For the young athletes on the George Washington Carver Junior League Baseball Team 1960 was a great year. Here they pause, trophy in hand, to have the team photo taken. From the left: Andrew Duren (deceased); Larry Jones, Charles Boardley (deceased), Leon Banks (deceased) Maurice Byrd (deceased), Alexander Stewart, Alfred Harris and Taswell Byrd (deceased); back row starting from left is Leon Braywood, Harry Minor (deceased), Clarence Jones (deceased), Marvin Williams and Don Jones. The adults, standing in the 3rd row areVernon C. Rossman, Gen Secretary of the YMCA, Clarence Jones, Manager of Carver’s Team, and Frank Williams, YMCA board chair. (note: Thanks to Commissioner Charles Given for Elkton with identifying the youngmen.)
A new title, “Football! Navy! War!” How Militiary “Lend-Lease”players saved the College Game and Helped Win World War II is out. 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.
The author, Wilbur D. Jones, is a retired Navy captian with four decades of service. He spent several days in Cecil County working with the Bainbridge Museum and others while doing his fieldwork.
According to the Star News, “Growing up in Wilmington, Jones idolized Charlie “Choo-Choo” Justice, the legendary tailback who led the UNC Tar Heels to three bowl games and (briefly, at least, in 1948) the No. 1 spot in the Associated Press college football polls. Well, Justice, was just out of Asheville High School when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and headed for Bainbridge Naval Training Station, near Port Deposit, Md., where he became part of the Fighting Commodores, one of the Navy’s top teams, and one of the top-rated football squads in the nation, period.
Click here to read a full book review from the Wilmington, NC Star News Online.
1902-03 Maryland State Gazetteer by R. L. Polk & Co.
A new title, Edge Effects: The Border-Name Place, by Dr. Robert D. Temple focuses on border towns. The author provides a fascinating and entertaining look at more than eighty north American border towns in Edge Effects. With an adventurer’s heart and a historian’s keen eye, Temple explores life on the edge and how these places have made their place in history. One of the chapters examines Cecil County’s own little border village, Sylmar. In 1902, Sylmar, which is located on the state line northeast of Rising Sun, a population of 50 people, as well as an undertaker (W. N. Brown), a blacksmith (Amos Whiteman), auctioneer (S. H. Dowland), a general store (Kimble S. Howard, and a number of other interests.
Other border villages examined in our region include, Pen Mar, Marydel, Delmar and Mardela Springs. The author talks about finding these 80-s0me places, the adventure in exploring them, by highway, four-wheel-drive, boots, and kayak, and in encountering memorable locals: historians, farmers, waitresses, cops, forest rangers, railroaders, and ne’er-do-wells. But even
more, he says, these places lead us to investigate concepts of borders, boundaries, frontiers, margins, and marginality, as well as survey lines, battle lines, picket lines, and color lines. Edge Effects reveals how edges shape local history-and our lives. With an outstanding chapter on Sylmar, it’s a title I’ve ordered for my personal library.
Chief Inspector James Tiano of the Philadelphia Police Department and his staff are trying to locate the relatives of Officer George Barnett, who was shot and killed in the line of duty on Nov. 28, 1910. A plaque-dedication honoring his sacrifice is set for July 22 at 42nd and Pine streets, West Philadelphia, where he died. Anyone with information about any family members is asked to call Inspector Tiano at 215-685- 3655.
Policeman Barnett was shot and killed while attempting to question a suspicious man he suspected of being involved in a burglary. The officer, who was in plainclothes, approached the man and told him to take his hands out of his pockets. As the man complied he suddenly produced a revolver and shot the officer. Despite being mortally wounded, the policeman returned fire and shot and killed the suspect.
The Philadelphia Police Department has developed the following information: George’s death certificate lists his parents as George and Annie. When George’s son Harry registered for the draft during World War I, he reported that his father was born in Rowlandsville. The 1870 census lists a family group in “Rowland ville” that is probably his family — a year before he was born: George Barnett, 32, laborer, born Penna; Ann Barnett, 27, keeping house, born Penna; Mary Barnett, 5, born Maryland; and William Barnett, 1, born Maryland
There were several Barnett families in the vicinity of Rowlandsville and we lose trace of the above-listed family after 1870.
Officer George Barnett’s death certificate lists his name as “George Mc. Barnett.” Plaque dedication information:
Police Officer George Barnett #2118
EOW: 11-28-1910
Location: 42nd and Pine Streets, 18th District
Click here for more information
SPONSOR: Detective Gary Capuano, SWDD
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 11:00am
Chautauqua 2009 – “Rights & Reformers” – July 10, 2009
When:4 pm – 6 pm
Where: Perryville Outlet Center, Heather Lane, Perryville, MD
Description: Performers bring important historical personalities and their accomplishments to life, in live, free, summer presentations. This year’s theme is “Rights and Reformers”. On Friday the 10th, listen to Woody Guthrie celebrate the life of working people in his songs, poetry and prose. On Saturday the 11th, hear how Jackie Robinson dealt with being the first black player in major league baseball. And on Sunday the 12th, see how Eleanor Roosevelt changed both our nation and the world through her commitment to social activism.
While the search continues for an AirFrance jetliner carrying more than 200 people that disappeared over the Atlantic this week, the possible role of lightning in that tragedy recalls a similar air disaster in the skies over Cecil County.
On a December night in 1963, the sky lit up when a fireball exploded over Elkton. Calls poured in to Rosemary Culley, dispatcher for emergency services in Cecil County in the days before 9-1-1. No one knew exactly what had occurred, only that something was terribly wrong. Soon enough, however, it became clear that a jet plane had disintegrated high above Cecil County.
Sixty-two years ago on a gorgeous Memorial Day, a DC-4 with 53 people on board suddenly plunged from the sky into thick woods outside Port Deposit, MD. With about an hour of daylight remaining, Eastern Airlines Flight 605 departed La Guardia on time for its scheduled trip to Miami.
As the southbound craft neared the Susquehanna River, Bainbridge, and Port Deposit coming into view, everything seemed perfectly normal on this serene afternoon. A DC-3 with a group of Civil Aeronautics Board Investigators (CAB) trailed about three miles behind Flight 605. They, too, were enjoying the afternoon as the sunlight faded. They were returning from probing the crash of another DC-4 at La Guardia the day before.
With the tranquil scene and the daylight fading, the CAB staffers were taking in the view. But suddenly, they were jolted out of this peaceful tranquility by the frightening action of the craft just ahead of them. It was streaking earthward in a vertical dive. Losing altitude quickly, the plane kept dropping, and it appeared that no attempt was being made to pull it out of the steep, rapid, out-of-control descent.
Then there was a puff of white smoke, a flash of orange, and a billowing cloud of smoke. After circling the scene, the federal men landed at Aberdeen Proving Ground and commanded ground transportation to the scene to start another fatal investigation. Everyone on board had died in the terrible explosion.
Fire companies from Perryville, Port Deposit (Water Witch) and Havre De Grace, along with police officers and men from the Bainbridge Naval Training Center, rushed to the scene, but they could do nothing. The crash occurred in a dense, thicket of woods and vines near the north end of Principio roads, not too far from Bainbridge.
Chief Walker of the Havre De Grace Police Department was the first officer to reach the scene according to the Havre de Grace Record. Hurriedly covering the few miles from town to the scene, he told the Record that he was guided to the area by a plane that kept circling above the area. It was later determined this was the craft carrying the CAB officials from the accident at La Guardia which also took a huge toll of lives. “I left officers Bullock and Himes to drive to the scene of the accident while I made my way through the woods on foot. I’ll never forget the horror of that first glimpse I received when I entered the clearing . . . The tangled wreckage of the airliner was a blazing inferno and I realized that all of the passengers must surely be dead.”
According to Aviation Week, the accident was tagged as a mystery. No evidence was found on the structural cause of the crash, and in those days, recording devices were not yet in use. This is one of the few “for reasons unknown” crashes in the history of U.S. air accidents and the investigation still has experts puzzled all these decades later.
The Civil Aeronautics Board issued its report and findings following the plane crash. Here’s a PDF of the report. This report is from the Department of Transportation Special Collections Library. Registration is required but it is a free service and it gives you access to many of the accident investigation reports.
For many of the 19th and 20th century directories that provided travelers, business people, and others with needed information about distant places were published. The ones called gazetteers (geographical dictionaries) described towns, villages, counties, rivers and other natural features. Depending on the amount of content in one of these interesting works, you may find information on the population, the types of businesses and institutions in the community, the different religious denominations, and public works in the area.
State directories usually contained much more information for these publications were similar to the city directories that started getting published once telephones became common place. The names of all the merchants, farmers, manufacturers, mechanics and officials in a community, as well as a full description of the town, village or hamlet are usually found. To give you some idea of the matter contained in these directories, I scanned a part of a page from the R. L. Polk & Co’s Peninsula Director of the Eastern Shore of Maryland for 1908 -09
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Pilot
This entry is for the village of Pilot, located in northwestern Cecil County, near Conowingo and Bald Friar. Twenty-five miles from Elkton and nine miles from Rising Sun, the directory reported that Pilot had a population of 200 people. It also had a dressmaker, grocer, blacksmith, and a couple of carpenters and poultrymen. The directory also lists the farmers in the area.
This Pilot postcard was mailed from the Conowingo Post Office in 1912 (personal collection).
On the 40th anniversary of the passage of RFK’s Funeral train down the northeast corridor, through Cecil County, we posted a piece on some recollections of that sad day as many Cecil Countains stood along the tracks to honor the fallen leader. A few days ago, a documentary producer reported that they are looking for people that were there that summer day. That caused us to go over to You Tube where there’s a video showing some of the scenes on that day in 1968 and we thought readers of this blog might enjoy seeing this excellent piece of video work.
The newest area blogger, the Cecil County Observer, has published an interesting historical piece on the an earlier flu Epedemic in Cecil County. We’re clipping the introduction here. Click on the link at the bottom of this post to go to the full piece.
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Flu fears are beginning to subside in Cecil County and surrounding areas as the so-called H1N1 virus or “swine flu” shows itself to be less deadly than when it surfaced in Mexico.
Yet flu remains something to take seriously, officials warn, especially when the historical record indicates that the world is overdue for a dangerous pandemic. The Spanish flu that struck worldwide in 1918-19 is often cited as the deadliest outbreak of the disease in modern times. An estimated 20 million to 50 million people died of the flu or complications such as pneumonia.
Even rural Cecil County was affected, with Spanish flu hitting hardest in the fall of 1918 into early 1919. All told, the Spanish flu or the pneumonia that was a secondary infection killed 157 Cecil County residents.
According to an article by Greg Birney in the Fall 2003 Cecil Historical Journal, Spanish flu became so rampant that the Cecil County Board of Health ordered all public gatherings suspended. Schools around the county, including West Nottingham Academy, were closed. Nearby Delaware College (now the University of Delaware) was turned into a hospital, according to Birney, with 135 cases of flu among the 425 students. (Interestingly, several cases of the most recent flu were reported at UD.)
