Window on Cecil County's Past

The times were changing for readers after World War II and Cecil County kept up as it organized a county library system.  The first step was to hire a professional librarian, Ruth Miller, and she made the establishment of a “library on wheels” a priority.  Filled with shelves, the bookmobile started rolling down the road in 1947 as it carried books to stations scattered across the rural area.  Miss Miller, brought years of experience in organizing systems, coming here from the newly established Mohawk College Library at Utica, NY.  Before that she organized a public library at Hamtramck, Mich. where she served the city as its librarian for 10 years.  In the second half of 1947, the bookmobile, “painted a robin egg blue, with navy blue lettering on all four side in bold type” became a familiar and welcome sight on the roads and highway of Cecil County as it transported 800 volumes of valued reading material to “stations” in villages and wide spots in the road.  In a time when literature and reading material were scare and many lived far away from the local reading room, it was a welcome sight when the mobile library arrived with fresh material for a weekly visit in places that stretch from Oakwood to Warwick.  As the librarian worked to provide Cecil County with a first-class institution, she reported that by Oct. 1 5,000 new books would be ready for circulation, in addition to the old books already in the library.

WPA Today, a website published by Brent McKee, contains an interesting virtual exhibit of WPA projects around Maryland.  He has drawn on Great Depression era photographs and art work in the collection at the University of Maryland College Park Archives and added his own current images to it as he travels around the State.  The Maryland exhibits includes a number of Cecil County projects that caught our attention, including the African-American Schoolhouse in Port Deposit, the Pleasant Hill Fire Tower, street work in Elkton, the Elkton reservoir, water and sewer work in Chesapeake City and more.  We think readers of a Window on Cecil Count’s Past will find this site of interest.  Thanks Brent for sharing  Maryland New Deal history on the Web.

As Cecil County anticipates the arrival of summer, the Singerly Fire Company Station in Kenmore was looking fine in the late afternoon sunshine on the last day of spring 2013.  Station 14, some seven miles from Elkton, opened in 1978 to serve the far northern part of the fire protection district.  It serves Fair Hill, Providence, Lewisville, Appleton, Cherry Hill, Pleasant Hill, and other northern reaches of the territory.  It was dedicated to Edgar (Speck) Slaughter Jr., who was the chief from 1960 to 1969.  Gary Storke was the president of the company overseeing the opening of the substation, which greatly reduced travel time to an emergency.

Press Release – Cecil County Public Library 

Sixteen local authors will share their latest work at the Elkton Central Library on Saturday, June 22, 2013, from 1-4pm. Meet and greet your favorite local authors and have the opportunity to discuss the writing process, explore inspiration, and check out some of their latest work!

Listen to live readings, buy local autographed books and enter the prize drawing. Readers and aspiring writers of all ages are encouraged to attend. The following genres will be represented: Inspirational, Children’s Literature, Local History, Cookbooks, Self-Help, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Horror, Romance, and Native American Fiction.

Meet the following authors: Michele Chynoweth, J.R. Coffey, CC Colee, Milt Diggins, Cathy Gohlke, Karin Harrison, David Healey, Terrie McClay, William Prins, W.P. Rigler, Richelle Rodgers, Vernon Schmid, Becky Titleman, Pam Tomlinson, Pat Valdata, Ken Wiggins.

Call 410-996-5600 x481 for more information or visit Cecil County Public Library’s website: www.cecil.ebranch.info

The old Sassafras River Drawbridge, the vital link between Georgetown and Fredericktown, had been around for 51 years in 1968, when a Whig photojournalist did a piece called the “The Keeper of the Bridge.”  The tenders that June were D Raymond Hill of Kennedyville on the dayshift and Harry Redding of Galena on nights.  They were responsible for raising and lowering the structure during that busy summer, letting boats pass through.

The current issue of Cecil County Life, a Chester County Press publication, has an informative article about a historical investigation focused on understanding centuries long transformations on the land at the Fair Hill Natural Resources Management Area.

Emily Kilby decided to make a scholarly, in-depth study of this place in northeastern Cecil County, a couple of years ago.  The interest in digging into long unexamined records from earlier times, something that would require weeks of work, grew slowly as she strolled the area.  On those leisurely visits, accompanied by her two dogs, she noticed surviving artifacts, including stone ruins, crumbling foundations, unexplained trenches, and other fading but visible markers of human activity.

Puzzled by those vestiges, she decided to find answers to her questions.  At first, according to the article, Emily thought it would be a quick search, but in doing preliminary work the curious park-goer found “there wasn’t much.”  No one had previously undertaken much of a study so “I decided to do it myself,” she noted.

Her initial work started at the Historical Society with 19^th century maps, which  highlighted the nature of the land at different points in time.  Once the cartographic baseline was visualized, she followed the holders of the land back through time and owners as generations came and went.  The retired magazine editor spent lots of time doing fieldwork too, visiting the ruins to document and collect visual data.  The checking of estate records and wills and much more followed.

At the Hagley Library in Wilmington, her due diligence really paid off.  William duPont started piecing together his country estate, “purchasing parcel after parcel of land – nearly 8,000 acres in all – beginning in the late 1920s”  There she found the 1931 inventory for his estate.  Modern technology such as Google Earth also supported the in-depth investigation.

Emily has given two standing room only talks on the subject at Fair Hill as over capacity crowds were drawn to each event.  People were anxious to hear about the copious amounts of information she had collected.  She had tapped into an audience of local history enthusiasts, genealogists, park supporters, conservationists, preservationists, and the horse-industry crowd.

Called “Investigating Fair Hill’s Past,” be sure to check out the interesting piece written by Carla Lucas.  By taking a serious, scholarly approach to an important subject, while collecting and interpreting a large body of primary source materials, Emily has added greatly to our scholarly understanding of the past in Cecil.  These types of comprehensive studies of an area with so much heritage just waiting to be carefully examined are important.

There are also a number of other engaging articles in the issue of Cecil County Life Magazine, too.  Thanks Carla for an interesting article.  And thanks Emily for undertaking and sharing the careful work done with this scholarly examination.

Forty-five years ago, on Sat., June 8, 1968, Robert F Kennedy’s Funeral train made a long journey from New York City to Washington, DC.  As it passed through Cecil County, thousands of people lined the tracks, and when the train rolled through North East, 15-year-old Michael Scott was there with his mother.

His father elected a couple of years earlier as the first president of the Cecil County Branch of the NAACP, couldn’t be there as he was a track supervisor for the railroad.  He had to make sure the special train got safely through this section. It had already encountered trouble in North Jersey as an approaching locomotive had struck mourners lining the tracks as the two engines neared each other and those waiting to pay their respects failed to notice the freight coming in the other direction.

That awful year, with so much sadness in the nation, isn’t something that people who lived through the period will ever forget, and the Washington Post has a feature about that troubling time 45 years ago.  The paper has interviewed people who recalled that day.  In Cecil County, they talked with Michael Scott about his recollections and the things that were happening with Civil Rights in Cecil County as the times were changing in the 1960s.

Click here to check out the article on the Kennedy Funeral Train.