Window on Cecil County's Past

Cecil County History on Facebook passed a milestone with 6,000 followers on August 21, 2018.  Thus, we want to say thanks for stopping by to spend a little on our social media channel.  Your visits to this public history space and your participation in conversations there and on our blog make our effort worthwhile.

The mission of the page is to inspire curiosity, enjoyment, and understanding about Cecil County’s fascinating past for a broad audience. We do this in two ways: Curating and selectively sharing content created by others; and contributing our own original pieces — photos, posts, and rich media — to this universe.

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Frederick C. Breitenbach Sr., of Cherry Hill, served as the last B & O station agent at Childs. retiring in 1954. Starting work for the railroad at the Singerly Tower in 1904, he served stints at Childs as a clerk and at Leslie as the stationmaster. The company brought him back to Childs as the agent in charge in 1935, where he sold tickets, handled freight, mail, and baggage, oversaw the arrival and departure of trains, took care of the property, and supervised employees.

Until 1949, passenger trains stopped at Childs, but as he marked a half-century of service, the country station only handled freight, most of it going to and from the Elk Paper Company Plant. When he started at Childs, it was the most important Cecil County stop, and three people worked there for the B & O. But in 1954, he was the only remaining employee as this rural depot slowly reached the end of the line.

He was born in Baltimore in 1885 and died in Union Hospital on May 16, 1958. Married to Ida V. Breitenbach, he was survived by his wife, three sons, Frederick, Jr., Steelville, PA; William H., Elk Mill, Robert E., Baltimore, and four daughters, Mrs. Ida R. Couden, Elkton, Mrs. Marion L. Walters, Elkton, Ruth E. and Blanche V. Breitenbach at home and Mrs. Dora Z. Pearce, Elkton. Interment was at the Cherry Hill Cemetery.

For more photos and a post of the last B & O Stationmaster, click here.

In the aftermath of World War II in Europe, the world faced an enormous humanitarian crisis.  Millions of people had been made homeless by the terrible conflict that had ripped the continent apart.  While the struggle’s end neared, President Franklin D. Roosevelt worked to establish the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, an international agency to plan and coordinated relief of victims of the war, and after the war was over Congress wrangled with the problem.  After strong and forceful involvement by President Harry Truman, the reluctant lawmakers managed to pass the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, which authorized the admission of 200,000 European displaced persons (DP) for permanent residence.

The DPs coming to the United States had to have a sponsor and a place to live before their arrival.  The first 813 refugees arrived in New York on Oct. 21. 1948.  Over the next twelve months, some of the DPs came to Cecil County to start a new life.  One of those was the family of Walter Mudryk, 38.  The Germans had taken him prisoner during the War.   His families prosperous Ukraine farm had been seized, some family members were put to death, and others served as forced laborers for the Germans.

Norman Fell sponsored this family in Cecil County, and they arrived here on January 21, 1949, to work on his farm near Calvert.  They departed from Munich for the United States, and after arriving by steamer in New York, they were sent to Baltimore on the railroad.  Mr. Fell met them at the Fifth Regiment Armory in Baltimore, where hundreds of refugees waited to meet their sponsors.

Out of this terrible conflict, their homeland destroyed, Walter Mudryk, 38, Nina, 25, his wife, and their two-year-year-old son Victor settled down on the Norman Fell Farm to start a new life in Calvert.  Sponsors in Queenstown and Virginia had also hosted some family members.

Source:   The Maryland News Courier, May 6, 1949:  Russian D.P.’s Now at Work on Calvert Farm.

Before the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal became a sea-level canal for ocean-going vessels, there were at least six lighthouses along the 14-mile route between the waters of the Delaware River and the Chesapeake Bay.  Navigation aids, these beacons of light, warned tugs, barges, schooners, sloops, and steamboats, that they were approaching a bridge, lock, or some other hazard along the waterway. The thirty-foot wooden towers were fitted with red oil lamps.  Lighthouse tenders hoisted the lamps up into the lantern room of the light to signal vessels of the approaching obstacle.

The Army Corps of Engineers completed widening and deepening the canal in 1927, discontinuing the familiar lighthouses that had stood guard along the waterway. The Army Corps of Engineers Museum in Chesapeake City has a full-scale replica of the original Bethel Bridge Lighthouse. The replica was donated by the Chesapeake City Lions Club in 1966.

Tomorrow (Aug 7) is National Lighthouse Day so we are resharing a post on a Cecil County lighthouse. On this date in 1789, Congress approved an act for the establishment and support of lighthouses, becaons, buoys, and public piers. According to the American Lighthouse Foundation is a day “to celebrate lighthouses and the commitment and service of those who tended America’s lights for generations.”

The Turkey Point Lighthouse in Elk Neck, Cecil County, was built in 1833. It sits on a 100 foot bluff at the tip of the Peninsula bordered by the North East and Elk rivers. C. W. “Harry” Salter was appointed the keeper of the Light in 1922.

CHESAPEAKE CITY DRY — On Aug. 17, 1914, someone passing through the canal in Chesapeake City penned a brief message on the back of this postcard. The traveler wrote: “passed through at noon.  All sober.  Dry town. . . .” Postmarked in Chesapeake City, the message was mailed to William Mauer, Norristown, PA.

In the decades before prohibition, Maryland had a patchwork of wet and dry counties and communities. State laws permitted local referendums on the question, and if enough local voters had an aversion to alcohol, sales could be banned in the municipality, district, or county. The divisive issue appeared on the ballot regularly, giving the citizens plenty of opportunities to soberly reconsider the matter of wet or dry.

For more on temperance and prohibition see

Beer Is Back They Shouted as They Raised a Glass to Prohibition’s Death Knell

One of Cecil County’s most colorful personalities, Rodeo Earl Smith, “a gun-slingin’, troublemakin’ goat-keepin’ bachelor,” lived at the King Ranch on Route 40 outside Perryville for decades.  Labeling himself Cecil County’s most famous resident, he also described himself as the “cussin’est, kissin’est cowboy who ever lived,” Robin Brown reported in the Morning News on May 4, 1980.

A rodeo rider, Hollywood stuntman, boxing and wrestling promoter, television and radio personality, amusement park owner and who knows what else, he began his entertainment career as a young man in the earliest years of the 20^th century, performing as an expert rider and roper in Wild West Shows.

“As movies became popular, he started performing stunts in the early Hollywood shows. For 20 years, he operated the Morton Park Pool in Delaware County, an amusement park outside Philadelphia, and when he retired around 1952, he purchased the 200-acre Silver King Ranch on U.S. Route 40 in Perryville.”

Wherever the aging Earl Smith went as he traveled around the county, people he met knew they were in for a special treat as he shared his exciting tales of the old west, early Hollywood days, the famous people he worked with, and his adventures.

He was known for toting pistols as he went about his day.  In the Middletown Centennial Parade in 1961, on a mule-drawn covered wagon, he had his six shooters pointed up in the air as performed along the route.  Everyone thought the bullets were blanks until one shot downed a live power line, and the startled Earl inadvertently pulled off another shot as he looked down to see what was happening.  According to Charlie Biggs, a local barber, that last shot nicked one of the mules pulling the wagon, and it tumbled down the street.

A couple of years later, President Kennedy came to town to dedicate I-95.  Old Earl was there, but the Secret Service ensured he wasn’t carrying his Colt 45 pistols that day in 1963, and they kept an eye on the “old range rider” during the president’s appearance on the state line. 

 As he aged, he couldn’t stay at home quietly with his memories and mementos.  He traveled about the county with his goats and dogs, looking to rope passersby into a conversation as he never tired of talking about himself.  One summer around 1970, Governor Marvin Mandel was whisked through the county on a campaign tour.  While the governor visited the county commissioners, he roped Mandel into listening to him praise the county commissioners, the Nixon Administration. At the same time, he also shared often told tales of his exploits.  “A campaign aide eventually intervened to Mandel’s apparent relief,” the News Journal reported.

He was a great friend of local law enforcement and newspaper reporters.  Whenever he came in the front door at the Cecil Whig, Editor Don Herring recalled there was often a rush to get out the back door for the young reporter that Earl caught up with would have to listen to stories for hours. 

In the late 1960s, Elkton’s AM Radio Station, WSER, started a midday news and talk show.  Whenever the DJ hosting the show heard that familiar voice on the line, he knew he wouldn’t have to worry about filling the broadcast hour.  Earl used that as his platform to talk about politics, what needed to be done in the nation, the fading memories of the old west, and his accomplishments.

“On the eve of his 86th Birthday, the Cecil Whig said he was a “hale and hearty octogenarian” who once earned a “living by physical strength, daring skill, a flair for entertaining, and plenty of good old American guts.” When the feisty old cowboy with the goatee and handlebar mustache died in 1980 at the age of 89, the newspaper said: “One of Cecil County’s most colorful personalities” has passed away. Born January 17, 1891, he was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.”  He had been born in Stoughton, Mass on Jan. 17, 1891.

For additional photos of Rodeo Earl click here

Elkton — A late 1950s or early 1960s view of the “town hall and the shopping center of this bustling county seat of Cecil County.” The YMCA, the police department, and the town hall occupy the building that is now the headquarters of the Elkton Alliance. In the background is the J. J. Newberry Company.

The postcard was mailed to Mrs. Ralph Terrell, https://www.cecilcountyhistory.com Lester Ave., Findlay, Ohio. The message reads: “Sept – 1 – 1967. We were married here Sept. 1, 1917, on our way to Williamsburg Va., Asheville, NC, and area. Say hello to Hazel and Elva – see yo next summer – love. Fred & Ireen.”