Window on Cecil County's Past

A nonprofit group in Oxford Pa is attempting to restore rail service to the old Octoraro Line through Cecil County.  Click on this link here to go to a full piece on this subject over on our public affairs blog.

In the heyday of downtown Elkton, Chief William White or one of his police officers directed Friday evening traffic at the heart of the business district, Main and North streets. Lines of automobiles, hundreds of shoppers, and more than a few strollers streaming into town from throughout Cecil County moved through that intersection. This activity, most of it converging on one corner in a few hours, required the attention of the town’s thin blue line to keep things flowing smoothly.

Central Elkton was busy on most days in the mid-twentieth century, but Friday evening it was especially so as the narrow main street – a route built for horses, coaches, and wagons – overflowed with people and vehicles. The draw: downtown’s large assortment of stores, shops, banks, car dealerships, and service stations, a movie house, restaurants, and modern supermarkets.

Just a few years before Chief White or one of his men stationed himself at that bustling corner, Main Street had served as the main thoroughfare for vehicles traveling between Philadelphia and Baltimore. Those days, luxurious vehicles, cars of lesser pretension, trucks, taxis, and buses rumbled over the tourist road, passing right through downtown.

What were the changes that occurred to the old business district over the decades? Well, 1937 would have passed almost unnoticed except for a declaration from the State Roads Commissions that it would rob Main Street of through highway traffic. More accurately, the Commission said it intended to construct a bypass, a “modern dual-lane superhighway” south of town. Increasing traffic had overtaxed the old Post Road where once Revolutionary War Troops marched and stagecoaches rumbled past. Abruptly 1937 was unlike any other recent year.

Route 40 Sidetracks Traffic from Town

Sidetracking traffic from Main Street would take profitable commerce away from Elkton establishments. Over morning coffee, at the Chamber of Commerce, and everywhere businesspeople gathered, the talk was, could downtown cope with the loss. Proprietors of the five hotels were particularly concerned. Out of sight, out of mind could have been their worry. As for the Chamber, “you could hear the members … scream,” wrote Rodney Frazer in Parts of Elkton As I Remember it in 1918.

While the community agonized over the pending loss of a great deal of traffic, an aspect of business full of character felt the crunch in 1938. A “look before you leap” law, as the Associated Press called it, put the breaks on instant marriages. For decades, couples from practically all points came to Elkton’s “busy marriage mart” by the thousands, and a full-scale industry, including marrying ministers, tourist houses, hotels, taxis, and restaurants, developed around the trade.

After the state threw the “48-hour monkey wrench in the machinery,” applying brakes on altar-bound couples, the town’s marrying parsons saw almost two-thirds of their business slip away, the Evening Sun reported. In December 1938, 277 couples visited Elkton for a quick marriage; the business had churned out 1,843 in November and 2,344 in October.

Other businesses also felt this decline: “Why the couples brought in about $20,000 a month here, and that’s a good deal for a town of this size,” the owner of the New Central Hotel told the AP.

While national newspapers riveted in on the threatened extinction of the marriage mart and some marrying parsons moved to greener pastures, bulldozers and paving equipment worked away south of town, out of the gaze of city reporters. Finally, one June morning in 1941, dignitaries gathered at the state line to dedicate the “Philadelphia Road” (Route 40).

Motorists began cruising between Baltimore and the state line on “one of the finest roadways in the country” without going into Elkton. Suddenly, the constant flow of machines on the old Post Road ended abruptly. Where once pedestrians stepped lively to cross Main Street, folks ambled now crossing without much difficulty. Accustomed to commerce from a stream of motorcars, trucks, and buses, downtown enterprises could not help but suffer. Main Street must have taken on a sad and deserted appearance to some businessmen.

But looming on the horizon were the dark, distressing days of World War II and the economic stimulus this provided to the nation’s economy. Besides, trade was sufficiently healthy to attract a chain store, J. J. Newberry Company. The Company announced it was building an outlet on Main Street in 1940. “Hundreds of shoppers” and thirty clerks were on hand when the doors opened a year later. The Chamber proudly remarked that it was an outstanding addition to the business section.

One numbingly cold December morning in 1947, a fire raged in the heart of Elkton. It broke out in a shoe store and spread uncontrolled through the A & P, Ritz and New Central hotels, the New Theater, and into Newberry’s, where it was checked. Eleven fire companies from as far away as Wilmington battled the blaze. By the time it was over, nine businesses were wiped out.

Having devastated properties along the south side of Main Street, the fire caused a reconfiguration of the business area. Newberrys wasted no time in announcing it was rebuilding. Besides, the Company required more space, so it acquired the property next to the first store, the New Central Hotel. Connelle Brothers, owners of the New Central and New Theater properties, purchased ground at the corner of North Street and Railroad Avenue to build a “modern theater” and a “shopping center.” Construction started in 1948.

Meanwhile, Ralph Aubrey Jeffers wrote The Cecil Democrat that year, presenting ideas for improving trade. North Street should be extended to Howard Street, he advised. Now was the time to do it; the fire had destroyed the properties necessary for the right-of-way. Another idea: Take advantage of doing business on two streets (Howard) instead of one. While the Chamber of Commerce examined the ideas, the Connelle’s finished stretching the business area northward; as a Wilmington reporter put it, they built “a second Main Street” on North Street.

Besides a theater, the building included an entire block of stores and a large supermarket, the “first in Cecil County.” The A & P opened on North and Railroad Ave corner a few weeks before Christmas 1948. Months later (April 1949), Mayor Henry H. Mitchell cut the ribbon, admitting the public to the Elk Theater on opening night to see Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Despite the bypass, economic upturns and downturns, a devastating fire, and wars, Elkton’s business district did just fine.

The Pull of Malls

Still, the powerful pull of malls, megastores, and shopping centers was a few years down the road. Perceptively, The Cecil Whig cautioned merchants about this in 1949: “There is a developing trend toward the establishment of large merchandising establishments in outlying districts . . . . It is not beyond the realm of possibility that one of the large merchandising concerns . . . should locate a large store on the Dual Highway near Elkton. . . . Those who come by highway would seldom, if ever, find the center of Elkton.”

Starting in the 1960s, the hearts and wallets of consumers were being wooed away from the nation’s main streets by malls, chain discounters, and massive superstores. It was all a national trend: main street businesses stagnated; main street Businesses closed; main street buildings stood vacant.

Downtown Elkton was not an anomaly to these happening. New stores opened a short distance away on South Bridge Street and along Route 40. Large shopping malls popped up in nearby Delaware. Shoppers on Elkton’s Main Street, like shoppers in most places, gradually migrated to new outlets.

Main Street’s business slowly dwindled. In Elkton, the principal onset was in the 1970s. The business district lost two anchors on Railroad Avenue (the Acme and a chain drug store) and several small businesses. Most of those who survived had gone a short distance, about a mile along Route 40, just as the paper had predicted decades earlier.

The bulk of this relocation started in the summer of 1975 when town officials joined shopping center developer David Cordish in a field near U.S. 40 and MD 213. Shovels of dirt were thrown in groundbreaking ceremonies for the Big Elk Mall. This phase would contain some 20 stores including two anchors, Developer Cordish said. He had found his anchors nearby.

Now downtown merchants had their first major competition for in county retail dollars. Despite the commotion on the highway, downtown still had one major anchor, the A & P. Surviving several years after Acme moved, it fell victim to a corporate wave of closings of unprofitable stores. It was a sad day when the store closed in 1982, shoppers said. A store that had been a mainstay of Elkton shopping for “60 years” was suddenly gone. An independent grocery store filled the void, but a fire eventually destroyed it.

The migration of smaller businesses from downtown persisted. Elkton planning consultants, surveying the central area in 1979, found “only 45 retail or wholesale establishments in the district. . . .” Their count was strict: beauty parlors, barbershops, eating places, banks, and offices were not tallied.

The commercial district was also losing its institutions and its old industrial base. Downtown lost the library when the new headquarters opened on the north edge of town in 1987. The Elkton Elementary School had closed over a decade earlier. State government offices moved out to Route 40. (The state multi-service center eventually brought some of those back). Even the Victorian-era lock-up, the county jail, abandoned downtown for a home in a cornfield outside of town. And factories that had hummed along producing motors, wire, and automobile engine parts shut down, draining workers from the old district’s economy.

As the years passed, the county seat’s new retailing area continued enlarging south of the old business district. Commercial real estate sprang up along South Bridge Street on what was once undeveloped land. Out on Route 40, shopping centers and other commercial development expanded.

When planners first studied Elkton’s old business district (1963), it was the County’s dominant retail center. Almost half of the county’s retail dollars changed hands there, the only major competition coming from downtown Newark and Wilmington shops. Business outlets along Route 40 then mainly consisted of gasoline stations, motels, and roadside restaurants serving the highway traveler. But those planners warned that aggressive steps were needed to preserve the central business district.

Loss of the Courthouse Accelerates Trend

In 2008, Main Street suffered a staggering blow when the county moved most of its employees to a new office building on the Delaware State Line. Suddenly overnight, the loss of over 200 workers, and the hundreds of people conducting business in their offices created a noticeable emptiness on the town’s streets.

Because of commercial expansion along Route 40, the town’s commercial life has shifted south toward that artery, and its retailing role has remained strong. For the centuries-old business district, it has become an arts and entertainment district.

The Story of Elkton’s old business hub is like many towns throughout the country – towns forced to adapt to changes. And, like other towns, Elkton is addressing the changing times.

Elkton’s depression era station replaced a depot that had somehow managed to outlive its usefulness in just 80 years. It was in 1855, that the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad Company decided to replace the first station, which had been built when the railroad first arrived in town in the late 1830s. The company purchased five acres of land on the Howard farm at the edge of town and proceeded to building a “handsome brick station house,” which was similar in size and appearance to the one in Chester. It included separate waiting rooms for the ladies and gentlemen, as well a ticket and telegraph office. But by the time the great depression rolled around the county seat needed a modern facility. Once the 80 year old structure was no longer of use to the railroad company it was sold and moved to Locust Point where it was used as a summer cottage.

In the middle of the Great Depression, the Pennsylvania Railroad electrified its mainline between New York and Washington and this resulted in a number of improvements in Elkton.  In the center of town, a sharp curve in the tracks created a hazard so company engineers straightened the right-away, eliminating the dangerous bend. While they were at it they also eliminated three grade crossings and built two bridges to carry traffic safely over the busy railroad, one on North Street and the other on Bridge Street. Blue Ball Road was also slated for a bridge, recalls railroad historian Mr. Richard Hall, but the owners of the land demanded such a high price the plan was dropped.  Since the goal was to do away with grade crossings the company built an improved road known as Elkton Blvd., to connect Blue Ball Road with Bridge Street.  This first phase of work was completed in 1934.

The realignment also caused a need to replace the old Elkton Railroad Station, which had somehow managed to outlive its usefulness in 80-years.  Thus in February 1935, The William M. Francis Company of Wilmington started building a new one, a one-story brick structure with a green slate roof. In a few months, the station opened to travelers. This modern facility, with all the latest conveniences, included baggage and waiting rooms, as well as an agent’s office. A pedestrian tunnel underneath the tracks connected the main station on the Philadelphia side with the tracks for southbound traffic.  It replaced a structure built-in 1855.

Once the Elkton Railroad Station opened the company had completed the extensive improvements started by the railroad more than three years earlier.  The sharp curve in the company’s tracks between North Street and the Big Elk Creek bridge has been eliminated, the tracks being about one-quarter mile further north than previously.  The total cost of improvements made here, not including electrification were estimated at over $1-million.

For a generation of residents, the Elkton Station was an important community center, the place that linked them to the larger world. Passengers arrived and departed here, the mail came and went, and the Railway Express Agency brought in the freight, while morning and evening newspapers arrived from the cities.  But as the golden age of railroading faded, regular passenger service ground slowly to a halt here by the mid-1960s. A brief attempt at providing commuter service ended in 1981. After that the station became little more than a storage shed and a workshop used by Amtrak’s right-away crews.

Today that symbol of the community’s railroad age still stands quietly alongside Amtrak’s mainline as Acela’s rush by. Mayor Joseph Fisonia has said that restoration of service to this station is important to the economic well-being of the central business district and for the region’s transportation needs.

Note:  Thanks to Mr. Richard Hall for reviewing this article and providing additional information

John Berry, Jr., an African-American living at Mt. Zoar was authorized by the Cecil County Board of Education to raise money to help build a school at the small community a mile or so outside of Conowingo late in 1871.  He successfully raised local funds and the school board matched it with the school tax that was paid by “the colored people.”   Thus a contract was awarded to J. Dixon West and the Cecil Whig wrote:  “Soon now we shall have a good house for the colored children in the 8th District and in the most central place, which will accommodate at least seventy-five children (Cecil Whig, Dec. 17, 1870).”

On February 25, 1871, a Pilot Town News Item in the Cecil Whig announced that “The colored public school in this district commenced on Monday.  They have a very fine school room in the basement of Thad Stevens Hall on the road from Conowingo to Port Deposit.”

While we can say with certainty that there was an African-American School in Conowingo by 1871, it is not the building that survives there now as the physical description does not align with the surviving structure.  For example, for the original Mt. Zoar School the article states that the contractor was to build a schoolhouse with a hall over the classroom.

When Mr. Berry died in 1879 his real estate was sold at an estate sale and the listing included:  “All the interest of said deceased in the property known as Thaddeus Stevens Hall and School House (Cecil Whig, Sept. 27, 1897)

The Maryland Historical Trust reports the “Mt. Zoar Colored School” near Conowingo opened about 1875.  But the building pictured in this post went up in 1914, the Board of School Commissioners inspecting “the new colored school house at Mt. Zoar” that October, the Whig reported.¹ The School Commissioners had allocated $2,000 for the project, but competitive bids came in and the contract was awarded to S. M. McCardell for $1,674.² This current structure was used until the start of the 1941/42 school year.

The Cecil County School Board Records provide a partial listing of some of the teachers assigned to the school: 1918-Miss Lucy D. Jackson, Conowingo; 1921 – Miss Katharine Whiteside, Conowingo; 1931 – Bessie C. Harris, Conowingo & Albert B. Wilson, Conowingo; 1932 – Bessie C. Harris & Mrs. Ada J. Berry; 1934 – Bessie C. Harris, Rowlandsville & Mrs. Ada J. Berry, Rowlandsville, 1935-36 – Mrs. Bessie C. Harris, Goldsboro, and Mrs. Ada J. Berry, Conowingo; 1939 – Mrs. Ada J. Berry, Conowingo.

It closed for the 1941-42 school year, according to the minutes of the Board of Education (5/13/1941).  After that, the children from the Mt. Zoar School were transported to the new school in Port Deposit.

For more photos of the Mt. Zoar School, click here

1. School Commissioners, Cecil Whig, October 17, 1914[↩]
2. Schools Commissioners, Cecil Whig, August 1, 1914[↩]

Elkton Town Administrator, Lewis George, was at the Elkton station Saturday when the Obama Express came rolling past the old railroad depot.  He said:  “I took this photograph of  then President-elect Barack Obama’s train blitz through Elkton on Saturday, January 17, 2009, at around 2:30 p.m………..as I stood in the midst of a very cold and patient, but warm and cheering crowd of citizens gathered along the Old North Road RR tracks near Immaculate Conception.”

Thanks Lewis for allowing us to post these excellent shots here.

On this historic day when people all along the northeast corridor between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. greeted the nation’s 44th president, Barack Obama, we look at a few other times when the nation’s leaders came through the county on the rails.  It was a frequent occurrence in the era before air travel became common. 

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Riding Cecil’s First Railroad – The seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson, rode Cecil’s first little railroad, the New Castle and Frenchtown during his administration (1829 – 1837). 

Lincoln Sidetracked at Elkton — The 16th President took a flying trip to West Point in June 1862.  On his return to Washington, D.C. his train was put on the siding at Elkton to let a Philadelphia bound express pass by.   During 15 to 20-minutes the “special lay off on the switch” a number of people shook the President’s hand and exchanged a few words of conversation with “Old Abe.”   Two years later (June 1864) when Lincoln made an appearance in Philadelphia, the railroad let him pass right through without delay.  It provided a special train for the wartime executive and the locomotive, gaily decorated with flags rushed past Elkton with a “shrill scream” from its steam Whistle.

Grant’s Destination, Elkton – May 18, 1872, was like no other day in Elkton history.  On that day the distant smoke of a locomotive steaming toward the railroad station announced that President Ulysses S. Grant was approaching the county seat.  The president and Mrs. Grant stepped from the train and were greeted by a crowd of people.  The party was here for an overnight stay with Postmaster General Creswell. 

Whistle Stop Tour Brings Taft – In May 1912, William Howard Taft in an all-day speech making tour campaigned in Elkton.  Arriving by special train, he found houses and businesses elaborately decorated in his honor.   Excitement filled the streets as he rode to the Howard Hotel in the automobile of William T. Warburton.  Speaking for about an hour from the porch of the Howard Hotel, he hurried back to his train for whistle stop in Aberdeen. 

Roosevelt Waits for at Perryville — The 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, left office in 1909 but in 1912 he decided to jump back into politics, running on the Progressive Ticket against William Howard Taft.  On a speechmaking tour in May 1912, a locomotive dropped his coach at Perryville where it had to wait for another engine to take it across the bridge.  When word spread everyone who could get away from him home or business gathered to get a glimpse of the ex-president.  Hearing the cheering Roosevelt came out on the platform and spoke to the crowd.

Hoover Hurries Past – Immediately after Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office in March 1933, Herbert Hoover, the chief executive who had served when the stock market crashed and the nation spiraled downward into the depression, made his exit from Washington D.C.  Speeding to New York City on the Pennsylvania Railroad, the weary ex-president was piloted by an engineer from Perryville, Harry Fay.  As passenger extra 5385 swiftly passed through the county, the train averaged 60-miles an hour. 

For more on Presidential Visits to Cecil County see this post.

By the time the Whistle Stop Express rolled across the Mason-Dixon Line into Maryland at 2:17 this afternoon, the mercury was still a couple of points short of the day’s high, 19-degrees.  But the artic air blanketing the Mid-Atlantic didn’t stop over 200-well wishers from waiting patiently in the bitter cold at the old Pennsylvania Railroad Depot in Elkton.  On down the 20-miles of line in Cecil the train rolled southward while smaller clusters of people in the outlying areas waited to get a glimpse of it on this historic day.  It was striking to see the lone people standing on a hillside not far from the tracks waving in this rural part of Maryland as the train came by, a CNN reporter aboard the press coach blogged.

When the locomotive pulling the 10 coaches came into view at Perryville’s restored passenger station the Mayor and Commissioners of Perryville and another crowd of over 200 people waved and cheered the president-elect’s party.  The Amtrak special crossed over the Susquehanna into Harford County at 2:35 p.m.  The vintage car faded slowly from view of the cheering crowd while President-elect Obama and Vice-President-Elect Biden seated comfortably inside rolled toward a date with history as they carried with them the hopes of the nation.

Falmanac has some great photos of the visit and posts.  Check it out.