CHARLESTOWN – NOV. 25, 2022 – Friday, as a rainy, gray morning gave way to the warming sunshine of a late autumn day, they laid Robert (Bob) Earl Phillips to rest at St. John’s United Methodist Church Cemetery, where family, friends, town leaders, and the fire company gathered to bid farewell. Born on March 6,…
Train Wreck Gives Halloween a Frightening Start
ELKTON, Oct. 31, 1965 — On a morning when most people eagerly looked forward to the playfulness and pranks of Halloween, the day got off to a frightening jolt. In the pre-dawn darkness, as a Pennsylvania Railroad Train rumbled through Elkton, 41 of the 118 freight cars derailed at the edge of Hollingsworth Manor. Some…
Vietnam Draft Creates a Buzz in Elkton
As the Vietnam War escalated in 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson more than doubled the number of inductions as the Army needed more young men. To enable local selective service boards to meet this new quota, President Johnson signed an order on Aug. 26, 1965, that modified selective service requirements at midnight.1 One of the…
Elkton weddings talk explores Marriage Business Here
Elkton was the place for quickie weddings for much of the twentieth century as eloping couples rushed here for hasty ceremonies. The town’s marrying parsons worked overtime to accommodate the trade, performing over 16,000 marriages one year in the 1930s. While officiating day and night, some turned their homes into 24-hour chapels. This highly profitable…
135 E. Main Street Serves as Hub for Arts & Culture
As part of our occasional series on historic structures in Cecil County, we visited one on Main Street in Elkton, the former Cecil County Public Library Building, which has watched over Main Street for centuries. The town’s Main Street has a strong cluster of 18th and 19th-century structures and 135 E. Main Street is one…
George Reynolds Reflects on Passage of 100 Years
As George Reynolds prepares to turn 100 years old in September 2022, he discussed growing up in Cecil County on a farm, his life, and the passage of the twentieth century in this interview/ Before World War II he worked on the Broadland Farm for Hoagland Gates. The interview took place on March 31, 2022….
Circus Park — The Elk River Indian Reservation
As automobile travel became common in the first half of the twentieth century, Sandy A. Tamargo, the owner of Sandy’s Shows, a traveling circus, opened a permanent roadside tourist attraction on Route 7 between Elkton and North East. Known as the Philadelphia Road, it was designated Route 40 before the dual highway opened before World…
North East Under Mayor Jack Johnson
John F. (Jack) Johnson was one of North East’s longest-serving mayors, leading the small municipality through most of the 1970s. He managed a frugal, cost-efficient operation — An old 1871 lock up served as his town hall, police station and library. When the Cecil Whig once remarked that the town didn’t have a budget (Oct….
Remembering Skip Mahan’s Contributions to Emergency Services
After sadly hearing that Daniel H. “Skip” Mahan, Jr. 76, passed away on August 17, 2022, we reflected on some of the public safety leader’s accomplishments. Throughout his adult life, as a deputy sheriff, state trooper, police chief, firefighter, and emergency manager, Skip served the community on the frontline. Along the way, he marked several…
The Telephone Operators in Elkton
We were recently asked when the phone company in Elkton stopped using telephone operators. Here’s our response. Once, most Cecil County towns had switchboard operators. But as the modern age of telephony arrived, consolidation occurred, and gradually, switchboards in smaller towns went dark as the larger central office in Elkton handled connections. As the 1950s…