As Professor Ifill, the author at the Kent County meeting suggested, we took a deeper look at the meager surviving traces of the past to see if the accepted interpretations stood a more thorough examination and study.

We identified two incidents through a closer examination of the original newspapers published in that era:

  • On the evening of July 27, 1872, three African-American men were brought before the Magistrate Bell in Warwick on the charge of firing a dwelling near Sassafras. During the hearing, it was ordered that John Jones, Robert T. Handy and a young person named Thomas were to be committed to the Cecil County Jail for further investigation. Special Constable Merritt put the three men in his carriage (two were manacled and one was riding free) for the journey to the county seat. As they passed through a woods near Pivot Bridge (near Bethel Cemetery outside Chesapeake City), a group of men “in disguise” surrounded the carriage and took the prisoners. Hours later, when Sheriff Thomas and Deputy White arrived from Elkton, they found one of the men “strung up by a rope around his neck to the limb of a hickory tree,” according to the Delawarean. No trace of the other two men was found.
  • In September 1861, a young African-American named Frederick “belonging to Capt. M. C. Pearce” of Elkton was charged with rape. in Sassafras Neck.   After a mob formed in Cecilton, the Cecil Democrat, reported that he was “taken to a tree in the vicinity of the act and hung. (Cecil Democrat, 1861)” 

For these two murders, there were a few meager surviving clues, but some stories handed down through the generations and oral traditions report that there were a few more.  We will keep searching for some sources related to these Cecil County lynchings to see if there is documentary evidence to support these oral traditions.

lynching in Cecil County
Lynch Law in Cecil County. Part of an article from the Baltimore Sun: Source: Baltimore Sun, July 30, 1872

Also See

Lynching in Harford County: Beginning the Journey from Truth to Reconciliation, Mike’s History Blog

Incendiarism and Lynch Law in Cecil County, Maryland, from the Blog, Delmarva African Ameican History

Notes & Sources

Baltimore Sun, Incendiarism and Lynch Law & Cecil County, MD., July 30, 1872.

Cecil Democrat, Elkton, Rape, Sept. 22, 1861

Cecil Whig, Attempt by a Negro to Commit a Rape on a White Girl, Sept. 22, 1861

The Delawarean (Wilmington), July 30, 1872


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