Reflections on Yesterday — Cecil County History
From the Cecil Whig YouTube Channel
A 60 year old firetruck has returned home at last to Singerly Fire Company.
Officials at the Elkton fire company welcomed the 1951 Oren fire truck during a ceremony last weekend. Charles Richard Fox, a former Oren firetruck salesman who purchased the truck from Singerly for $500 20 years ago, fully restored it. He has now returned it back to Singerly, which plans to exhibit it in its museum.
The Octoraro Branch Railroad once connected Rising Sun, Colora, Rowlandsville, Liberty Grove, and other northwestern Cecil County communities with the outside world. But in the automobile-age, passenger service declined rapidly and after World War II freight service slowly disappeared.
Although it’s been a long time since the lonesome locomotive whistle echoed through these valleys and hills, plenty of relics from the heyday of the railroad still exist for anyone casually exploring the abandoned right-of-way. One sunny day this week, I snapped this shot of the old iron bridge where it crosses Basin Run and the tracks enter the deep cut outside of Rowlandsville. Along the way, plenty of other artifacts from the golden era of the train caught our attention, including railroad stations, depots signs, several bridges and other remnants.
The Octoraro Branch, with its natural beauty, rolling hills, and gentle streams, would make an ideal rails to trails route for public enjoyment.
Press Release – Historic Elk Landing Foundation
“They were a wretched, cowardly set of marauders, going only to those points which were unprotected.” That’s how Judge Thomas Jefferson Sample described the British sailors and Marines who attempted to invade and burn Elkton 199 years ago this coming weekend.
On Saturday, April 28th you’ll have a chance to hear more from Judge Sample as he reminisces about his days at Elk Landing and his firsthand account of events there from April, 1813 when the British met their match at Forts Hollingsworth and Defiance.
Begin your trip back in time this Saturday with a welcoming from Elk Landing proprietor Zebulon Hollingsworth himself, as the gates open at 10 a.m.
At 10:45, it’s show time, featuring fifth grade students from Holly Hall Elementary School performing their skit, “The Invasion of Frenchtown” highlighting the British capturing and burning of the Frenchtown hamlet just a mile or so south of Elk Landing in 1813. The skit also recognizes the heroics of 20 year old slave woman, Hetty Boulden, for misdirecting the British and leading them into the guns of Fort Hollingsworth at Elk Landing.
The Hollingsworth House and our Stone Structure (both present for the original battle) will be open for tours. Refreshments will also be offered for sale. Admission to the event is free as is ample parking just outside the gates to the grounds.
Some forty years ago, sightings of unidentified flying objects zooming through the night air or hovering over rural roads kept Cecil County’s police agencies busy fielding many calls about strange, glowing aircraft.
The series of reports started in the late 1960s and continued into the early 1970s as people reported large silent objects with bright lights or flying saucer-like craft darting through the darkness.
One cold January night in 1971, an unsuspecting motorist driving down Old Field Point Road sighted an object without engines, windows, or markings gliding silently above the road ahead of his car. Suddenly the UFO stopped to hover over the road as another object met the first one. As soon the driver got to a telephone, he alerted the Elkton Police Department to the mysterious object floating silently on the southwest side of town. Patrolman Marshall Purner answered the complaint but never located the UFO.
Two years later, a rash of sightings had people abuzz as eyes scanned the night sky for mysterious sights. One of those observers, Rachel Gray of Bay View, called the state police after seeing big, bright yellow and red lights floating erratically through the darkness near Bay View. Troopers unable to explain the strange lights phoned the Andrews Air Force Base, which checked radar but found nothing to explain this sighting.
Eventually, the rash of calls about unidentified flying objects subsided. The police explained most of the UFO calls, finding helicopters, weather balloons, and other logical things as the source of the observations that baffled residents. But still, a few remained unexplained.
When a terrible fire struck the DuBois Planning and Sash Mill, the largest industry in Havre de Grace, one June day in 1883, men rushed the town’s small Holloway Chemical Engine to the factory. Once on the scene, they worked frantically trying to check the destructive advance. But the “ruthless flames” turned the factory and nearby buildings into a mass of blazing ruins as the conflagration spread to large piles of nearby lumber.
The small stream from the soda and acid engine, which wasn’t designed to suppress a large industrial fire, was totally ineffective for this growing inferno so officials telegraphed nearby fire departments, asking that special trains be commandeered to rush steam engines to the stricken community. Hastily in Port Deposit, Wilmington, and Baltimore the P.W. & B Railroad assembled a locomotive and flat car and cleared the road for quick, emergency runs to the river town.
The Water Witch Fire Company of Port Deposit apparatus was on the grounds first, going right to work to prevent the advance. “The Port Deposit boys displayed themselves to good advantage and worked with a zeal and skill that would have done credit to a more experienced force,” the Havre de Grace Republican remarked about the three-year old firefighting organization.
Just over an hour later a second pumper, the engine from Baltimore, shrieked into town, the engineer laying on the whistle warning unsuspecting people to clear the tracks. No. 11, from Baltimore, showed from whence the well-earned reputation of the Monumental City Fire Department was derived, the paper remarked. It was supervised by Chief Engineer George W. Ellender. The Reliance Engine from Wilmington, Delaware, under direction of Chief Engineer Murphy, went into action about forty-five minutes later.
With three powerful steam pumpers playing large streams of water on the blaze, the “fire ladies” from neighboring places finally subdued the inferno, with the help of the citizens.
Press Release – Eclipse Base Ball Club
The Eclipse Base Ball Club of Elkton invites you to its home game on April 22nd at the Terrapin Station Winery. The club has great things planned this year and there is at least one home game a month. If you can’t make it Sunday when the Eclipse take on the Philadelphia Athletic at 1pm, then try to make another game against such clubs as the New York Mutuals, the Essex BBC out of Boston, the Chesapeake Nine from Baltimore and many more including the Patriotic Series on Memorial Day weekend and 4th of July weekend against our in-county rivals the Chesapeake City Cecils. (Note: The game on the 22nd takes the place of the scheduled April 29th game).
While you are there, be sure to partake in food and beverages from our concession stand as well as sample (and purchase) award winning wine from Terrapin Station Winery. Fans can also bring their own food and non-alcoholic beverages in. (Please no animals though). We are handicapped accesible and this upcoming weekend is completely free to come in so bring your lawn chairs or blankets and your picnic lunch and enjoy a great family day out where you’ll be transported back to 1864. See you then!
Just in time for June, a busy month for weddings in Elkton, the colorful story of that era is being presented in a captivating talk by Mike Dixon. Hear about how the quick marriage business got started in Cecil County in 1913 and, for several decades, made the place hum as the marrying parsons worked overtime, cranking out some 12,000 marriages annually in the mid-1930s.
SPONSOR: The Historical Society of Cecil County
WHAT: Talk on Elkton’s Marriage History
WHERE: 135 E. Main St. Elkton
WHEN: May 25, 2012 at 7:00 p.m.
Free with light refreshments
When the Honeymoon Express Rolled into Elkton, Brining Cupid’s Wedding Business
The Marrying Clerk Replaces the Marrying Minister
One of the speakers at this year at this year’s Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Conference is a local historian, Milt Diggins. The conference, which takes place in Cambridge on June 1st and 2nd, will feature a talk by the author and retired educator. Milt will present original research into the story of Thomas McCreary, a kidnapper and slave-catcher operating out of Elkton, Maryland, who was active a few years before and after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This history offers a view of slave hunting and dealing in the Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware areas and its political ramifications. It tells of McCreary’s most famous kidnapping, that of the Parker sisters in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and the mention of McCreary in the treason trial of Castner Hanway, a Pennsylvanian who refused to help a posse search for a runaway slave.
For those who enjoy the natural beauty of publicly owned lands and the cultural resources found on some of the properties in Cecil County, there’s some great new out of the Historic Elk Landing Foundation (HELF) this morning. HELF announced that the 62 acres of land purchased by the Town of Elkton through grants from the Maryland Public Open Space program is now open to the public for strolling and picnicking from sun up to sundown year round. The nearly fifteen year old nonprofit overseeing the restoration of the historic structures, caring for the grounds, and providing interpretive programming says it is “proud and pleased” to make this announcement as it provides stewardship for “a lot of land “ that “is some of the most picturesque ground in the Elkton area.”
The nonprofit has been charged by the Town of Elkton with preserving and presenting this valuable public resource to the community since 1999. It is accomplishing its mission through living history interpretations, regular programs that draw on the site history, and the restoration of the cultural resources, according to the organization’s website. The property’s owner, the municipality, transferred responsible for the restoration, management and operation of the site as a living history museum to the nonprofit. At the time that was done, the town stated that it was creating a public-private partnership that freed the municipality of the responsibility for bearing the cost of the maintenance, upkeep and operation of the site, as a nonprofit would be able run fundraising events and seek corporate sponsors.
Click here to read the full announcement.
While historians learn about the past in many ways, one of the most exciting can be reading letters that were penned long ago. You never know what these private communications from another age are going to reveal or where they’re going to come from. Sometimes these old sheets of paper have been stashed away in a long sealed attic trunk or shoe box, placed there by relatives who passed away generations ago. But a few times they’ve been trapped or secretly stashed behind walls for some reason, and revealed by construction or some other disturbance. Whatever the case these private exchanges are often illuminating as they put a different sort of light on times gone by.
As the War of 1812 Bicentennial draws near I’ve been examining aging, unpublished manuscripts from that era and came across one from Captain Andrew Hall of the 30th Maryland regiment. This document had been in the custody of a relative Thomas E. Hall, who generously shared a copy.
Nearly two hundred years ago on November 13, 1813, the Captain penned this letter to his brother-in law David Wherry and sister in Brandy Camp, Ohio. He began by talking about the family in Cecil County and his aging mother. But he informed the recipients that these were dangerous time here as the waters of the Chesapeake were polluted with the English and they had been here since last spring blockading all the seaport towns. Merchandise of all sorts, especially sugar and salt, was very high as a consequence. After describing the prices of basic commodities, the officer noted that flour wasn’t selling briskly because of the blockading of the rivers by the enemy.
Despite the blockade, the trade from Baltimore to Elkton and then by wagon to Christiana was brisk. The demand for wagons exceeded anything Hall had seen and they were charging as high as a half a dollar per barrel for flour and 15 pence per hundred for hauling from Elkton to Christiana as there was no water passage.
Hall also told his brother-in-law about the British invasion on the Upper Chesapeake. On the 26th of April (1813), the militia had orders to march, but not being armed things were in a confused state. On the 28th the British landed at Frenchtown and set it on fire, which “consumed it to ashes.” Elkton would have been destroyed if it they’d not been “cowed” by the shot of one cannon ball from a small battery thrown up at the landing. It had a “good effect on them” which prompted them to retreat by the time the militia was pretty well collected with arms. The invaders fell down the river till the fourth of May when they attempted a landing at havre de Grace under a heavy cannonading on both sides. As they had the greatest force they succeeded in landing and setting fire to the town and several small vessels. From there the British went to Cecil Furnance, which was also burnt to ashes.
Hall was born in Cecil County in 1768 and died in 1846. He married Rosannah Mahaffey on February 6, 1789. He noted in his communications written in the middle of the war, that he had eleven children living and three dead (seven sons and four daughters).
The history that unfolds in aging letters provides glimpses into a very personal past as they reveal what others thought and observed. There’s great value in these aging letters for they show what someone though and generally was passing along in a private exchange between two people. That’s far different from say a newspaper, where an editor wrote for a large general audience and numerous factors affected the coverage provided by those sources.
Be sure to check out your attic for documents like this one that should be saved. And I’ll share some other private, unpublished communications from this war in the weeks ahead. I’ll also do a little more digging on Capt. Hall and see what else we can develop on this militiaman’s history. Crowd sourcing can be helpful in these situations too so feel free to share added information.
Finally thanks to Thomas for sharing this letter so we know what was on the mind of one milita officer from northeastern Cecil County during those trying months, a dangerous times when the war came to our rivers and shores on the Chesapeake.
