Bishop Basil Losten will trace the history of the Ukrainian community in the Chesapeake City area. These hard working pioneers established homesteads, imported their traditions, and built St. Basil’s Ukrainian Catholic Church. During the 1920s, in addition to working their parcels, many men worked for the Corps of Engineers on the C&D Canal expansion. Their stories will help us to understand the importance of this major waterway and the contribution the Ukrainians made to the local culture.
Location: Chesapeake City Branch Library 2527 Augustine Herman Hwy Chesapeake City, MD 21915
Native Cecil Countian, Bernard Purdie, will share his musical journey story. Mr. Purdie was the first African American to enroll at Elkton Public High School. He then went on to an internationally renowned music career and is the world’s most recorded drummer, having worked with such music greats as Aretha Franklin, Miles Davis and B.B. King. Mr. Purdie will share his stories and his music during this one-of-a-kind evening.
Location: Elkton Central Branch 301 Newark Avenue Elkton, MD 21921
This program explores immigrant and local journeys from poverty to success. A diverse panel of individuals will attest to the journey of the human spirit as they describe personal experiences in seeking their dream in Cecil County. Their journey stories will weave a rich tale of struggle and success and their experiences will help us understand how risky, challenging, and worthwhile the journey has been.
Location: Elkton Central Library 301 Newark Avenue Elkton, MD 21921
Neither Peter Stavrakis, nor his wife Helen, parents of Olga, Katheryn, Peter and the late Steven Stavrakis, ever wanted to leave their homeland. They never dreamed of going abroad or coming to America. But the ravages of War, Nazi occupation of their homeland, and the bloody Stalinist persecution gave them no choice. For seven years, following their escape from the Soviets in 1943, they wandered around Europe looking for peace soon realizing that America was the only choice. This is the story of fear, escape, a life saving intervention by the Tsar’s sister, a small Russian Orthodox church in Athens, and ultimately, the Journey to Cecil County, a special place chosen for a specific reason, where the family finally found the peace they had sought for so long and where Peter Stavrakis, physician, would practice his medical magic for the rest of his life.
Location: Cecilton Branch Library, 215 East Main Street Cecilton, MD 21913
The Historic and Architectural Review Committee meeting scheduled for Wednesday, June 27, 2012 has been cancelled due to a lack of a quorum. The meeting will be rescheduled for early July, the Town of Elkton announced. We’ll update readers once a new date is announced.
A non-profit affordable housing group was on the agenda to discuss plans for the old 1870s Cecil County Jail. Click here for more information on that project.
1877 Atlas of Cecil County from Library of Congress showing area of Fort.
Since we’re hearing a lot about the War of 1812 this week during the Sailabration in Baltimore, I’ve been thinking about some of the really old, local narratives I’ve examined. The conflict that found the enemy sailing up the Elk River has fascinated generations born long after the enemy sailed away. Terrestrial and underwater archaeologists have arrived in the skirmish field to dig in the ground and jump into the river, searching for clues to that time so long ago. Treasurer hunters have scoured the soil looking for relics from that frightful April in 1813. And scribes penned recollections about visiting the Fort in an era when there were no longer any first hand memories and the stories were getting passed down through the ages. Whatever the case, those earthen redoubts garrisoned by local militia have intrigued curious types since the British sailed away from our waters.
Let’s look at one the accounts, that of a Boy Scout visiting the defensive position in 1912. In 1976 F. Rodney Frazer drew a sketch of the location of Fort Defiance as he recalled the visit from the top of the 20th century as a tenderfoot scout. The Owl Patrol, “a unit of the first troop of Boy Scouts in Elkton,” went on an expedition to the bend in the Elk River to scrutinize the Fort Defiance site “and the place where the chains were placed across Elk River to thwart the British.” It was May when these excited youngsters floated down the calm waters from Elkton in Scoutmaster Standley Evans’ boat, the Wabum. “Opposite Fowlers’ shore we waded in mud on the banks of the thoroughfare to where three decaying piles remained and I sawed off a section for evidence.”
According to Frazer, a deed from Eli Pierson to David Short in 1856 said in part: “A parcel of land on the northward side of the Elk River, a short distance . . . from an old fort known by the name of Fort Defiance, which is contained within the following courses and distances. The 30 foot bluff overlooking Elk River, as indicated on accompanying map and now owned by Robert L. Campbell was the site of Fort Defiance,” the local historian recalled in 1976.
Such were the recollections of youth from an old man who visited the Fort that saved Elkton from the fate of Frenchtown, Havre de Grace, and Georgetown. F. Rodney Frazer, a local historian, was born in 1897. He wrote an Elkton history, “Parts of Elkton In 1918 As I Remember It.”
The Fort Defiance Marker was erected in the 1960s. Based on his visit to the Elk River fort in 1912, Rodney Frazer questioned the placement of the modern marker.
1976 drawing by F. Rodney Frazer recalling a visit in his youth.
Google earth map showing the area sketched by Rodney Frazer
A non-profit affordable housing group, the Home Partnership, Inc., is interested in purchasing the old 1870s Cecil County Jail from the county for $400,000. The developer wants to transform the building into 50 affordable apartments for seniors in downtown Elkton, the Cecl Whig recently reported.A reprsentative of the group will appear before the town’s Historic District Review Board on June 27th at 6: p.m., to discuss concept plans for the 1.12 acre pracel. This zoning board is charged with protecting Elkton’s architectural and cultural resources. At that time, the developer will probably present his plans for developing the 50 apartment unit structure at 214 North Street.
When it was built in 1871, the sheriff’s home and jail was hailed as a state-of-the-art monument to law and order, a credit to the county. Considering that it replaced “a so-called jail” where notorious types were “chained to the floor,” it probably wasn’t hard to make that claim. For those who ran afoul of the law there were 20 cells at the new prison, surely enough to “accommodate any demand that Cecil county culprits,” could place on it, said the Whig. Sheriff Thomas, the first official to turn the key and swing open the wide heavy grated iron door, let in his “house guests.”
In the years to come, those cells would have their own stories to tell and the jailhouse walls would stand as silent witnesses to more than a few tragic scenes. Out in the old jail yard, more than one man would draw his final breath while at the end of the hangman’s noose. One early spring day in 1912, as the county felt the first tentative nudge of the approaching season’s warmth, a cold-blooded shooting in the outer yard snuffed out the young life of a Cecil County Sheriff. The incident took place when Sheriff J. Myron Miller attempted to take a pistol away from a trustee who had refused to obey an order.
Somehow the place managed to outlive its usefulness to the county in a mere 128 years, so a modern detention center started sprouting out of a corn field at the edge of town early in the 1980s. Then in January 1984, in a secret nighttime operation, Sheriff John F. DeWitt moved inmates from the jail to Landing Lane.
One era had ended but another one might be getting underway for a structure that has been on the market since 2009. The Elkton Historic and Architectural Review Board will get to weigh in on this matter at its public meeting in June.
As a snow falls on the old jail on a cold winter night in February 2010, a few inside lights burn brightly and an sign on the main entrance lets people know the building is for sale.
The last direct link to an important period in Cecil County’s past was lost when 93-year-old Henry Jackson died at his home outside Perryville on a cold November day in 1939. As a teenager he ran away from home to serve in the Civil War, enlisting in the Union Army for three years with Snow’s Battery. After surviving the horror of Antietam and other engagements, he was discharged in 1864.
During a long life, the soldier who was growing old watched the ranks of his comrades, men who knew the madness of that time, thin. By the early 1930s, there were just a few old soldiers around Cecil who recalled frightened, brave boys in blue hastily forming ranks to march into harms way. The first-hand memories of those years, a time that called for the best from comrades, were rapidly fading as were the sad thoughts about comrades that fell on bloody, distant battlefields. Seventy five years after the bloody war staggered to a close, Private Jackson was laid to rest, the last local survivor of that unforgettable time.
This information about Henry Jackson comes from the Mahoney Civil War Inventory of county soldiers and the newspaper files at the Historical Society. In the 1960s, the Mahoney file established a register of men from Cecil County who fought in the war.
Henry Jackson, the last surviving Civil War Soldier in Cecil County
Cecil County Arts Council, The Historical Society of Cecil County and the Cecil County Library are partnering to host a national Smithsonian Exhibit, Journey Stories, from July 13 -August 24, 2012. The Maryland Humanities Council has chosen the Arts Council as one of f…ive sites to host Journey Stories, which will travel throughout Maryland until January 2013, through a partnership between the MHC and the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street Program.
Journey Stories explores tales of how we, and our ancestors came to America. American history is filled with stories of people leaving behind everything – families and possessions – to reach a new life in another state, across the continent, or even across an ocean. The stories are diverse and focused on immigration, migration, innovation, and freedom. Journey Stories uses engaging images, audio, and artifacts, to tell the individual stories that illustrate the critical roles travel and movement have played in building our diverse American society.
The partners are working to bring an exciting slate of local programming to coincide with the exhibit. Opening night is sure to excite with The Melting Pot, a showcase of local restaurants sampling the foods of our different heritages.Both the Arts Council and the Historical Society will host their own exhibitions celebrating local journey stories. The Arts Council is looking for artists wishing to show their works offering a glimpse of their own journeys, whether they be a tale of immigration, a move across country, or even an exciting vacation. The Arts Council would like artists to also showcase an artifact representative of their travels alongside their work. The Historical Society’s exhibit will focus on local stories of movement, immigration and transportation images.
The Library is planning to host a different program at each of their branch locations. So far, a lecture and performance in honor of Cecil County’s own Ola Belle Reed is planned, as are programs featuring how transportation shaped the growth of Cecil County, the tourism draws of Circus Park and White Crystal Beach, and Cecil County’s role in the Underground Railroad. For children there is a Summer Reading Program, “Dream Big,” and an Ellis Island trunk featuring the kind of items immigrants would bring with them to the new country. Teenagers may want to participate in the development of an Oral History project recording local personal journey stories.Programs are still in development and dates are getting set. Whether you have your own “Journey Story” to tell, or want to hear and learn of others, be looking out for the upcoming calendar of events of “Journey Stories” programs.
Where: Elkton United Methodist Church, Main Street, Elkton
This year’s theme is the War of 1812. Each day a historical figure is portrayed by an actor/historian who will speak “in character” about their life during the War of 1812. Following the performance, audiences will have the opportunity to interact with the character in a question and answer session. Friday features Francis Scott Key, Saturday is Rosalie Stier Calvert, and Sunday presents Mary Pickersgill.
For information and profiles of these historical figures, visit the website.
Cecil County Arts Council, The Historical Society of Cecil County and the Cecil County Library are partnering to host a national Smithsonian Exhibit, Journey Stories, from July 13 -August 24, 2012. The Maryland Humanities Council has chosen the Arts Council as one of f…ive sites to host Journey Stories, which will travel throughout Maryland until January 2013, through a partnership between the MHC and the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street Program.