Window on Cecil County's Past

Before the first shovel of earth was moved to dig the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal about 1824, there was a tiny village about three miles east of Chesapeake City.  Called Bethel or later Pivot Bridge.  It was clustered around an old Methodist Church built in 1790 and an ancient burial ground.  When the waterway opened across the Peninsula, the ditch bisected the village separating  residents from each other and the church, school, and the store.  The 18^th century church was replaced by a newer edifice in 1849.  Built by John Pearce at a cost of $3,000, it was dedicated in December of that year.  Thirty people lived in Pivot Bridge and James R. Kirk had a store there by 1902 the Polk Directory notes.  For a few brief years (1892-1893 & 1905-1907), villagers had a post office operated by James R. Kirk, Sr.

The community had about a dozen dwellings, one dry goods and grocery store, one wheelwright, and blacksmith shop, and a public schoolhouse.  Business was flourishing there, the Cecil Whig reported as there were no rum shops.  The school was under the charger of the teacher, Mr. W. C. Lake.

Arrangements in the intersected village worked satisfactorily for about 100 years, but eventually early in the 20^th century the federal government acquired  the canal and started widening the route.  Considering that Chesapeake City wasn’t too far away, the Army Corps of Engineers decided to abandon the Pivot Bridge crossing.  Residents of the hamlet strongly 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 Indian trail, it had served the people first using carts and wagons and then automobiles.  Moreover, farmers on the south side would have to use the railroad depot at Mount Pleasant, DE  for shipping products while their neighbors 200 feet away could send their product to Elkton.  The freight rate from Delaware was almost double that of Elkton.  The church had an average attendance of 75, more than 50 coming from the other side of the canal, a trip of 12 miles they noted.

The pleas failed to move Uncle Sam, the government noting that two places with spans, Chesapeake City and Summit, weren’t far.  By March 1925 the pivot bridge had been ripped out, although as a concession the government put in a “rowboat ferry.”  Still those wanting to visit the quaint Bethel Cemetery on the banks of the C & D Canal were “forced to drive along a rough slag road.”  When the protests continued the Corps of Engineers decided the sensible thing to do was to convert this slag road into a concrete highway.  In Sept. 1928 P. D. Philips & Brother of Salisbury, MD. moved heavy equipment to the vicitninity and started grading for a concrete road from the Pivot Bridge to Chesapeake City at a cost of nearly $119,000.

By the 1960s the canal needed to expand again and most of the remaining structures, including the church, were demolished.   Today Bethel Cemetery Road stops abruptly at the canal’s edge, and little remains to inform the 21^st century travelers that a thriving hamlet once existed in this area.  Where the old burial ground remains at the edge of the canal, a tall simple cross memorializes  the church and the relocated graves.

The Harford Dagger, a citizen journalism website providing “news with an edge,” recently published an interesting piece about a fatal explosion in Bel Air as that town prepared for the trial of H. Rap Brown in March 1970.  That article caused us to remember the tension caused by those times in Cecil County, so we put together this quick piece.

———–

Maryland was on edge in March 1970 as violence spilled into streets and bomb blasts rocked the tranquility of the night in rural county seats.  The fear grew after H. Rap Brown made an incendiary speech in Cambridge urging African-Americans to burn down the troubled town one summer night in 1967.  Gunfire erupted in the streets, two blocks of the Choptank River town burned to the ground, and Brown and a police officer suffered minor gunshot wounds.   Brown was charged with inciting a riot.

As the time for the case neared in 1970, the proceedings having been moved to Harford County, a wave of blasts swept across Maryland.  On March 10^th, about 1 a.m., a car containing two militants, associates of Brown, blew to bits near the state police barrack in Bel Air.  Twenty-four hours later, minutes after midnight on March 11, a blast ripped open the old  Dorchester County Courthouse.

Shocked by what was occurring, Governor Marvin Mandel alerted the National Guard and ordered tightened security in public buildings around the state.   Cecil County Sheriff Thomas Mogle and his small force of deputies responded swiftly to the order. The men went on 12-hour shifts, and special officers were called to supplement the thin blue line.  The Sheriff said he had been warned through special intelligence of impending protests aimed at the local draft board, IRS office, and courts.  “They are going to bomb and destroy the judicial system.  Why else would the governor issue the order?” he told a reporter.

Amid this, Maryland State Police reported that 7,000 blasting caps were stolen from Ordinance Products, a North East company that made hand grenade triggering mechanisms.  The commander of the barrack, Lt. Charles L. Andrews, said there was no connection “at this time” between the theft and the two blasts.  The Lt. was familiar with the Harford County situation because the 44 troopers from his barrack and the Conowingo Post were helping with security in Bel Air.   “We wonder what might happen Monday when the trial resumes,” he said, “and view it with some dread.  We feel we’ll be able to cope with any situation that might develop, however,” he told the Wilmington Morning News.

Already nervous public officials heightened security in Cecil County after an anonymous female telephone caller dialed the jail to report that a bomb was going to go off at the courthouse in Elkton.  Before the call two deputies stationed in the building heard a “hammering sound,” and when they went to investigate, they saw a Chevy speed away. With tension already high, the sheriff called for assistance of other police agencies.  Residents near the county building were routed out of their homes in the pre-dawn hours while demolition experts from Edgewood Arsenal searched the building.   Nothing was found.  The phone call caused more of a stir, and the Cecil Democrat reported that ten deputies and one K-9 dog were on duty in and around the courthouse the next business day.

The pre-dawn threat failed to materialize, but in the wake of the fatal car bombing 33 miles west of Elkton and the explosion at the Dorchester County Courthouse in Cambridge, the building was closely guarded until the trial was over.

A new exhibit showcasing the history of baseball in Cecil County opens at the Historical Society on Friday, April 30th at 5:00 p.m.  The exhibit includes memorabilia, photos, a baseball players reunion and a book signing by James Crothers author of “History of Rising Sun Little League.”

On Booth Street in Elkton there’s a small nondescript masonry block building adjacent to the George Washington Carver Leadership Center.  A few days ago that structure, which presently houses the school system’s maintenance office, was the subject of an investigation by historian Susan Pearl who is working for the Maryland Historical Trust. 

Susan is out tracking down Rosenwald Schools across Maryland.   In the era before Brown versus Board of Education, African-Americans schools in the south were generally inferior.  Thus the president of Sears, Julius Rosenwald, wanted to make a difference in education for young people in needy segregated communities so he established a foundation that encouraged the building of up-to-date schools in the south between 1917 and 1932.  

Working with the Fund’s archives at Fisk University Susan determined that the Foundation built one in Cecil County.  It was in Elkton and according to the University records the school constructed in 1926 was a five-teacher building that cost $7,600 and the Rosenwald Fund contributed $1,300 toward the project. 

While Susan was in Elkton, she searched historical society files, examined board of education records, checked maps, and studied school board financial records for the period.  The data shows that there was a much earlier frame structure on this parcel by about 1892.  In the 1920s and the 1930s, there were additions to the building, which served as the African-American School in Elkton until the current administration building opened as a modern school for students.   I’ve talked with a number of people who recall attending classes in the older building, which eventually became the maintenance shop once the county integrated the school system. 

There’s still some work to do on this investigation and we’ll look forward to seeing Susan’s final report cataloging these schools throughout Maryland.  In her investigation here she found records clearly documenting the $1,300 contribution to Cecil County’s African-American School children.

More on Schools for African Americans in Cecil County

An Old Schoolhouse in Warwick

Undergraduate Thesis Examines Desegregation in Cecil County

Cedar Hill — A Surviving One Room Schoolhouse

Mt. Zoar Colored School

A Quiet Old Schoolhouse — Mt. Zoar

 John Damond of the Enoch Pratt Free Library will present a program called “A History of Shopping through the Sears Catalog at the Cecil County Public Library, Elkton branch on March 17, 2010, at 7 p.m.  Take a trip down memory lane and see the fashions and prices through the years using pictures from old department store catalogs during this free program.  Starting with the 1930s and ending in the present day, you will see how clothes, furniture, appliances, toys, and more changed decade by decade.  You will also see how the value of the dollar changed.   

Copied from the Upper Shoreman, June, 1972 (this informative regional magazine, focusing on local history, art, & culture was published in the 1950s, ’60s, and early ’70s)

————————-

Just before the burning of Frenchtown during the War of 1812, the citizens of Elkton and the surrounding country were frightened by a false alarm. Somehow the story got in circulation that the British had taken Frenchtown and the people as far north as the State of Pennsylvania were very much excited and alarm. Companies of militia from Pennsylvania rushed to Elkton. James Buchanan, then a young man, was an officer in one of those companies which was quartered in a house that stood in the eastern part of the new cemetery.

The directors of the Elkton Bank thought it best, in view of the raid, to remove the specie from the bank to a place of safety and so they ostensibly loaded a wagon with it and put the wagon, which was drawn by six or eight horses, in charge of a military escort composed of a number of soldiers, mounted and on foot, and made believe they were transporting the specie to Lancaster. This process made quite an excitement in the country through which it passed, but was only a ruse on the part of the officers of the bank, designed to mislead the British and divert them from the real place of concealment. Sometime before the wagon and its escort went from Elkton to Lancaster, Levi Tyson, a director of the bank and the owner of a grist mill on the Big Elk quietly when down to Elkton one evening with his team and two men and bought the specie home with him that night and placed the chest which contained it under his bed, where it remained until the danger was over. The men were told that the chest contained bullets to be used if the British made a raid on Mr. Tyson’s mill.

Mr. Tyson often related the story of this removal with much satisfaction and thought it a good joke. The ostensible removal of specie to Lancaster was probably made with the view of adding to the reputation of the bank by making the impression upon the minds of the community of its sound financial condition and ability to redeem its notes, many of which were in circulation. And probably the cream of the joke was to be found in the fact that the creditors of the bank were quite as much fooled as the British would have been had they attempted to pillage the bank.

[clearspring_widget title=”Animoto.com” wid=”46928cc51133af17″ pid=”4b6e430b54c005de” width=”432″ height=”240″ domain=”widgets.clearspring.com”]

As a result of the restoration work on the Gilpin’s Falls Covered Bridge,  some interesting tweets and posts from master craftsmen doing the work, and research done by the Maryland Covered Bridges website, we’ve been working with the materials related to our bridges to the past, those old covered spans.  Fortunately, through the perserverance of one citizen, Earl Simmers, that old bridge to the past on Route 272 was saved for at times it appeared to be doomed.  Whatever the case, it’s now restored so we’ve put together a little slide show containing some of the photos of these structures, most of which have long vanished.

Note Scroll Through the Recent Posts to see some more items on the History of Gilpin’s Falls Covered Bridge.

As work draws to a close on an important Cecil County restoration project, Gilpin Falls Covered Bridge, the Maryland Covered Bridges web site has posted an update on the undertaking and a photo gallery.  As of Jan 18, 2010, the final stage for the completion of the rehabilitation of the structure was underway. In addition, the Bridgewright putting the shine back on this precious resource tweeted on Jan. 27, 2010, that the master craftsmen from NH were “handing over the reins for the project and peeling off for home.”  Click here to see some of the photos and news updates.

As links to our past disappear all too fast in the 21st century in Cecil, the old structure that survived the test of the time, the Civil War, the automobile age, floods, and lack of care is prepared for a run through the 21st century.  Since the county invests heavily in marketing Cecil to tourists, relocating BRAC workers and higher end corporations, it is our natural beauty, historical character and cultural resources that these targets groups find most appealing.  The old bridge at Gilpin Falls, a surviving relic from before the Civil War, physically enhances the county’s investment in marketing personnel and promotional advertising materials, as it stands as silent proof of the area’s history.  We’re pleased to see that the structure the Cecil Whig once identified as our own little bridge to no where nearing completion.

[clearspring_widget title=”Animoto.com” wid=”46928cc51133af17″ pid=”4b5bcd4789e9bd97″ width=”432″ height=”240″ domain=”widgets.clearspring.com”]

Wright’s AME Church, Elkton – Jan 18, 2010 – This morning Wright’s African Methodist Episcopal Church held its 20th annual prayer service celebrating the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  The sanctuary of the historic Elkton church filled to capacity before the praying, preaching and singing started.

Right on time, Elkton Commissioner Charles Givens called the assembly to order as the choir remembered the civil rights leader with inspiring songs.  Once the first round of music faded inside the house of worship, the Rev. Brian Thomas stepped forward on the pulpit to deliver some stirring preaching that reflected on Dr. King’s work and the challenges ahead.

The powerful sermon, one we’ll long remember, drew on Marvin Gaye’s song “What’s Going on” to present a relevant message of equality, justice, and nonviolence for our time.  Peppered with frequent references to current social issues, the lively oration engaged the audience, filling the old place of worship with energy.

The historical words of the Rev. Thomas and how they connected with the popular piece from 1971 to present a message for today was on our mind throughout the day.  In conversations around the county, we often chatted with people about the Reverend’s moving words on this special day of remembrance.