Eder was a station on the B & O Railroad. It was located near the bridge that carries Nottingham Road over the tracks and is about one mile east of Mechanics Valley. It was named for William H. Eder, who owned a large farm nearby. The Baltimore & Ohio railroad began providing service between Baltimore…
The Great Rising Sun Train Robbery
RISING SUN, Jan 2, 1885 — A passenger train that was making its way through the gloom of a winter night was robbed outside Rising Sun 131 years ago. Admittedly, it was not a great holdup, for it only involved a watch or two and small sums of money. Nevertheless, a raid on the rails…
The Cecil County History Conversation Continues on Facebook
Since we published our first Cecil County blog post on April 13, 2007, we have kept up with evolving social media platforms, maintaining multiple channels of communications. As the digital publishing transformation continued, some outlets became more media rich, interactive, and extremely simple to use. Thus over time we found that we were publishing most…
History Lecture – “What Does Archaeology Tell Us About the Lenape?” by Dr. Jay Custer
What: History Lecture – “What Does Archaeology Tell Us About the Lenape?” by Dr. Jay Custer, Dept. of Anthropology, U of DE Where: Historical Society of Cecil County, 135 E. Main Street., Elkton, MD. Date: Wednesday, March 9, 2016 at 6:30 p.m. Sponsored by: Archeological Society of the Northern Chesapeake… FREE “Recent archaeological studies of…
When Ice and Water Overflowed the Susquehanna River, the Media Descended on Port Deposit
There are floods and there are cold snaps in Cecil County. But in Port Deposit there were “ice gorges” and there were floods. So frequent before the building of the Conowingo Dam, the ice jams periodically brought destruction to the old river town and other communities on the lower Susquehanna River. They occurred when a…
When Ice Jammed the Susquehanna River and Threatened Port Deposit Photographers Were Quick to Respond.
Port Deposit, Havre de Grace, and other communities on the lower Susquehanna River have a long record of damaging ice floes and floods. When the towns were paralyzed by the ice jams, photographers rushed to the area to capture the scene. And when picture postcards arrived at the top of the 20th century, these regular disasters became…
When Ice Gorges Terrorized Port Deposit and the Susquehanna.
A century ago, whenever the Susquehanna River Basin suffered through a particularly tough winter—for weeks, the wind would howl, the snow would blow, and the temperatures would hover below freezing—the powerful waterway would ice over from New York down to Havre de Grace. But as those long blustery nights showed tentative signs of easing, people…
On Labor Day: Remembering Those Who Died While Building the Conowingo Dam
On this Labor Day, a holiday that honors American Workers and remembers the struggle to acquire better employment conditions, it’s a good time to share some research I have been doing on men who paid a high price erecting the Conowingo Dam. An untold number were killed, injured or disabled while toiling away at the…
Remembering the Service of Sheriff Sam du Pont
Following the local election in the autumn of 1970, headlines across the nation put a favorable spotlight on Cecil County. A member of the Du Pont family, Samuel Francis du Pont, had become sheriff, and curious journalists from some of the nation’s largest dailies sensed a unique story here. Sam du Pont certainly wasn’t after the $125-a-week…
Hack’s Point: A Natural Spot for Summer Visitors
While Cecil County has always been an attractive spot for vacationers, the arrival of the automobile age after World War I accelerated that trend as new waterfront communities started popping up. Desiring to escape the oppressive heat and humidity of July and August, visitors from Philadelphia, Wilmington, Lancaster, and other nearby urban areas motored here,…