Fifty-one years ago, people across the nation stayed glued to television sets and radios, listening to a stream of alarming broadcasts about heightening tensions as the Soviet Union and the United States faced off over the placement of missiles in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy alerted the American people to the danger on Oct. 22, 1962,…
Cecil’s History & Genealogy Library Helps Media Outlets Covering the County
With the investigation into the crash of Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco continuing, Fox 45 News reporter Melinda Roeder stopped by the Historical Society yesterday for help with a Maryland connection to the story. It was Dec., 8, 1963, nearly fifty-years ago, when the worst crash in Maryland history occurred. On that stormy December night…
Storm Clouds Over Elkton
July 7, 2013 — We have exceeded our quota of strong evening thunderstorms, dangerous lightning, and heavy downpours lately as it seems we have been in Mother Nature’s Bull-Eye. One of our volunteers, Kyle Dixon, snapped this photo as dark storm clouds gathered over Rev. Duke’s Log House at the Historical Society just before dusk. When Rev. Duke built his home over…
Four Dispatchers Juggle Emergency Calls at Fire Headquarters in 1967
The Cecil Democrat, a weekly newspaper, published a series of interviews with public officials about local agencies in 1967. That August, the paper put the “spotlight” on Civil Defense and the nearly six-year-old central fire dispatch system, as a reporter spoke with Marie Cooling. “Fire headquarters” had gone on air in October 1961, working out…
Volunteers Hard at Work in the Cecil County History and Genealogy Library This Weekend Waiting on Patrons & Preparing Talk About Elkton in 1960s
All across the area people have been out and about enjoying the extended Independence Day Holiday. But right on schedule, Historical Society volunteers reported for duty, opening the Cecil County History and Genealogy Library for those digging back through layers of time. Hard at work, fielding whatever came their way on this hot, sweltering first…
Society Seeks Information on Civil War Chaplain Detained at Libby Prison
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…
An Old Elkton Weathervane Knows Which Way the Wind is Blowing
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 —…
The Gilpin Building Anchors a Corner in Downtown Elkton
The old commercial district in Elkton has several architecturally interesting cultural resources, one of which is the Gilpin building, a centuries-old surviving structure. This substantial three-story brick vernacular building was the subject of a recent inquiry, as we were asked to investigate the past at the southwest corner of North and High Streets. During the 1880s, the town…
The Cecil County “Library on Wheels”
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…
Cecil County New Deal History Found on WPA Today
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…