These July days are an excellent time for enjoying that smooth and creamy summer treat, ice cream. That is especially true on hot, steamy Eastern Shore days like we are currently experiencing, as few pleasures are as comforting and cooling as a double scoop of the frozen dessert. Ice cream has been the quintessential way…
Recalling Schools Days at George Washington Carver School
Each year hundreds of graduating seniors receive high school diplomas in Cecil County. However, in June 1964, when nine students at George Washington Carver School in Elkton stepped forward to receive degrees, it was a particularly historic moment for it marked the end of segregated high schools in Cecil County. At the commencement five boys…
Freedom Riders on Route 40
The Freedom Riders started incursions into the sharply segregated deep South to confront Jim Crow laws in 1961. For the campaign, young people boarded buses heading into states where they tested a Supreme Court ruling declaring that separate interstate travel facilities were unconstitutional. But this era of protest also involved visits to northeastern Maryland as…
George Potts, Elkton’s First Police Chief
George Potts was appointed to a two-year term as bailiff in June 1908. The salary for the man who constituted the entire police force was $50 per month and the council had an assignment ready for him when he took office. The Town had erected large signs warning of the eight M.P.H. speed limit for…
Cecil County’s Octagonal School
The Carter’s Mill School, an octagonal school was also known as the eight-sided schoolhouse was built in 1820 by Robert Carter at Carter’s Bank. The stone schoolhouse was replaced in 1886 by a two-room frame building located on the west side of Singerly Road at Andora. William Spratt built the Andora School for $275. It…
The Cecil County Almshouse — A Place to Care for the Poor & Needy
For nearly three centuries, Cecil County’s destitute, elderly, sick, and mentally ill, as well as other cast-asides from society who couldn’t make it on their own, found help at the county almshouse poorhouse. Today, this institution, on the road between Childs and Cherry Hill, is home to Mt. Aviat Academy. However, until the 1950s, it…
Country Roads in Cecil County
History ProgramLife in the Past Lane: Country Roads in Cecil CountyDate: 5/7/2019 @ 6:30 p.m.Cecil County Public Library — The Perryville BranchContact Number: 410-996-6070 Presenter: Mike DixonFree Historian Mike Dixon will explore the character, ambiance, and history of country roads in Cecil County. In the 21st century, many of Cecil County’s back roads — the…
Fallen North East Firefighter Remembered
FALLEN NORTH EAST FIREFIGHTER RECOGNIZED – Fifty-five years ago, on December 8, 1963, a sudden life-shattering tragedy occurred in a cornfield at the edge of Elkton. On that stormy Sunday night over a half-a-century ago, Pan American Flight 214 circled in the night sky, waiting for orders to descend into Philadelphia International Airport. Moments before…
Singerly Fire Station – The First One
Many times, each day alerts go out in Elkton for an emergency and first-responders dash straight for a nearby Singerly Fire Station. Within minutes, emergency vehicles, sirens screaming and lights flashing, roll out of a firehouse, rushing to a blazing inferno, a serious accident, or some other emergency. Scenes of this type have been happening…
William M. Singerly’s Elkton Stock Farm
ELKTON STOCK FARM — William M. Singerly, an industrialist and newspaper publisher in Philadelphia, bred and raced standardbred and thoroughbred horses on farms he held in Kentucky and Montgomery County, PA, according to Wikipedia. In 1888, he purchased 300 acres on Blue Ball Road about 2½ miles northwest of Elkton, which he called the “Elkton…