Recently we were asked if had any information on Elkton’s first and only television station, CATV Channel 5. Here’s our response.
“Mary Maloney was worried about her lipstick, and Harry Shivery forgot to take the coffeepot off the burner, but otherwise things moved along just fine when local television came to Cecil County,” The News Journal reported on Sept. 5, 1973. Things went so well that it wasn’t a minute after the first local “telecast had become history that one of the county’s true celebrities, Rodeo Earl Smith, called in his congratulations.” Maloney, then the president of the Board of County Commissioners, “came off like an old pro on camera,” with Shivery introducing her “as the First Lady of Cecil County,” according to The News Journal.
The county’s first local television show, produced and aired by Head of Elk Productions Inc., was on the air from downtown Elkton one hour a day in black and white. But soon color was added and local programming increased. Shivery was, according to Morning News reporter Robin Brown, a “television star; a newscaster; often a newsmaker; a scriptwriter; set designer and builder; ad salesman and producer; cameraman and crew; programmer; and handyman. He was everything a studio needed, but his versatility was a matter of necessity.”
The shows aired on channel 5 on Elkton’s first cable TV system, Madison Cablevision. Shivery got the idea after reading a local newspaper and thinking “that Elkton-area residents were missing something — a local television station,” Brown wrote in the Morning News in 1977.
Shivery’s visionary dream of bringing local television to the area came to an end in October 1977 when the broadcasts ceased.
Harry W. Shivery (center) hosts a show on his local television station at the studio in the mid-1970s. At one time broadcasts originated from a studio at the Howard Hotel. (Source: Cecil Whig Photo)
Women voters turn Charlestown election. (Morning News, Jan 14, 1921)
With the beginning of women’s suffrage in the autumn of 1920, the ladies of Charlestown promptly exercised their full responsibilities of citizenship by voting in the national election.
And when the annual Charlestown election came around for the town on January 13, 1921, they took to the polls in large numbers, casting more than one-half the ballots, the Morning News reported on Jan. 14, 1921.
“They opposed those who had been holding office for years and named a new set of men as follows: Horace Graham, Bayard Black, Isaac Heisler, William T. Henry, W. P. Morrison. Those defeated were Harry W. McKeown, Elmer Murphy, Marion Lewis, H. T. Heverlin, and W. E. Black.
NOTE — Thanks to Jeannette Armour for sharing this piece of research she did. The subject of women’s suffrage is one of our research interests and this was a fascinating piece.
It’s not exactly a big family holiday unless everyone gets together to sharp for bargains, but today is Presidents’ Day. To celebrate this occasion, we are looking back at a few times when the nation’s chief executives came our way. We’ve done this before, but since Cecil County has always been on the highway of American history, the great and the near-great, including many men who served as the nation’s leaders came traveling through. Thus in this post, we’’ continue our tradition of looking back at some visits of these men.
We’ve previously reported on our founding father, George Washington’s, frequent visits to Cecil on this holiday. By some accounts, we have noted that he was here 46 times. It’s not hard at all to pick up a local history book and see some sort of comment about the first president dining and lodging here or there in the county as he toured about.
We know, too that Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and John F. Kennedy all stopped here, along with Warren Harding and Harry Truman. In fact, Grant spent the night in Elkton in 1872.
Still, there are others, so let’s take a quick look on this Presidents’ Day at a few more:
The seventh president of the United States 1829-1837. Andrew Jackson rode Cedi’s first little railroad, the New Castle and Frenchtown, during his administration. Though less than 18 miles long and connecting the waters of the Chesapeake with those of the Delaware, it was one of the pioneer railroads in our country.
A poster advertising the Newcastle and Frenchtown Railroad. President Andrew Jackson traveled on this road. (Source: Cecil County Directory)
Our eighth president, Martin Van Buren, served the nation between 1837 and 1841. In the years before his election, the man from New York visited the McLane family estate in lower Cecil, known as Bohemia. He was there on July 21, 1829, Ernest Howard wrote in the Almanac of Cecil County.
One of Van Buren’s letters, dated July 15. 1529. published in part in Alice Miller’s “Cecil County. Maryland: A Study in Local History” said: “I shall leave here for McLane’s on Monday morning. Will stay there a day or two and return to Washington by Cape May.”
As modern times started allowing presidents to fly quickly over northeastern Maryland, sightings of the leaders on our roads and rails decreased. But once, during the administration of our 34th president (1953-1961), Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Cold War leader, was flying north to make a speech. As his helicopter departed Washington and started its trek northward, bad weather set in. The pilot landed at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where a motorcade stood by to transport him to the meeting. On that foggy day. up Route 40 came the general who faced Hitler during World War II.
So as you are out and about today, you might be traveling a route that was known to our nation’s chief executives. They often came our way.
This new local history blog, “History Surrounds You,” by Kyle Dixon takes up the subject of a largely unknown Cecil County Civil Rights Story from 1866. The Freedmen’s Bureau had assigned teachers at Elkton, Port Deposit, Rowlandsville, Cecilton & Chesapeake City, and one, Ella Jackson, challenged discrimination under the new Civil Rights Act of 1866
Kye writes, “During her tenure teaching in Port Deposit, Ellen became one of the first to openly challenge laws that were meant to protect the rights of African Americans. One of the first pieces of civil rights legislation included the Civil Rights Act of 1866. According to the United States House of Representatives History, Art, and Archives website, the legislation guaranteed citizenship to all citizens born in the United States and that they were guaranteed the right to the “security of person and property.””
“In the spring of 1866, Ellen took a train from Port Deposit to Baltimore on personal business. She was accompanied by Mary Anderson, a fellow Freedmen’s Bureau teacher at the Anderson Institute in Havre de Grace. When the two women were waiting to board a train home from Baltimore at the Train Depot for the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, they were asked to leave the waiting room by the station master, who claimed the area was for white passengers only. When they refused to leave, the station master physically removed Ellen and Mary.”
One night late in 1917 or early 1918, the electrical age arrived in Cecilton. As darkness descended, current flowed through wires causing lights to flicker on in businesses and homes, while lamps on poles illuminated streets. The Cecilton Electric Light and Power Company had launched this important undertaking in July 1917 when the investors told businessmen that they could shortly do away with oil lamps.
The four corners in Cecilton sometime in the 1940s. During 1948, electricity was extended to the rural areas of the First District. (Source: image from Library of Congress)
The managers working to displace old kerosene lamps were Wm. H. Brown, Dr. R. M. Black, Wm, H. Alderson, President; E. S. Short, and William Luthringer.1
A Fire Plunges Town into Darkness
About the time people started getting used to chasing off the darkness with modern electricity, a blaze erupted at the powerhouse. On that Friday evening in November 1920, the fire grew beyond what the employees and townspeople could control so someone telephoned the Middletown Fire Company.
The Delaware firefighters answered the alarm, rushing an engine over. Although it wasn’t possible to save the power company property, the firefighters stopped it from spreading to nearby buildings. That autumn night, the town plunged into darkness except for hastily located kerosene lamps. Consequently, the utility purchased a new electric light station and dynamo, bringing current back to town in a few months.2,3
To help with the expense, the Cecilton Electric Light Company planned a carnival to raise $2,500 for new machinery in 1920. But Rev. T. R. Van Dyke, pastor of the Cecilton M.E. Church “declared that carnivals were a great injury to the morals of any community and a most undesirable method of raising money.” The managers called it off as the minister went out among the people to collect the full amount. After finishing his rounds, Rev. Van Dyke presented the contributions to the town commissioners enabling them to make the final payment on the machinery.4
Nevertheless, the company held carnivals some years during the roaring ’20s, the big draw being an automobile they chanced off. In 1925, the managers made a profit of $1,153.72.5
Large Utilities Move In
As the industry matured and the Great Depression neared consolidation brought changes for rural utilities across the nation. The interconnected grids enabled small towns to receive service village generating plants couldn’t provide. In line with this, one buyer offered the Cecilton Electric Light and Power Company $11,000 in 1928.
Meanwhile, the Maryland Public Service Commission started investigating rumors about Eastern Shore offers. Luke Ellis, the agency’s fieldman, learned of multiple attempts by “undetermined interests” from Frank “Home Run” Baker, a former Talbot County Baseball Star. Overtures had been made to purchase the Trappe Electric Company,” Baker reported. These same buyers had offered the Millington Plant $70,000.6
Lower Rates Promised
Representatives of the undetermined syndicate promised “lower rates” through the transmission of current from the Conowingo Dam. But W. H. Taylor, president of the Philadelphia Electric Company said no contract or deal had been proposed to furnish power to any Eastern Shore utilities. The state advised that it wouldn’t allow prices in excess of the valuations to be paid as the public would “suffer through higher rates in the future.”6
Following the investigation, the Commission issued an order permitting a subsidiary of the Empire Public Service Corporation of Chicago, a utility operating in 14 states, to merge the small Maryland companies into its network in 1930. Ratepayers, the Commission said, would benefit from ownership by an adequately financed and managed corporation that would extend service and provide cost efficiencies to benefit the public. Operating as the Maryland Light & Power Company, this consolidated concern had acquired thirteen firms in this area, including Betterton, Millington, Trappe, Love Point, Somerset County, and Cecilton.7,8
Rural Electrification
A few more decades slipped by before farmers and residents in the outlying areas of the First District could chase off the darkness with a flip of the switch. While they waited for the current to flow, people met in Cecilton one afternoon in April 1939 to express interest in extending the lines.
During these years, summer developments popped up along the waterways, increasing demand. One of those seasonal resorts, White Crystal wrote in the community newsletter, the “Manor Messenger” in 1939 that the Beach stood at the threshold of another major improvement. “Prospects of getting electricity next year would mean running water, radios, electric stoves, good lighting, and a thousand of the conveniences that have been sacrificed by everyone for the fresh air, the sunshine and water,” the editor remarked. “We won’t have to say to our visitors, “We just camp out down here!” No with the advent of electricity . . . we will be able to say ‘This is our summer home . . . “9
But World War II got in the way. Finally, the first lines were energized in 1948 for those necks and remote farms in southern Cecil County.
Other Uitilies in Cecilton
By the way, Cecilton had two other utilities. One, the gas company piped gas to houses and streets of town by August 1904. Mr. Short, the owner, produced gas from a small brick gas house on the east end of town. Rudolph G. Anklam of Denton had built the acetylene plant and installed the mains in July 1904.10.
There was also the Cecilton and Earlville Telephone Company.
Endnotes
Public Service Commission of Maryland, Report. Report for the Year 1918, Case No. 1457, Korn & Pollock, Baltimore, 1919[↩]
Now that a blast of cold Canadian air is moving in, we started thinking about another time that an arctic blast held a tight grip on the area for an extended period.
It was the winter of 1852, the coldest in many years, and the temperatures dipped far below zero each night. This caused the mighty Susquehanna River to freeze over, disrupting transportation on the northeast corridor. In those days, a bridge hadn’t been built between Perryville and Havre de Grace, so a steam ferry, the Susquehanna, ferried passengers and freight across the waterway.
But with the river solidly frozen over from bank to bank, the movement of the railroad ferry was disrupted. This presented a major problem as traffic backed up.
The Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, Isaac R. Trimble, devised a solution. His expedient involved railroad tracks on the ice. This unique route opened on January 15, 1852, and It was in use every day through February 24, 1852, when the rails were removed because a thaw was coming on. Over 1,378 cars were moved over the ice, and regular traffic began again on March 3, 1852.1
Based on a drawing by F. F. Schell, a lithograph was produced by Thomas S. Sinclair of Philadelphia. It featured a view of the railroad tracks on ice across the Susquehanna at Havre de Grace. This was a popular item at the time and it was reproduced in several forms. The Adams Express Company arranged to get an imprint of it, too, and the company distributed the popular image to customers.2
Railroad tracks on ice across the Susquehanna River between Perryville and Havre de Grace. (source: Enoch Pratt Free Library)
Endnotes
Digitial Maryland, View of Railroad Tracks Across the Susquehanna, mcdcp179[↩]
Adams Express Co., Lithograph by Thomas Sinclair, 1852, Digital Library of Maryland[↩]
On the long journey between Philadelphia and Baltimore in the 19th-century, travelers looked forward to arriving in Rising Sun. There, the Maryland House provided some of the finest accommodations to be found in northeastern Maryland.
The Rising Sun Hotel a stop for tourists on busy Route 1. (Source: personal collection)
Recently an inquiry about a hotelier, S. C. Konigmacher, who briefly operated the Maryland House in the 1870s, had us looking into the history of these establishments. In January 1869, John Thompson opened a new hotel, the Maryland House. Replacing an earlier one destroyed by fire, the new house had 24 rooms and a concert hall or ballroom. It was one of the finest and largest establishments in Cecil County, the Oxford Press reported.
In 1872, another destructive fire, originating in the adjoining foundry, quickly spread to the hotel and its stables, destroying the buildings. The alarm was sounded around 11 p.m. but it was soon realized that the bucket brigade couldn’t check the spreading flames. Thus an urgent appeal for aid went out on the telegraph wires to Oxford requesting that the Union Fire Company load a steam engine on a special train and rush to Rising Sun. But at that hour the Oxford telegraph office was closed so the fire department didn’t get the message until the next morning, according to the Oxford Press.
After the 1872 blaze William Grason bought the Odd Fellows Building. His extensive remodeling included the addition of a third floor and attractive porches. Located on the site of the current town hall, it became the second Maryland House. S. C. Konigmacher was the operator of the Maryland House for a few years, in the early 1870s. In the 1870 census, he is listed as a hotelkeeper living in Rising Sun. He was an experienced hotelier for in 1869 he managed the opening of the Seaview House in Atlantic City NJ. Before that, he had managed the Ephrata Mountain Springs in Ephrata, PA.
Over the decades the hotel changed hands and new proprietors provided for weary travelers as the times changed. Early in the 20th-century roving tourists and their automobiles stopped for overnight stays as they made their way along the new highway, Route 1, which passed through the center of the town. . In 1916, G. R. Grason sold the hotel to W. B. Cooney for $5,500. Martin Keplinger and Carolina Keplinger of White Hall, MD took possession of the hotel on September 14, 1930. They planned to make extensive improvements, which included a new front to the building, an enlarged dining room, and other alterations, according to the Midland Journal.
Somewhere in this age, the Keplinger’s stopped using it as a hotel and focused on the restaurant. They also called it the Rising Sun Hotel. In 2000 the old hotel was torn down as the Town of Rising Sun erected a town hall.
Catching a show at the North East Theatre on Main Street was a popular thing to do for generations of people in central Cecil County during the middle third of the 20th century.
The North East Theatre circa 1950s or early ’60 (source: personal collection)
The first movie in town was owned by Albert J. Roney, Sr. and initially shows were projected at the GAR Hall, according to the “History of North East” published by the local history club of the North East High School in 1964-65. These were silent movies accompanied by a player piano. One of the early names of the movie house was “Cecil Theatre.”
At some point, Mr. Roney built the new facility on Main Street. According to the town history, the movies there were accompanied by an organ played by Ida Desosio. On May 18, 1929, the Cecil Whig announced that screenings in the movie house were the first in Cecil County to have sound and talking pictures.
When Mr. Roney received an appointment in 1937 as postmaster, he sold the business to John Smith. Mr. Roney died in February 1953, and his old theatre closed sometime around 1965. The last ads for shows we have located were published in the Cecil Democrat late in 1964, and in 1965, the theatre no longer had a telephone listing in the directory.
In March 1969, the Cecil Democrat reported that the North East Theatre was no longer there to greet visitors when they entered the town from Route 40 as it was being torn down. The paper added that the movie house had been closed for about five years and the building had been used for storage after the screen went dark.
The North East Theatre on Main Street was torn down in March 1969. (Cecil Democrat Photo, March 26, 1969 by David HIll)
Around 1824, before the first shovel of earth was moved to dig the C & D Canal, there was a flourishing village a few hundred yards from the Delaware State Line called Bethel or later Pivot Bridge. It clustered around an old church with an ancient graveyard. Before Chesapeake City, its neighbor two miles to the west began to grow, Pivot Bridge had a tavern and was a place for elections. The stagecoach conveying mail and passengers on the daily run down the Peninsula passed through Pivot Bridge and kept it quite a busy spot for that period in the 19th century.
A map of Pivot Bridge in 1877 (Source: Atlas of Cecil County, 1877)
At the center of this beautiful spot along the canal was the original Methodist Church for the area, built about 1790. A newer edifice replaced the aging house of worship in 1849. The new church was built by John Pearce, a contractor, who received $3,000 for the construction. Bordering the church and the canal was an old burial ground, the final resting place for many of the area’s oldest inhabitants.
The entrance to the Bethel Cemetery (Historical Sketch of Bethel Cemetery, 1908)
Pivot Bridge boasted of a dozen dwellings, one dry goods and grocery store, one wheelwright and blacksmith shop, and a public schoolhouse in 1869, the Cecil Democrat reported. Yet it didn’t have a rum shop “so they were free from all those drunken brawls and disturbances.” By 1902, thirty people lived in Pivot Bridge and James R. Kirk had a store there, according to the 1902 Polk Directory. For a few brief years (1892-1893 and 1905-1907), James R. Kirk Sr. served as the postmaster. During part of the 19th century, Stephen H. Foard operated a store and built a wharf for shipping grain to the city. A steamer stopped regularly to take in freight and passengers.
When the waterway across the Peninsula opened, it created a ditch that bisected the community, separating some of the residents from others and the church, school and store. Gradually over time, the thriving spot along the canal disappeared as the ditch kept getting wider and wider, taking away adjoining land. Although businesses and families came and went and generations of residents passed on, the arrangement with the intersected village worked satisfactorily for about 100 years.
Once the federal government purchased the route across Delmarva in 1919, it gradually started knocking off pieces of the settlement as it widened the waterway. Before the loss of land took away most of the remaining structures, residents of Pivot Bridge faced a more immediate problem. The Army Corps of Engineers decided to abandon the bridge that connected villagers in 1925, justifying their decision by the fact that Chesapeake City wasn’t too far away.
Residents of the hamlet objected, pointing out that for centuries the road the government wanted to scrap had been the main highway for the Peninsula. From its origin as an Indian trail, it had served the people first using carts and wagons and then automobiles. Moreover, for shipping products, while their neighbors 200 feet away could send their product to Elkton, farmers on the south side would have to use the railroad depot at Mount Pleasant, Del. The freight rate from Delaware was almost double that of Elkton. They also noted that the church had an average attendance of 75, of which more than 50 came from the other side of the canal — a trip that would be 12 miles without the bridge.
The pleas moved Uncle Sam some, though they didn’t get to keep the connecting bridge. As a substitute, the Army Corps of Engineers started running a ferry between the north and south sides. That lasted for a few more years before it, too, was discontinued.
Moving part of the Bethel Cemetery (CecilWhig, July 14, 1965)
By the 1960s the canal needed to expand again and most of the remaining structures, including the church, were demolished. Old Bethel’s graveyard with its 1.67 acres also disappeared under a federal order which condemned the land for the widening of the C & D. About 500 graves were supposed to be opened and the remains reburied in a section of the adjoining newer cemetery. But when the job was finished in 1965-66, workers had counted 1,137 graves that had been moved back from the water’s edge. Some of the graves dated back to the earliest years of this nation. One of the most famous was Joshua Clayton, president of Delaware from 1789-93. He died in 1798 at the age of 54 from yellow fever.
Today, Bethel Cemetery Road stops abruptly at the canal’s edge, and little remains to inform 21st-century travelers that a thriving hamlet once existed in this area. Near where the old burial ground stood at the canal’s edge, a tall, simple cross memorializes the church.
A SERIES— This is the second part of a series examining the role of the coroner, the lead officer in charge of investigating suspicious deaths for centuries in Maryland. For the first installment about the history of the coroner’s office click this link. This article examines how a murder investigation progressed in one case in 1886.
The murderously battered body of William Green, an old man living on a barge on Back Creek at the edge of Chesapeake City was discovered on March 18, 1886. Incoherent and urgently needing medical attention, people carried the insensible fellow to George Whiteoak’s home in town, where he lingered for a few days.
How Billy the Joker was Killed, Cecil Democrat, Oct. 2, 1887
As news of the grisly assault spread, lawmen hurried to the desolate cabin at the edge of the marsh. First, they came in ones and twos, Town Bailiff Foard and County Constable Carpenter arriving promptly. And when word of the cruel assault traveled to Elkton, Cecil County’s entire criminal justice system, the sheriff, state’s attorney, magistrate, coroner, deputy sheriff, and more constables bolted into action.
The local officers scoured the abandoned canal boat cabin at the edge of Chesapeake City for clues. On the floor, they discovered a stonemason’s hammer covered with blood, and in a trunk the man’s revolver, its chambers fully loaded. Otherwise, the assailants left no trace of their identity, and there were no witnesses.
Working off slender leads, the officers chased down suspects, questioning a local stonemason, interrogating canal boat crews, and rounding up a few wayward types. However, it was fruitless, mystery surrounding the crime as nothing viable developed. Only the incoherent victim knew what happened.
William Green, also know as Billy the Joker, was murdered in the cabin of his abandoned canalboat grounded on the northside of Back Creek at the edge of Chesapeake City (Source: Atlas of Cecil County, 1877)
Green lingered on his death bed until 8 a.m. Sunday, March 21, when officials sent for Coroner Perry Litzenberg. He dashed to Chesapeake City to hold an inquest upon the remains, State’s Attorney William Bratton coming down from Elkton with him.1
Murder Investigation Begins
In the hands of the Cecil County Coroner, the investigation into the violent and untimely death began that afternoon at the Whiteoak house. Chesapeake City Magistrate Christfield rounded up twelve good and lawful men to serve on the coroner’s jury, and Litzenberg swore them in. Upon their oath, the panel swore they would inquire on the part of the State of Maryland when, how, and what manner Green came to his death.
The inquest began when the jurors viewed the body in the dining room. They carefully eyeballed it for marks of violence, taking note of the wounds, before retiring to the parlor to continue the inquest. Some 30 witnesses testified and evidence was exhibited as doctors Bratton, Krasner, and Wallace conducted the postmortem in the next room. After finishing the autopsy, the physicians testified that blood on the brain and a crushed skull, a piece about the size of a quarter pressing into the brain, caused death. His jawbone was also broken, and they were satisfied that the hammer was the instrument that took him down.
Four hours after the inquest started, the jury presented the verdict. Although they were unable to connect anyone with the murder, they swore upon their oath that “William Green came to his death from compression of the brain caused by blows upon the head by a blunt instrument in the hands of persons to the jury unknown.”
This murder ruling triggered a full homicide investigation, all the elements of the county’s criminal justice system sprinting into action to pursue leads while grilling suspected assailants. However, the murder investigation grew cold, the local officers exhausting every avenue as they ran down suspects.
Pinkerton Detectives
Therefore, the Cecil County Commissioners hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. One sleuth worked the case around town, spending the entire month of April and part of May combing through tips, leads, and clues while working up suspects. Nevertheless, after a “patient investigation” of weeks, he was unable to make any viable discoveries, so an undercover agent was added to the case. In the dry town of Chesapeake City, this gumshoe started a “pear cider saloon,” covertly listening to the “class of the community who spent their time in drinking and playing cards” for clues.
This approach to criminal investigations was a waste, the Cecil Whig reasoned. “Instead of asking the governor to offer a suitable reward open to competition among professional detectives for the discovery of the criminal,” they hired two private eyes from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to work up the case with a “vengeance” at the expense of the county. One took it in hand and masqueraded in the role of a detective for quite a time in Chesapeake City, while the other worked as a “blind,” the paper remarked.
Weeks after the “miserable failure in detective work”, one of the participants in the crime confessed his guilt and an arrest of his associates followed. This big break came when Alfred T. Mannon took his son, George, to State’s Attorney Daniel Bratton. There he admitted to being one of the parties involved in murdering the “old Englishman.” He along with Paul Reed came upon a stonemason’s hammer in the road and they carried it to the desolate cabin in quest of whiskey and money, he reported.
Meanwhile, Reed had slipped out of the county and the Pinkerton man collared him near Annapolis. The detective brought him to the jail and put him in the custody of Sheriff Robert Mackey and Deputy Harvey Mackey. Both made confessions implicating each other.
Not one clue, trace, or step in the case was due to the gentleman who “mulcted” the county for the nice little sum of almost $600, doing practically nothing except to aid in defying the law in Chesapeake City and in doing police duty to bring Paul Reed from Annapolis to Elkton, the Cecil Whig noted following Mannon’s confession.2
Murder Trial
Reed waived his right to trial by jury, opting instead for a bench trial, while Mannon put his case in the hands of jurors. Owing to the great interest in the matter, Judges Stump and Thompson ordered Sheriff Mackey to summons “forty talesmen,” as the pool for jury duty.
At 11 p.m. on October 1, 1886, George Mannon, 19, walked out of the courtroom, a free man having been declared not guilty by the jury. As the foreman announced the acquittal, friends of Mannon applauded and shouted vigorously. At the time of the disruption, Judge Robinson made a remark that caused controversy. Some thought he said this verdict was an outrage on all decent people.3,4,5,6
Reed was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, Judge Stump remarking:
A more deliberately planned, premeditated, cold-blooded murder was never perpetrated in this or in another community, than that of which you stand convicted. After numerous consultations with your confederates . . . you twice walked seven miles with the deliberate purpose to murder and rob. . . . . After the second visit George Mannon was your companion. There was no hesitation then. He was possessed of the nerve that was wanting in you and Goffney. I have no doubt that he struck the blow, which deprived William Green of Life. You were present, aiding, abetting, counseling, and robbing. But you are as guilty as he. The conviction of Mannon would have added nothing and his acquittal can subtract nothing from the full measure of your guilt.7
A Wilmington newspaper, the Daily Republican, had this to say about the shocking murder verdict:
Read, it was proved, was an accessory to murder, while Mannon was the real conspirator. But Reed selected to be tried by the court and Judge Robinson adjudged him guilty. Then came Mannon’s trial and availing himself of the same privileges selected to be tried by a jury and that jury, though he was the real murderer, brought in a verdict of not guilty. Reed was an African American and Mannon was white. While there was no doubt of the guilt of Reed, there was, if such a thing could be, less doubt of the guilt of Mannon. But the latter knowing his guilt and knowing that Judge Robinson would not have spared him on account of his color, knew he would be in safe hands of a white jury, and that was his choice. This is a sad commentary on the justice of trials by jury, and if this is the way they work the sooner they are abolished the better. Governor Lloyd, however, will display good sound reason and judgment by never setting a day for Reed’s execution.8
Reed Pardoned
Under the circumstances associated with the verdict, State Senator Clinton McCullough States Attorney Daniel Bratton, and several Elkton lawyers went to Annapolis to present Governor Lloyd a petition “signed by all the officials and most of the prominent citizens of Cecil County” urging a commutation of the Reed sentence. Governor Lloyd commuted the sentence to life in prison.9,10
On De. 24, 1907 Governor Warfield pardoned Reed. He had been in the penitentiary since 1886 for the murder of William Green, also known as “Billy the Joker.”
The Cecil County Trial Docket for Paul Reed, convicted of the murder of William Green
Endnotes
“Death of William Green,” Cecil Democrat, March 27, 1886[↩]
“Something Else to Show,” Cecil Whig, Nov. 5, 1887[↩]
