Window on Cecil County's Past

By Eric Mease — Cecil Whig, June 22, 2013

You know those black and white prisoner of war flags you see flying in the area from time to time?  They have a white outline of a man on a black background with his head bowed superimposed on a watch tower also in white.  It’s an ominous flag.  It serves as a reminder that in every war there are Americans taken prisoner and it is our duty to do everything we can to free them.

Cecil County has had its share of prisoners of war throughout our nation’s history.  One of them, during the Civil War, was the Rev. Joseph T. Brown.  Brown was in his fifties when he volunteered to serve as the chaplain for the 6^th Maryland Volunteers.  On October 23^rd, 1862, Brown took a train to Williamsport, Maryland to begin his basic training before going to the front.  Eight months later Brown was taken prisoner by Rebel forces and marched over 200 miles to the notorious Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia.

Brown spent 3 months as a guest of Jeff Davis in Libby.  During that time he noted the number of wounded from his unit, the cost of bread, how to barter for tea, and the limb amputations that he witnessed.  On July 3, 1863, Brown was picked to draw lots to see which two of his fellow prisoners would be executed in retaliation for the execution of 2 Rebel spies in Kentucky.

But Brown’s happiest recollection was his return to his Cherry Hill community. He wrote, “I arrived in Elkton at about 9 o’clock and found quite a number of citizens awaiting my arrival.  My son was waiting for me at Elkton. I started home and when I arrived there found a party waiting amid the town (which) was illuminated, the choir was present and sang. To meet my friends once more.  Thank God for his goodness at home again.”

This is a lot of detail about a man’s war time experiences.  How did we come by all this information?  Truthfully, we cheated!  We have two of Chaplain Brown’s war time diaries, including the one that he kept while in Libby Prison.  We also have a few letters that he wrote before, during, and after his imprisonment.  From these letters and diaries we know many aspects of not only Chaplain Brown’s life, but his family life, the lives of some of his fellow soldiers, and the conduct of the war in northern Virginia while Brown served.  Without these letters and diaries, our knowledge of all of these things would be severely wanting.

While we know a lot about Rev. Joseph T. Brown of Cherry Hill, Cecil County, there’s a lot we don’t know.  We don’t know what happened to his family after he died a short time after the war ended.  We don’t know much about his service at Cherry Hill Methodist Church.  We know he was a member there and preached there frequently, but we don’t know in what capacity.  He wasn’t the pastor there, so what was he?  What ever happened to his Bible?  Perhaps he owned more than one.  What happened to them?  Are there other letters and journals?  Where are they?  We assume Brown wore a uniform during his years of service.  What did it look like? Did he save it?  Is it still in existence?  Most importantly of all, we don’t know what Rev. Brown looked like.  We have a picture of his tomb stone.  We have the stain glass window at the Cherry Hill Church dedicated to him, but we have no picture of the man!  Which brings us to the purpose of this article.  We need your help.  The Historical Society of Cecil County is celebrating the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War with an exhibit which includes some of Rev. Brown’s letters and his diaries.  We would like to add to our collection.  We would like to answer those questions that are nagging us and we’d like to have a picture!  If you are a descendant or know a descendent of Rev. Brown, and you have any of these things or other artifacts/mementos from Brown, please let us know.  We want to talk to you about them!  Please see our web site at www.cecilhistory.org and click on “Contact Us.”  Or, give us a call at 410-398-1790 and leave a message.  We will return your call.

High atop a perch on the old brick firehouse in downtown Elkton, a 128-year-old weathervane has pointed out the direction of the blowing wind for centuries.  From that central location or the nearby courthouse where it originally claimed a spot, it swung in changing breezes, gusts, and gales always serving as a steady sentinel — keeping a watchful eye out for shifting conditions.

That interesting weathervane, in the form of a shad, was originally placed on the roof of the old courthouse that stood at the corner of North and Main streets.  This 18th-century public structure was being renovated in 1886 when the Cecil Whig wrote about the attractive crown.  The expanded building “has been decorated by a handsome and unique weather vane, which is all new. . . .”  The contractor, George S. Fox of Rising Sun placed the ornamental piece of roof work there. Harry Hearn designed the instrument, the Baltimore Sun added.   Above the courthouse cupola, the decorative piece had a sweeping view of the Big Elk Creek crowded with boats, during an era when fisheries were an important part of the everyday.

Detractors complained about the expansion.  But “the critics can’t carp at this new vane, however vain the architect or builder of this vane may be, simply because there is no carp about it but all shad, a massive gilt shad, its body made of copper, with the scales wrought in shape by hand and covered with real gold leaf.  Below it are gilt balls . . . with the four index letters of the compass in gilt letters about 9 inches in size,” wrote the Cecil Whig.  “Outside of the beauty and usefulness of such an ornament, we are glad to know that it is one of the few things about the building which were got up at home.”

By the 1930s, the judicial system and county government needed more space.  Thus, the county erected a new courthouse one block east of the original facility.  County officials handed over the first seat of justice to the Town of Elkton, and the city council promptly tore it down in Oct. 1940. They, however, saved the shad from the wrecking ball, and sometime after, they moved it to its present location, a municipal property that served as the fire station.  This was its perch when the Baltimore Sun wrote about it in 1958.

In this age of instant access to weather data on our smartphones, computers, and cable television, the attractive, twisting, and turning instrument, a once useful monitor of the whims of the weather, reminds us of an earlier time.

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.