All is quiet on the right-of-way of the Lancaster, Oxford and Southern on this winter day.
Big Elk Creek, Saturday, Dec., 29, 2012 — On the last Saturday in 2012, a light snow gently blanketed the Big Elk Creek valley. The twisting, turning stream, flowing gently toward the Chesapeake, was the source of industrial power in the pre-electrification era and many mills lined the waterway. Today, it still retains significant cultural resources that reflect the 18th and 19th centuries in Cecil County. And a gentle snowy day amplifies the beauty of the old mills, homes, churches, graveyards, schools and other places as the timeless flow of the creek ambles along on its course through history.
A photo of Bishop Levin Copping from the Unwritten History. (Source: Internet Archive).
Many African Americans from the Eastern Shore have played prominent roles in helping to shape the history of Maryland and the nation. Some served as leaders from the pulpit, a few worked as regular conductors on the Underground Railroad, and many served as educators, newspaper publishers, and in other ways.
Here in Cecil County, one of those leaders was Bishop Levi J. Coppin. He was born in Fredericktown, Maryland, thirteen years before the Civil War started. The family Bible said, “Levi Jenkins Coppin, born Dec. 24th, 1848.”
His mother, Jane Lilly, taught the youngster to read and write, and at the age of 17, he began to study scriptures. After moving to Wilmington when he was 17, he joined the Bethel AME Church. In 1877, Levi became a minister, eventually becoming the 30th Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. During his lifetime, he also served as an editor, educator, and missionary. Coppin University is named after his wife, Fanny Jackson Coppin. She was a noted educator.
The Bishop published his autobiography in 1919. “Intermingled with this ‘Unwritten History’ is the story of my life. . . Those who are fond of reading novels about men who never lived, and things that never did and never will happen, may enjoy a change to something that is historic and real,” the foreword notes. Of the nine chapters, the first five concentrate on Cecil and Kent counties and his life here. The fifth chapter is entitled “Farewell to Cecilton.” He passed away in 1924.
This book is a helpful, seldom-used local source for anyone studying the antebellum and Civil War eras on the Delmarva Peninsula. In the antebellum period, many landowners in the lower part of the county relied on slave labor to harvest crops and perform plantation work. This valuable title provides information on the families in the area, slavery, some insight on the Underground Railroad, the arrival of Union Troops in the town, news of Emancipation in Lower Cecil, and life in general for African Americans during the slavery era.
—The Rev. Joseph Brown was the pastor at the Cherry Hill United Methodist Church.
The winter 2013 edition of The Inkwell, the Society newsletter, is at the printer now and will be mailed to members shortly after the first of the year. In this packed issue you will find in-depth history articles, a roundup of the latest local heritage news, features about people, and updates on events. It also contains columns that examine research collections and provide practical how-to tips for patrons working with materials in the Cecil County history and genealogy library.
Highlights include a fascinating, thoroughly researched story by Eric Mease about a Civil War Chaplin, the Rev. Joseph Brown of Cherry Hill. He has taken a scholarly look at the pastor’s life by working with the original diaries written during the war, which includes his detention at the infamous Libby Prison. Also there is a column about the man who knew the highs and low in Cecil County. He was H. Wirt Bouchelle, our local weather observer for 55 years.
Make sure you keep up with the latest news from Cecil’s heritage keepers by becoming a member of the Society. And look for some additional exciting news about products for members early in 2013. We will be opening our virtual library, where supporters will be able read archived copies of the Society’s print product spanning a 60 year period. These serials have brought local history articles to readers for generations and are helpful to those digging into the past.
We will also be launching the Annual Journal of Cecil County History. The once a year product will feature long-form original scholarly submissions that add to fresh understanding or revised interpretations about the past. Another focus for 2013 will be the enlargement of the member’s only research section, which will contain e-research materials. Look for details about these and other exciting products, as our all-volunteer organization continues to work to preserve, record and document Cecil’s past.
One of the Historical Society volunteers, Kyle Dixon, is an undergraduate at Washington College where he is working on one of his senior graduation requirements. It’s a research paper that examines school integration on the Upper Chesapeake and he has discovered a valuable Cecil County collection at McDaniel College. Other researchers may find this resource to be helpful, so we are sharing a note about it here.
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Morris Rannels was the superintendent of Cecil County Schools. (Source: 1954 Elkton High School Yearbook, A Rebecca Smith Yearbook Collection, Historical Society of Cecil County
Morris W. Rannels, the Superintendent of Cecil County Schools from 1952 to 1960, oversaw the system during a time of major social change and rapid student growth. After the superintendent passed away in 2007 at the age of 92, his collection of personal papers and documentary materials, which concentrate on Cecil County, were donated to McDaniel College.
This collection concentrates on his management of the growing county school system and the challenges faced by the professional leadership team and the Board of Education. The physical plant was outdated as many structures needed renovation, the era of the one or two room facility had passed, and a booming student population required additional space. The overcrowding, school buildings in “poor condition,” and the financial demands of modernization for a system coming out of the Great Depression and World War-II were a major management problem for Superintendent Morris Rannels.
Then on May 17th, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Course handed down its decision declaring that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. When a new school year started that fall, the Board of Education refused to admit thirteen African-American students of Navy personnel to Bainbridge Elementary School, a new facility on federal property. That initiated a complex legal challenge involving the NAACP, the Navy, the U.S. Attorney General, the Cecil County Board of Education, and the Maryland Dept. of Education. After a federal judge refused to dismiss the civil suit charging local officials with violating the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the parties agreed to settle the matter out of court, according to the Afro-American. When the school doors opened next year, it was an integrated school for Navy personnel.
The large body of records consists of six containers of research materials. “Through the collection, Rannels meticulously records the status of integration in Cecil County, the financial situation of the Cecil County Public School System, student enrollment, teacher hires/resignations, and school constructions/reconstructions.” According to the McDaniel finding aid. In the next decade, full integration of the school system was handled by another Supt.
North East, Dec., 24, 2012 – A light snow began to fall on Cecil County late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve and soon a thin blanket of the fluffy stuff was starting to cover the ground. In the growing winter darkness the scene made for a near postcard-perfect evening over at the old Episcopal Church in North East. There the warm glow from the windows of this historic house of worship glowed softly on this wintry scene as the historic church awaited the arrival of worshippers for the Christmas Eve service.
With another year drawing to a close, the old church spires of Elkton catch a few rays from the setting winter sun, as the sky begins to clear. These silent sentries of time, towering over an old pike lined by 18th and 19th century buildings, have watched over Elkton for centuries.
McKinley Scott played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights history of Cecil County and almost paid for his efforts with his life. McKinley’s son Michael will share stories about his father’s life and how his actions in Cecil County fit into the turmoil of the Civil Rights era.
The official record of the Elkton PD, the police blotter, provides around-the-clock entries as life unfolded and the community interacted with its lawmen. Most of these fleeting encounters would have been quickly lost in time were it not for the brief items penned into the ledgers. This long-run of volumes provides day-by-day insight into the Elkton of an earlier era, capturing permanently in the short entries life as it unfolded. Here, from the police blotter, are a few moments that would have been quickly lost to the shadows of time.
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In the dead of night, Officer Ernie Beck and Baron look for trouble while patrolling Main Street. From award-winning Cecil Whig photo series by Richard Frear.
THE BLOTTER
April 17, 1959 – 11:30 a.m. – Air raid alert
Aug. 25, 1960 – 10:00 a.m. – With Mayor & Commissioners on North St – Radar demonstration
Oct. 21, 1963 – 5:00 p.m. 25 cows loose in Elkton heights Hi Ho Silver
Dec. 4, 1963 – 2:30 p.m. Complaint of beatniks acting up on Main St. Ran same out of town.
Sept. 7, 1968 – 01:13 a.m. – Cross Burning in front of courthouse
1/21/1970 – CALL – UFO
Oct. 24, 1973, 8:08 p.m. – CALL: UFO over 279 and North Street.
Officer Beck keeps a careful eye on the night in Elkton in 1968. This is from a Cecil Whig photo spread about the night watch in Elkton. The full-page piece by Richard Frear won photo-journalism awards.
Chief McIntire checks speeders in 1966 with the town’s new radar system.
The Elkton Police Department carefully and meticulously chronicled day-to-day happenings for the rural Maryland law enforcement agency in five-pound ledger books from 1955 to 1993. As patrolman went on and off duty, requests for police aid came in, suspects were arrested, weather conditions changed, or accidents happened, officers filled the pages of these heavy blotters with the details, completing a volume for each passing year.
These valuable records, a significant source of information about social conditions and changing times, municipal government, weather, crime patterns, and individual information, were added to the archives at the Historical Society of Cecil County by the Town of Elkton a few years ago. Spanning five decades, historians, social scientists, and family researchers have a long run of complete data, which can be used to understand the past.
Providing a cops-eye view, the handwritten logs began on August 6, 1955. On that Saturday Officer Harry Minker penned the initial entry in the otherwise blank book noting that it was clear and hot at 8:00 a.m. He scrawled nine additional notations during his watch, but only five involved police calls. A few days later, he penned one saying “call to get mayor coffee.”
The Mayor and Commissioners put a push on to increase the efficiency of its force about this time, and these records are evidence of the focus on better police practices. The “thin blue line,” four full-time and 2 part-time men, crisscrossed the town in a new Ford patrol car, responding to calls from the water plant operator who signaled them on the town’s two-year-old radio system. In a few months, the officers would have their own dedicated police station, replacing the desk and shared telephone they used in the town hall.
At first Elkton police work was by and large routine. Traffic problems, simple assaults, drunkenness, loitering, minor thefts, and a little disorderly conduct made up the bulk of the work, but serious crimes and alarming incidents sometimes jolted the routine. Take November 22, 1963. As a thick Chesapeake Bay fog blanketed the town, the day-man, Officer Jerry Secor, signed on watch at 8:00 a.m. On this Friday, as police work goes, things were quiet as he handled two unremarkable calls. Then, abruptly at 1:30 p.m., everything in this Eastern Shore town and the nation changed for someone, in a careful hand, wrote in the register: “President Kennedy shot and killed in Dallas Texas.” For the remainder of that heartbreaking day, there is something about the unsettling quiet reflected in the activity report as a deep dark, sadness penetrates the town and few calls come in for the remainder of the evening and night.
May 1965 train wreck in west Elkton.
There were others. On December 8, 1963, a commercial airliner crashed just outside town killing 81-people, the blotter notes. On a quiet Sunday in May 1965, as two cruisers prowled the sleeping town, a fire-ball suddenly loomed high up into the sky at the edge of Hollingsworth Manor. A chemical train jumped the tracks and exploded.
When storms threatened the county seat, the force was busy. As Patrolman Alton Crawford took to the streets on December 11, 1960, an early snowstorm was sweeping toward Cecil County. For the next two days, the men in blue noted that heavy snow was falling as they rescued stranded motorists, transported doctors and nurses to the hospital, and eventually began reporting that traffic was tied up and all activity had stopped. At the height of the powerful blast, the night watch noted that the power was off all over town.
In August 1955, hurricanes Connie and Diane charged through the mid-Atlantic unleashing devastating floods. Throughout those wind-swept days the men noted the water was rising, trees were blown down, and significant flooding was occurring. When Officer Edgar Startt signed off as midnight neared on August 12, 1955, he put pen to paper and simply scribbled, “bad night, off duty.”
On the evening of December 1, 1974, burglar alarms across town rang out as a severe thunderstorm blew through, taking out power lines and disrupting electrical service. Then at 11:35 p.m. as Officer Terry Lewis cruised East Main a large tree blew over on the patrol car, trapping the officer and his partner. The fire department extricated the men with the Jaws of Life rescue tools.
Just as the nation struggled to clean up air pollution, the night watch, officers, Hawley and Sharpless, reported that a thick smog from a chemical plant drifted over the town during the predawn hours of December 23, 1965. The visibility plummeted to zero as the two officers prowled the darkness looking for trouble.
November 17, 1993, marked the last time someone wrote a note in the old police logs. The department converted to a computerized system and the journals were discontinued as the agency entered the digital recordkeeping age. The last entry occurred at 11:32 a.m. when officers responded to a domestic disturbance. It was the 8,577 call of the year. That year, the Maryland Uniform Crime Report reported the force of 23 officers investigated 555 serious crimes and made 799 arrests. In 1973, there were 461 serious crimes, 278 arrests, and 12-officers.
As one reads the blotters, books now preserved for researchers, you get a detailed cops-eye-view of what life was like on a particular day in Elkton as you fall swiftly back in time with each receding year. The growth and development of the Elkton Police and the community and changes in the nature of crime and social conditions, all unfold in these pages. Minor disturbances, drunkenness, petty larceny, and domestic trouble made up the bulk of the complaints in the early years, reflecting the nature of crime in a rural community in the 1950s. As that quiet decade gave way to the troubling ‘60s and ‘70s, the volumes start reflecting changes in society, the drug culture, social unrest, and the rapid increase in crime. While most of the time the men recorded routine complaints, there were a few spectacular crimes. During the 1990s, the notations sometimes overflowed the pages because of the number of calls.
North East, Dec., 24, 2012 – A light snow began to fall on Cecil County late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve and soon a thin blanket of the fluffy stuff was starting to cover the ground. In the growing winter darkness the scene made for a near postcard-perfect evening over at the old Episcopal Church in North East. There the warm glow from the windows of this historic house of worship glowed softly on this wintry scene as the historic church awaited the arrival of worshippers for the Christmas Eve service.
