While digging up some historical records on a property in Cecil County, I discovered a large body of helpful online maps published by the Philadelphia Free Library. This urban institution has substantial online collections, including a large holding of maps.
The resources that helped with my investigation was the Hexamer General Survey collection. Between 1866 and 1895, Ernest Hexamer sketched out detailed plates on nearly 3,000 industrial and commercial properties in the Greater Philadelphia area, including Delaware and Cecil County. These meticulous illustrations included breweries, textile mills, printers, car works, dye and chemical plants, planning mills, and much more. The renderings were created for fire insurance underwriters and are similar to the Sanborn Maps, which are available for many Delmarva communities.
Hexamer was a German immigrant, according to the blog, Hexamer Redux. “He began his career creating insurance maps in New York City. In 1856, he moved to Philadelphia and established the fire insurance map business in the city.”
For researchers there are a number of fascinating local industrial plates, depicting the larger mills and industrial facilities. A highly detailed plate shows the landscape of the McCullough Iron Works in North East, and includes descriptive information about fire protection. Other companies include the Providence Mills owned by William H. Flitcraft & Company and William Singerly; The Shannon or Stone Chase Mill; the Octoraro Mill; West Amwell Mills and more. Several of the larger manufacturers have products that were updated periodically.
In addition to floor plans similar to architectural drawings lots of additional details are provided. There are notes about the construction, fire protection, occupancy, and other elements of interest to an insurance carrier. Many include perspective sketches of the actual building, which is great.
This will be a valuable resource for many Cecil County researchers. In the age before electrification the county’s creeks provided the source of energy and there were many mills situated on the banks of the streams.
Thank you Philadelphia Free Library for making this excellent resource available digitally.
The Childs Paper Mill, 1880, from the Hexamere Map Collection. Source: Philadelphia Free Library
Providence Paper Mill, 1890, Hexamer Map. Source: Philadelphia Free LibraryNorth East Mill, 1876. Source: Philadelphia Free LIbrary
We always look for the weekly posts on this Old Book, The Delaware Historical Society blog by Ed Richi, the curator of prints. This week he is focusing on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.
In the middle of a heated four-way presidential contest, a special train screeched to a stop at the Elkton station one Saturday in May 1912. On-board for a quick whistle-stop tour of Maryland was President William H. Taft.
When he arrived at 11:45 a.m., he was met at the station by a committee with automobiles and was quickly whisked to the Howard Hotel for a quarter-of-an-hour reception. Promptly at 12:00 p.m., the Chief Executive was introduced by William T. Warburton and for three-quarters of an hour, he spoke about the issues of the day. Houses, stores, and officers were decorated in his honor, and the Cecil County News reported that a crowd of about 2,000 listened to the speech.
President Taft was then hurried back to the station, returning to the President’s car for a brief rest, the special leaving for Aberdeen as soon as the tracks were clear.
President William Howard Taft spoke from the porch of the Howard Hotel in May 1912. (source: personal collection.)
When Benny Kirk visited the Sheriff’s Office in Elkton a few years ago, he paused to look over a series of photographs hanging on the wall. These weren’t mug shots from recent arrests or some of the most wanted criminals that caught his attention. They were aging images of men who served the county as its chief law enforcement officer over time. A bunch of them were there, all except one. It was his great-grandfather Cecil Kirk, who was elected to the position in 1905.
Having noticed the gap, Benny was on a mission to supply a photo of his relative so he contacted another family member, Sally McKee. As a genealogist and volunteer with the county historical society, the Rising Sun resident is a wealth of information and she helped out. Not only did the family historian have photos and documents, but also the appointing commission. Once the image was copied, Sheriff Barry Janney added this long ago public servant to the “Sheriff’s Wall.
As a candidate with Cecil’s minority Republican Party, the popular farmer was elected to public office three times. Before his criminal justice stint, he served as a delegate in the legislature and after doing time at the jail, he took on the responsibilities of the Clerk of the Court.
It was a Friday in December 1905 that the Principio area farmer moved to Elkton with his wife, Alice, and an infant, settling into the commodious apartment the county provided for its chief lawman. It was on the second floor of the jail. This old lockup built for chicken and horse thieves, drunkards, unruly types, cold-blooded murderers, and evildoers was going to be home for this young family.
Curtis Davis Kirk, Benny’s father, was just over one year old when the family started living with criminals and undesirable types of all classes. The next spring (1906) Sally’s mother Anna May was born in the lockup. Some years after the family returned to farming, Anna May walked into Colora school one morning dressed in blue. “Oh we have a little bluebird,” someone remarked. “No I’m a jailbird,” her mother uncharacteristically responded, Sally recently recalled. Another child, Cecil Dare, was born after the lawman finished his term.
To take care of his many duties, including enforcing the law, keeping criminals behind bars, and serving the courts, he had one deputy. Myron Miller filled that roll, the Rising Sun newspaper, the Midland Journal, reported. By-the-way, the paper also noted that he was the first sheriff from the Rising Sun area since 1857. That around-the-clock responsibility was a lot for two men in a county of 25,000 people for they would often have 20 criminals behind bars.
These jobs were usually family affairs, in those days. While the sheriff and his deputy took care of law enforcement activities, the responsibility for looking after the jail in those days often fell to the wife, when the men were away. She was often helped by a trusted prison, a trusty. And Alice, his wife, probably cooked two meals a day for this gang of jailbirds.
The sheriff investigates the murder of Captain Joseph Hilton on his sloop, “Golden Light,” in the Elk River. Thomas R. Witcraft was arrested for the crime. source: Cecil Democrat, January 12, 1907
During his first two-year term, dangerous police work was sometime required. Five days after taking on the job, he got a Sunday evening call to rush to Chesapeake City as a disturbance was going on. He brought his man back to Elkton, to appear before a magistrate the next day. The next month, the officer got a Sunday night call to rush to Cowentown to help a Pinkerton Detective and Railroad Officer capture a forger.
In 1907, he received an urgent telegram from Baltimore advising that a gang of armed desperadoes had practically taken charge of a northbound P. B. & W. freight train. A conductor managed to throw off a note at a signal tower, alerting the operator to flash a message to Elkton, the Midland Journal reported. As he hastily rounded up and swore in a posse, a dozen citizens, to help, another urgent telegram arrived, this one from Perryville. The gang shot and robbed two hobos, forcing them to jump from the moving cars.
When the freight stopped for a signal at the Elkton tower, the robbers took flight as they were outnumbered and outgunned by revolvers and shotguns. With shots ringing out the sheriff’s posse captured all of them,, lodging the dangerous types in the county pen.
The 75-year-old Cecil County political leader, lawman, and successful farmer passed away in 1944. Cecil Kirk was survived by his wife, Alice, one daughters Mrs. Paul McKee (Sally’s mother) and two sons Curtis (Benny’s father), and Cecil Jr. of Colora. He was buried in Hopewell Cemetery. Now thanks to the efforts of the family, his photo has been added to the Sheriff’s wall at the agency’s Elkton headquarters.
The Commission for Sheriff Cecil Kirk.
Benny Kirk arranged to have the sheriff added to the sheriff’s wall.
Announcing the Annual Rising Sun Civil War Re-enactment brought to you by the Rising Sun Historic Preservation Commission.
The re-enactment this year runs Friday, October 3rd to the Sunday, October 5th. The Friday session is reserved for local school students, with over 500 registered to attend this year.
The public hours are as follows:
Saturday:
11am to 4pm – Camp open to the public. Battle re-enactment is scheduled for 2pm.
7pm to 11pm – Dance with period attire and music. The public is invited to attend.
Sunday:
9am to 3pm – Camp open to the public.
9am – Ceremony in the cemetery adjacent to the park with a Church service to follow.
1pm – Battle re-enactment
3pm – Break Camp and Clean-up
The original tracks ran alongside the old Cecil County Jail around 1912 (personal collection)
Over time, physical changes occur to a community’s built environment. Most are subtle like when a backhoe goes to work digging up a new foundation, or a bulldozer extends a street so a small parcel of land can be subdivided into building lots. But as decades pass, more radical transformations occasionally materialize, many of which leave behind no hint of earlier times.
Between the two World Wars, one of those epic alterations occurred in Elkton’s center as the Pennsylvania Railroad electrified the northeast corridor and improved its right-of-way. The significant local enhancements included moving the tracks nearly a quarter of a mile to the north, eliminating dangerous grade crossings, constructing two overhead bridges, the extension of municipal streets, and the erection of a new passenger station.
Once the engineers developed plans to straighten the tracks, the company purchased a great deal of land. In between wrangling for a deal with individual property owners, the PRR negotiated with the town council and the State Highway Administration to get an agreement to eliminate several busy grade crossings and build elevated bridges at North and Bridge streets.
As the plan moved forward, this design disrupted long-established street patterns in the older section of town and reoriented growth toward Elkton Heights, a new development on the edge of the county seat. In the area of North Street, the realignment of the roadway required the Company to acquire a number of residences on either side of the street. Around August 1931, the PRR sold nine of those recently acquired buildings to local parties, ranging from $300 to $500. The company had paid as much as $10,000 for some of them, the Cecil Democrat reported.
Several of the houses had been lifted from their foundations in August 1931, and were “being moved intact to what is known as Elkton Heights, about seven hundred feet further north,” the Cecil Democrat reported. The balance would soon follow, as the new owners had agreed to promptly remove the dwellings. Two had been bought by John Lawrence of Newark, and one each by Argus F. Robinson, John W. Alexander. W. Holt McAllister, George P. Whitaker, Cecil P. Sentman, Thomas W. Simpers, Taylor W. McKenney, and Robert V. Creswell. George Moore of Newark and Woodall & Son of Elkton handled the moving contract, the Cecil County News noted.
The work was hastily accomplished as the contractors on this major Great Depression-era public works project anxiously wanted to get the long-delayed project moving. When it was over about 1935, the Pennsylvania Railroad had completed improvements amounting to over $ 1 million locally, not including electrification. Beyond that, street patterns familiar to a generation of people had been altered. And homes that once lined North Street had been moved to the newest development, Elkton Heights. Today they continue to line some of the attractive streets in this subdivision, appearing as if they have been there from the first. There are few traces of the pre-electrification era in Elkton.
Part of a 1931 Sanborn map showing the new concrete bridge. (Library of Congress).
Pennsylvania Railroad plan for improvements in Elkton, 1930. Source: Hagley Museum and Library
If there was anything remarkable about that Wednesday in November 1935 in Elkton, it was the new policeman directing traffic on the main thoroughfare from Washington to New York. Seventy-year-old Chief George Potts, having maintained tranquility in the town for twenty-eight years, had recently retired. The rookie, Jake Biddle, was going to make a fine replacement as the top cop in Cecil County’s largest town and its two-man force, the locals remarked.
Eloping couples were streaming into the courthouse, while the marrying parlors were packed with nearly forty weddings, but that was routine. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in the White House struggling with the nation’s economic woes. Far away in the Middle East, the ruler of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi was on the throne, but few people recognized his name. As far as anyone knew, it was going to be another unremarkable day for the town of 3,000 people.
But once that shiny Packard blasted onto Main Street “at a terrible speed,” the town was caught in an incident involving international law, wounded Iranian dignity, and disrupted diplomatic relations.
Chief Biddle was downtown when he noticed the fast-moving vehicle. In it was Iran’s ambassador hurrying from Washington to New York for a dinner date, along with his British-born wife, a pet dog, and the chauffeur. When the policeman gave a blast on the whistle the driver pulled to the curb. As Biddle walked up to the Packard, he wasn’t put off by the lettering on its side that read “Ghaffar Khan Djalal, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of His Imperial Majesty the Shah of Iran.” The diplomatic license plate didn’t register either.
Stories about what happened next vary widely, but whatever the case, the run-in escalated with the Ambassador of Iran. One local paper said, “When Biddle approached the car, the minister, who it is said had been drinking pushed him away, and when Biddle refused to allow the envoy to proceed, he got out of the car and engaged in a scuffle. “ So unruly had the diplomat become that handcuffs were snapped on his wrists, the paper continued. Constable Clayton Ellison, who lived nearby, was roused from a catnap by the disturbance, so he rushed over to help, as did old Chief Potts, as a growing crowd watched the tense, unfolding scene downtown.
Producing his State Department credentials and a business card identifying his lofty position, the Persian Prince asked to straighten things out by calling Secretary Cordell Hull, the Far East Desk, or someone in Washington, D.C. But the officers weren’t letting a little noise distract them from their sworn duty to uphold Maryland Traffic Laws.
At some point, the bunch was carted off to the jail. When it was explained to the jailer that the minister of Iran was involved, he wasn’t impressed either, accustomed as he was to so many marrying reverends in the Gretna Green. “Minister, eh? Just another preacher. Throw ‘em in the cell!” quoted the Associated Press.
Everyone had concluded the same thing. From the crowd watching the police action to Biddle and the deputy at the jail, it was universally agreed that he was a “marrying minister” trying to grab some of Cupid’s lucrative Elkton business.
At the lockup, the ambassador again protesting that his diplomatic immunity was violated, asked to call Washington, but the request was denied. When the lawmen found that the trial magistrate wasn’t available they packed up the group for a trip to North East. There the justice of the peace, George C. Rawson, thought the situation was a little ticklish so he allowed the Persian representative to call the State Department. When the Far East duty officer got the judge on the line, the charges were quickly dropped as the magistrate told everyone in the hearing room that a “foreign minister can do no wrong.”
Once the judge determined that not all speeders could be treated equally, it wasn’t long before the Elkton police discovered that they had stumbled upon one of “Washington’s prize foreign squawkers,” as a local newspaper labeled the emissary. Djalal grumbled to New York Papers, saying that the “Elkton police were no diplomats,” or a least that’s what the headline screamed. As soon as he returned from New York, where he “rushed for an urgent official engagement” he would make a formal complaint with the State Department, he assured newspapermen.
The Shah of Iran was outraged when he heard that police officer grappled with his dignitary . . . snapping the degrading shackles of a criminal on his wrist” as Time reported. After a protest was lodged, federal investigators took affidavits, followed by closed-door meetings with officials at the highest level of government. To pacify Iran, the officers, Biddle and Clayton, were convicted of assault and fired, while the president, governor, and mayor issued formal apologies.
It might have all faded into the mist of time, but for an enterprising photographer from the Baltimore Sun. He got three of the lawmen to pose for a picture a few weeks after with a caption reading: “These gyves [shackles] were snapped on Iran’s Envoy.” Local authorities thought they could quietly reinstate the officers, but the photograph and their action again grabbed headlines. This touched off another international incident, for an apology was no longer sufficient for the now furious Shah. He ordered the minister recalled, closed the embassy, and evicted U.S. representatives from Persia, breaking off all diplomatic relations with the United States for three years.
So how did the arrest of the Ambassador of Iran end? With the federal government carefully monitoring municipal actions, Biddle quickly hung up his holster and badge at the order of the town council. The rookie chief returned to farming at a quiet spot far off the main New York to Washington, road traveled by dignitaries. As for Elkton patrolmen, they steered clear of run-ins with foreign ambassadors or at least we have found any additional references to trouble with the agency in the Journal of International Law. And diplomats, envoys, and marrying ministers, for that matter, were likely to use a little more caution when traveling through this corner of northeastern Maryland.
Following the arrest of the Ambassador of Iran, Cecil County lawmen displayed the handcuffs used to shackle the ambassador while he was transported to the jail. From L to R: Sheriff Eugene Racine, Constable Clayton Ellison, and Elkton Chief Jake Biddle.
The Sheridan Library of Johns Hopkins University has a large collection of Cecil County digital maps. Family and local history researchers will find these online collections to be helpful. In the collection there is the entire atlas of 1877, as well as digital aerial maps (1938 and 1952), topographic maps, and many other cartographic products.
For many Cecil County villages and towns the railroad station was the center of the community years ago, and the company official overseeing the comings and goings of townspeople, passengers, telegraph messages, freight and mail was an important member of the community. Each place with a station had one, a station agent, in charge of keeping everything on track at his depot.
F C. Breitenbach B & O Station Agent at Childs. Source: Cecil Democrat, Oct. 7, 1954
To keep the operation running smoothly, the agents were assigned many responsibilities at smaller places. Obligations included preparing for the arrival of trains, selling tickets, handling freight, mail and baggage, announcing arrivals, and taking care of the property.
Frederick ‘C, Breitenbach, Sr., of Cherry Hill was the Baltimore and Ohio’s agent-operator at Childs in 1954. He had just completed 50 years with the company, having come to the Singerly Tower in 1904. In subsequent years he was assigned to Childs as an operator-clerk and as an agent-operator at Leslie. His final stint brought him back to Childs in 1935.
“The romance of the railroad has been lost since steam has gone,” the agent told the Cecil Democrat in 1954. He loved “the smell of that old coal,” and “the engineers in those steam engines were hardy men. The trains today are more like street cars.”
Until 1949 local passenger trains stopped at Childs, but as he marked a half-century of service the 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 stop in Cecil County and three people worked at the station, he recalled.
But in 1954 he was the only remaining employee. The rural Cecil County depot was slowly reaching the end of the line, although years ago the building alongside the B & O tracks was the center of the village. This old-time railroader had worked across the changing years and changing times as he and the station neared retirement.
He was born in Baltimore in 1885 and died in Union Hospital on May 16, 1958. He was an employee of the B & O for 53 years, last serving as “station master at Childs.”
A postcard of the Childs Railroad Station, Circa 1912. The card was unused, so there is no postal cancellation. Source: Personal Collection
“The Smoke at Dawn,” Jeff Shaara’s latest historical novel about the Civil War, has been released and it has a Cecil County angle. This third volume, part of a four part series, focuses on the critical Battle of Chattanooga.
Kyle Dixon has been listening to the audio version of the book., He informs me that William Whann Mackall, a Confederate General from Cecil County, appears on the pages of this just released volume. Mackall, a graduate of West Point, grew up near Childs. When the war broke out he resigned his U.S. Army commission and joined the confederacy.
A state historical marker near the boyhood home on Blue Ball Road provides additional information on Mackall. And here is a link to an article Milt Diggins did on the general.
The boyhood home of William Whann Mackall is just south of Childs on Blue Ball Road.
