The organization of the Cecil County Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
As the Cecil County NAACP prepares to celebrate 50 years of civil rights advocacy a Window on Cecil County’s Past has checked the old newspapers for that year for information. The Cecil Democrat carried a front page story, but nothing was found in the Cecil Whig.
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In February 1962, the Cecil Democrat announced the organization of the Cecil County branch of the NAACP. A front page photo showed the officers meeting to organize at Wright’s AME Church in Elkton. McKinley Scott of North East was the Vice-President; Mildred Johnson of Elkton was the treasurer and Rev. H. R. Curtis, Elkton, President; and Laurie Loper Charlestown was the secretary.
The Cecil County branch of the NAACP gathered for its annual banquet Saturday evening in Perryville. The national civil rights organization is observing its 100th anniversary this year and the local chapter will mark 50 years of advocacy in 2012. The evening’s keynote speaker was Major General (retired) Joseph McNeil. On Feb. 1, 1960, General McNeil along with, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond and Franklin McCain, protested a segregated lunch counter at a Woolworth department store in Greensboro, N.C., by conducting a sit-in. Their non-violent protest quickly attracted the attention of the national media , which called them the Greensboro Four. Their protest at the lunch counter, which sparked sit-ins across the country, became one of the defining moments for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Since the local chapter is getting ready to mark its 50th anniversary, I put together a video slide show of images related to African-American history in Cecil County in the 20th century. Many of these images were used in a Power Point slide show during the Saturday evening program.
Four hundred years ago Englishman John Smith and a small crew of adventurers set out in an open boat to explore the Chesapeake Bay. Between 1607 and 1609 Smith mapped and documented nearly 3,000 miles of the Bay and its rivers. Along the way they visited many thriving Native American communities and gathered information about this “fruitful and delightsome land.” In December 2006 the U.S. Congress designated the routes of Smith’s explorations of the Chesapeake as a national historic trail—the first national water trail.
As part of the planning process to develop a trail, which will allow you to learn about this aspect of the Chesapeake’s past, the National Park service is seeking public input through meetings held across the Chesapeake Bay region. These are opportunities to meet directly with representatives of the national historic trail.
The meeting focuses on topics related to interpretation, education, and trail use to help guide the interpretive plan for the trail. Based on input from the 2008 meetings, the National Park Service is currently developing several alternative proposals for ways to manage, interpret, and access the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail.
The meeting in Havre De Grace takes place on Oct. 22 at the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum
100 Lafayette Street, Havre de Grace, MD from 6 to 8 p.m.
The Friends of the Cecil County Public Library will host an exciting historical program, “Shipwrecks on the Chesapeake Bay,” on Wednesday, November 4, at 7 p.m. at the Elkton Central Library. The Chesapeake Bay is a key feature of Maryland’s geography, but less well known as a graveyard for ships, passengers, and their crews. More than 1800 shipwrecks have been documented on the Bay from Colonial Era to present. Presenter Don Bonsteel, from the Maryland Department of the Enoch Pratt, will discuss five of the most interesting documented cases for shipwrecks on the Bay.
The program is free and open to the public. For more information or to register please call the Elkton Central Library’s information desk at 410-996-5600 ext.481, or visit our website at www.ebranch.cecil.info.
The Fair Hill Natural Resource Center opened one of Cecil County’s surviving one room schools to the public Saturday. Located in the center of the state park, the structure was restored by the Elk Creeks Preservation Society about a decade ago.
Built about 1830, the fieldstone schoolhouse predates the establishment of the county school system in 1850. It was a subscription school, a place built by local residents to educate their children but in 1852 Center School was incorporated into the county system. Classes were held here until it closed about 1920.
The restored Center School on a Saturday in October and (below) the school in 1962.
A ticket to the 1905 execution. After the 1879 hanging, the sentences were carried out behind the jailhouse walls and only a small number of witnesses were admitted
Death sentences were carried out in the counties until 1923 when Maryland centralized executions in the state penitentiary. Consequently from the county’s founding in 1674 until the law changed, at least seven convicted murderers made the final walk to the gallows here in Cecil. The county’s executioner, the sheriff, got ready to perform the grizzly deed on the appointed day, as crowds gathered to witness the doomed convict’s final moments.
As many as 5,000 people watched some of the executions, but by 1893 when Alfred Stout was executed the law required the sheriff to execute death in as private a manner as possible. So for the first time, the execution took place inside the jail yard. The Baltimore Sun hoped that the Elkton hanging wouldn’t be a repetition of the turbulent scene which attended the recent hanging in Chesterton, in direct disregard of the law. It was not for just his legal and spiritual advisers, law enforcement personnel, and a few other people stood inside the old jailhouse yard for the deathwatch.
The last public execution took place at the Alms House in Cherry Hill and Medford Waters was the doomed man. Here is a description of the day a mile-long line of carriages made the trip from Elkton to Cherry Hill, and a crowd of between 1,000 to 1,500 assembled on the poor house property.
On the morning of December 5, 1879, Elkton was stirring at an early hour. It was to be a memorable day in town history for the resident were to be treated to a spectacle the likes of which they would never be permitted to witness again. A man was to forfeit his life on the gallows for the crime of murder and his execution was to be public. The central figure in the proceedings was an African-American youth named Medford Waters who was not yet 18 years old. He worked on a farm near Cecilton.
On November 25, 1878 he and another man were husking corn when a quarrel erupted between them. Waters got a pistol and fired two bullets into the other man, killing him instantly. He fled to Queen Anne’s County and after hiding for two nights was arrested by lawmen there and turned over to Sheriff William T. Boulden. Having been indicted for murder, his trial started on Jan 6, 1879. A verdict of murder in the first degree was returned.
Friday, Dec., 5th the date set for the execution having arrived, the Groome guards assembled at the armory at 8 a.m. and marched to the jail under command of Capt. Wm. G. Purnell who formed them in marching order to lead the procession to the Alms House, which had been selected as the place of execution. The gallows, with a platform eight feet from the ground, had been framed in Elkton the previous day.
At 10 o’clock the sheriff accompanied by the prisoner and two deputies, Eli W. Janney and John S. Cooling, came out of the jail and entered the carriage which was to convey them to the Alms House. A squad of soldiers led the procession, then came the officers and prisoners, followed by the remaining soldiers and a long line of carriages. The gallows was reached at 5 minutes after eleven, and the sheriff accompanied by the prisoner and Mr. Janney, who had some experience at an earlier execution and Mr. Cooling ascended the platform. Mr. John Perkins and the Rev. C. H. Williams also ascended the platform, where Mr. Williams at the request of the prisoner read the 15th chapter of the book of Revelations and Mr. Perkins offered a fervent prayer, and the entire audience joined in singing a hymn.
Waters then made a speech to the crowd, admonishing them to restrain their tempers and expressed the hope that none of them would come to an end like his. Mr. Perkins then sang another hymn to conclude the exercise. The prisoner asked the sheriff to lengthen the rope, which he did, and at 11:35 severed the cord and the drop fell. The number of spectators was estimated at from 1,000 to 1,500.
The table below is a registry of identified capital punishment cases, prior to centralization.
Table 1. Capital Punishment Registry, Cecil County Prior to 1920
Click here to go to the article on the 1905 execution, the last one carried out in Cecil County.
Earleville resident Jenifer Grindle Dolde will be giving a talk about her book and oral history project, “Cecil’s Soldiers: Stories from the World War II Generation,” at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 19, at the Chesapeake City Library. The book was published by the Historical Society of Cecil County and provides an insightful look at how the war shook up sleepy little Cecil County. Dolde, a Washington College graduate and alumnus of the University of Delaware’s Museum Studies graduate program, was formerly a museum curator and now works as a historian and museum consultant.
Earlier we posted a piece on Robert F. Kennedy’s Funeral Train passing through Cecil County and there has been a lot of interest in that subject. Here’s a photograph of the image published in the Cecil Whig that June day in 1968. Here is the link to our earlier post.
Wilbur D. Jones, Jr., the author of “Football! Navy! War! How Military ‘Lend-Lease’ Players Saved the College Game and Helped Win World War II“ will speak about his new title and sign books at the Historical Society of Cecil County on Sunday, Oct. 4 at 1:00 p.m. While highlighting the Navy’s role in preserving the game and football’s impact on national morale and the war effort during the 1940s, it has a significant local angle. One of the star players, “Choo-Choo” Charlie Justice trained at the Bainbridge Naval Training Center.
During World War II, the U. S. military and colleges joined forces, fielding competitive teams to prepare men for combat. The book highlights the Department of the Navy’s role in preserving the game and football’s impact on national morale and the war effort through their “Lend-Lease” to colleges of officer candidates, including All-America and professional players. It describes wartime college and military football.
From a local perspective, the book features details about the powerful Bainbridge Naval Training Center teams of 1943-45, whom Jones rates as the No. 1 military wartime team. Bainbridge opened in 1942 as a boot camp and advanced training station, and closed in early 1970’s. The center was located at the Jacob Tome Institute at Port Deposit. This is a major previously unpublished work on the history of Cecil County and region during WWII.
“Exciting military games were a diversion from war’s horrors and sacrifices, and they helped boost bond sales and home front morale for civilians and the military,” Jones writes. His book covers such games as Great Lakes Navy’s final-minute 19-14 upset over perennial power Notre Dame in 1943 (though the Irish won the national championship anyway). Featured in previously unpublished detail is the sport’s wartime star, teenaged halfback Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice, a kid among the All-Americas and NFL players at Bainbridge Navy and a postwar superstar at North Carolina.
Admiral James L. Holloway III (Ret).., 20th Chief of Naval Operaitons and Chairman Emeritus of the Naval Historical Foundation said Football! Navy! War! “is an untold story about the relationship of America’s great game with the armed forces – especially the United States Navy – during this struggle against the Axis powers. As one who fought alongside many of the outstanding athletes that Wilbur Jones portrayed, I can testify how the smash-mouth tactics of the gridiron were applied in the waters and archipelagoes of the Western Pacific. The book is a must-have for any patriot and fan of the sport.”
Don Jenkins of Sports Illustrated said: “I’ve been waiting for somebody to do this book and preserve these treasured college football memories, and now Wilbur Jones has done it – and done splendidly.”
The author, Wilbur D. Jones, Jr., is a retired Navy captain with four decades of service. He spent several days in Cecil County working on this project. This free program takes places at the Society’s headquarters at 135 E. Main Street in downtown Elkton. Light refreshments will be served.
Click here to read a full review of this title in the Star News Online (Wilmington, NC)
A program, “The Almighty Oyster: Food, Fighting and Sensibility,” will be hosted by the Perryville Branch of the Cecil County Public Library on Wed,, October the 14th, at 7:00 p.m.. John Wennersten, former Professor of History and author, presents the history of the oyster industry in Maryland from the colonial period through the twentieth century, including the “Oyster Wars” and the effects of over-harvesting.
the Historical Society of Cecil County on Sunday, Oct. 4 at 1:00 p.m. While highlighting the Navy’s role in preserving the game and football’s impact on national morale and the war effort during the 1940s, it has a significant local angle. One of the star players, “Choo-Choo” Charlie Justice trained at the Bainbridge Naval Training Center.
covers such games as Great Lakes Navy’s final-minute 19-14 upset over perennial power Notre Dame in 1943 (though the Irish won the national championship anyway). Featured in previously unpublished detail is the sport’s wartime star, teenaged halfback Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice, a kid among the All-Americas and NFL players at Bainbridge Navy and a postwar superstar at North Carolina.
