Window on Cecil County's Past

The Elkton Historic District Committee met with the mayor and commissioners to discuss the review board’s recommendation ”that the town’s two-decades-old historical district should be eliminated,” the Cecil Whig reported Aug. 15.  The standards the committee should operate under “are contained in a 200-page document that is incredibly detailed and restrictive in scope, down to the…

Last week the Mayor and Commissioners of Elkton heard that the burden associated with the town’s historic district outweigh its benefits. Members of the appointed group overseeing the special zoning area, the Historic and Architectural Review (HARC) Committee, aired those concerns, saying the “restrictive requirements” are “like Monticello” and put HARC in charge of “maintaining to…

On this rain-swept Sunday afternoon, about 30 people gathered to formally dedicate a memorial to the 53 people who died in 1947 when Eastern Airlines Flight 605 plummeted into a Cecil County woods.   The crowd assembled on a Principio Road hillside near Jackson Park Road, including a passenger’s son, a sailor who rushed to the…

For years the Society has worked to build a large collection of yearbooks as these volumes, which call up memories from decades ago, make valuable research resources for individuals working on a family or local history project.  Cover-to-cover there are portraits of each student, plenty of anecdotes, brief essays, highlighting specific memories, advertising, photos of…

Concerns about enforcement of Elkton’s historic district ordinance were put on the table for the Mayor and Commissioners at the monthly workshop.  The matter came up as the last item of business on an unusually long three-hour session jammed with developers bringing up other extremely technical regulatory issues related to a Planned Unit Development (PUD)…

The expansion of Singerly Fire Company’s main fire station on Newark Avenue in Elkton is moving right along.  At the station that has has served the community for forty years, demands on the facility have grown since 1971 so the enlarged structure will have eight fire appartus bays facing Newark Avenue.  Singerly responds to fire and EMS calls out of…

Two Historical Society of Cecil County volunteers, Billie Todd and Evelyn Wekke, are pouring over aging business ledgers from the Grant Funeral Home of Cherry Hill.  Scanning the old, yellowing pages they meticulously extract information on deaths from the undertaker’s account books, cataloging information about the people whom W. J. Grant and son buried, including names,…

The scorching summer heat has made outdoor activities nearlyunbearable for a few days now, and people are coping with the tropical conditions in a variety of ways.  Late this Saturday afternoon, families’ crowded tables at Betterton Beach, enjoying outdoor picnics while hopefully catching a cooling breeze from the Chesapeake Bay.  Elsewhere people outside quickly scattered…

Dr. James R. Koterski, the author of Potters and Firebrick Makers of Cecil County Maryland & Nearby, 1750 – 1950, will be at the Palette and Page, 120 E. Main Street, Elkton, from 5 to 8 p.m. on Aug. 5, 2011, to sign books.  Click here for additional information on the Aug. 5th activities. Here is some additional information on…

Bird’s Eye View maps, popular from the 1860s until about 1920, depict places as if they were viewed from above at an angle.  Using direct observation and some imagination, artists working for a number of companies specializing in these panoramic products visited towns to sketch out the place. The sketches, which were sold to local…