We’re enjoying a great Labor Day Weekend here at the top of the Chesapeake Bay. With temperature in the low 80s and brilliant Sunshine, we took the opportunity to drive around some old beaches and harbors at the top of the bay. Betterton Beach had a great crowd out enjoying the perfect Sunday, but back to Cecil County. White Crystal Beach was one of the shore resorts that drew crowds from the nearby urban areas for a large part of the 20th century. Here’s a telephone directory advertisement for the beach from the 1940 Cecil County Directory. Below that you will see a photo of the Manor House at White Crystal Beach. Click here for an additional images
The cooling water of the Chesapeake Bay made Cecil County, located at the very top of the Chesapeake Bay, a favorite spot.
Another summer is quickly slipping away as students get ready to return to school Monday and we prepare to mark the unofficial end of summer with Labor Day. Still for August, a period that is better known for the dog days of Summer, we’ve experienced some of the most beautiful weather and the forecast looks great for the upcoming week. Right now as I blog this piece, the temperature is in the high 70s and a beautiful partly cloudy sky comfortably warms the late August Saturday in Cecil County. Well as the unofficial end of summer nears, let’s give the season a send off by reminiscing a little with some old photos of Holloway Beach in Charlestown.
This image is from a postcard mailed to Mr. & Mrs. R. M. Elrick of Jeannette, PA in 1939.Though the water was the draw, it was our nearby proximity to nearby cities that caused our beaches resorts to grow.
We’ll post a few more photos as we wind our way to Labor Day.
As I worked on some syllabi for the upcoming semester with the midnight hour approaching here on the Chesapeake, I surfed over to WERU, an outstanding non-commercial radio station in Blue Hill, Maine. We discovered WERU several years ago while vacationing in Maine and always listen when we are in the coastal area. A few years ago they added streaming on the Net so the excellent content is available in Cecil County and everywhere.
Mark Elwin’s program “Mama Popcorn” was streaming when I surfed over and Mark was playing some great soul and funk music. As he worked the show and talked about the artists I heard him play a shaft piece, “Way Back Home” by Bernard Purdie, along with other fine selections. I’ve always found the noncommerical programs on WERU to be excellent, but I’ve never called them to let them know. Well I just had to give Mark a call to let him know that he had listener from “Pretty Purdie’s” hometown, Elkton, MD. I also called to let him let him know how much we appreciated his program, as well as the other fine DJs at WERU, a great radio station.
It wasn’t too many months ago that we were able to attend Bernard’s, “Bringing It Home Concert” in Elkton and we’re looking forward to his biography which is coming out soon. I’ve only met Bernard a few times, but it was always a pleasant experience to meet the R & B luminary.
And thanks to WERU for producing all sorts of great programming.
The following is a letter to the editor published in the Cecil Whig on Friday, Aug. 15. This piece is cross-posted from the blog, someonenoticed.wordpress.com, which contains much more information in this attempt. Please see that blog for much more information on this subject.)
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The Mayor and Commissioners of Elkton are considering a proposal to sell 20 acres of public park land near the end of Landing Lane. When this parcel was acquired at the end of 2002, it was joined with another 42 publically held acres to form a sizable open space near the center of the county’s most densely developed area. The board has discussed hiring a consultant to oversee the process since a large retailer is interested in building on the site. At several meetings, Commissioner Gary Storke spoke against the loss of the open space and hiring of the consultant. Other officials either supported the proposal or were largely silent on this public land policy matter.
The property was acquired through funding provided by Maryland’s Open Space Program. In the grant application, media coverage, and governmental records, the town’s leadership noted the significance of preserving this space just a few years ago. Comments such as it is a critical part of the greenway and park system, is consistent with the comprehensive plan, contains rich archaeological resources, and is an important part of the town’s heritage are noted. It was also stated that this acquisition relieved development pressure, protecting one of Elkton’s few resources on the National Register of Historic Places, Elk Landing.
These were valid statements when officials originally made them and they are accurate today. The land did not become a less valuable open space once a commercial developer expressed an interest in the property.
Main Street Elkton is busy prior to the big fire of 1947. Source: Robinson Collection, Historical Society of Cecil County.
On December 20, 1947, the largest fire in downtown Elkton’s history erupted in the predawn darkness of the bitterly cold night. About 5:30 that morning the fire whistle sounded, piercing the silence of one of the longest nights of the year. Someone ringing up the telephone operator had reported smoke seeping out of the Janis Shoe Store on Main St., one-half block from the engine house. At that hour, Police Officer William D. Pinder was nearby making his early morning rounds in the patrol car. He reached the scene moments later and started awakening occupants of the apartments above the fire. Then he helped night clerks, Alfred Taylor and Charles Gatchell, at the Ritz and New Central Hotels.
That Saturday morning, the coldest day of the year, the temperature stood at 16° before the first ray of sun poked over the horizon. Awakened to shouts of fire and the smell of smoke, about 100-guests rushed from the endangered hotels into the frigid air, newspapers noted. Arriving firefighters found flames “eating through the first floor” of the shoe store. With Elkton’s full force of pumpers, an Ahrens ‘Fox and Hale, struggling to confine the fire to the store, Chief Caspar Dunbar immediately ordered a second alarm. Engines from Chesapeake City, North East and Newark, Del., rushed toward the county seat.
Elkton barber, Tony Trotta, recalled that morning. In 1947, he worked at the shop where he plied his trade for most of life. In those days, though, it was the Anthony Williams’ Barber Shop and Jewelry Store – his father-in-law’s shop. Hearing the approaching siren, he walked a few doors up the street to see what was going on. “I got there about the time the firemen did. Some fire was coming through the first floor, but, suddenly, about the time they started to put water on it, flames roared through the building,” Trotta detailed.
Billowing smoke could be seen for miles. Before long, with ice forming on ladders, streets, power lines, and fire trucks, the blaze burst through the roof of the building, and high winds fanned it into the next door A&P Food Store. From the grocery store, the fire spread to the Ritz Hotel and Restaurant. It was spreading rapidly through the old brick, wood and plaster buildings of Main Street. The whole downtown was threatened. Chief Dunbar called for a third alarm, bringing aid from Perryville, Port Deposit, Rising Sun, and Oxford, Pa., Fire apparatus and firefighters were now beginning to jam the narrow, ice-glazed street, Elkton’s principal thoroughfare.
Smoke billows up from the New Central Hotel that December morning. Source: Singerly Fire Company Museum
Despite the attempt to quell it, the conflagration continued its eastward march. Next in its path was the New Central Hotel, which also contained the New Theater, a restaurant, a liquor store and a photographer’s studio. A call for further assistance, a fourth alarm, went out on telephone lines to Wilmington, Aberdeen, Havre de Grace, Mill Creek and Christiana. Former Singerly Fire Company President, Henry Metz, calling it “one of the worst fires” he’d seen, remembered that day. “In that area, many buildings were tied together and the roofs were all tin. The fire mushroomed under those roofs.” Metz and a crew of men spent most of the morning manning hose lines in the building west of the shoe shop, an auto parts store. Aided by a favorable wind, they checked the conflagration’s westward spread. It wasn’t until Wilmington’s ladder truck arrived that the eastward march was stopped, Metz recalled. “Those buildings were mostly three-story in the front and four-story in the back. We didn’t have the ladders to get above it.”
The Wilmington Bureau of Fire’s Engine Company 7 and Ladder Truck Three, manned by a squad of 14-firefighters, started from the city at 9:14 a.m., the Democrat observed. By the time companies from those places started arriving, the fire had eaten through the wall of the New Central Hotel building and was threatening the J.J. Newberry’s Five and Ten Cent store adjoining. At the height of the fire, Chief Dunbar directed a force of well over 100 firemen and 25 pieces of apparatus. As more of the town engines began tapping the municipal water mains and with the town pumping at full capacity, water pressure dropped. Six pumpers were taken to the Big Elk Creek to pump water to engines battling the inferno.
Flying low over midtown, taking photographs, were “new planes” from the daily papers, the Maryland News Courier observed. Some of those photos show hose crews on the roof of J.J. Newberry’s and in the street. They’re pouring water into the burning New Central Hotel, trying to keep the fire from spreading into the five-and-dime store. When the Wilmington squad arrived, they went into action with a 100 foot ladder truck. One city firefighter, high above the fire on the ladder, shot water onto the blaze, saving J.J. Newberry’s and checking the eastward spread, the Baltimore Sun said.
Shortly after 12 p.m., the fire was declared under control. “A potential disaster in the hotels,” fire officials told the Philadelphia Inquirer, “was averted by the quick action of the Elkton Patrolman and hotel employees who ran quickly from room-to-room to awaken guests.” The fire had raged for almost seven hours and burned a “half-million dollar” hole in the center of Elkton’s business district, destroying some of the largest and most important structures in town and damaging others. The buildings on the south side of Main Street destroyed by the blaze were those clustered around the foot of North Street.
It is summertime in Cecil County, and before these warm days are over, you may jump in your car to join a steady procession of people cruising toward the beach, mountains, or some other vacation spot. Perhaps your outing will take you to quiet forests, ocean-cooled breezes, or clear mountain waters. Whatever the case, this is the time of year when the road calls, and we steer toward some rest and relaxation. Automobiles make our vacation trips relatively simple these days, but getting away long before President Eisenhower made “interstate” an everyday word was much more difficult.
Before the opening of roads, steamers provided access to Cecil’s beaches. This is the cover of a marketing brochure produced by the Ericson Line (Source: personal collection)
When the first decade of the 20th century rolled around, there was no I-95, Route 40, U.S. 213, or other improved road to ease the way as people headed to getaway spots. A railroad excursion or leisurely steamboat ride provided the means to escape to that relaxing place in the era before automobiles dominated transportation. However, as the 1900s slipped all too fast toward World War II, good-hard surfaced roads started connecting towns, Americans began hitting the road in record numbers, and gas stations popped up. The allure of easier car travel and the desire to find refreshing, cool waters during hot months caused many from Wilmington, Philadelphia, Chester, and Baltimore to come to Cecil County to sit under the sun, enjoy the refreshing Chesapeake Bay, and relish the scenic shoreline.
Vacation Spots
As word spread about Cecil’s first-rate beaches, day-trippers and folks on short escapes started heading this way with bathing suits, beach towels, and picnic baskets. Holloway Beach, Port Herman, and White Crystal Beach were some sandy spots that called out to vacationers. Though these spots could be reached by other means, the automobile had a tremendous impact on opening them up for ever-larger crowds. As early as the Fourth of July 1916, you could see its effect on little resorts at the top of the Chesapeake. That year, not so long before young men would march off to war in a faraway place, the Town Point Improvement Association held a grand celebration on the “beautiful Elk River at Port Herman,” the Cecil Whig reported. Signing, sack and tub races, baseball, river trips, night illuminations, fireworks, and a phonographic concert, what more could one ask for? Come any way you could, boat, auto, or carriage, the association urged. When the sun set on the Chesapeake, hundreds of visitors, many in automobiles, had enjoyed the patriotic celebration, the newspaper wrote.
On a summer day between the World Wars, White Crystal Beach is busy (source: personal collection)
As vehicles helped put the roar in the 1920s, an Elkton newspaper, the Cecil Democrat, noted that if plans were carried out, Charlestown would be “one of the most popular summer spots in this section of Maryland.” Over the past couple of years, cottages had been erected there” by city people. By 1923, Holloway Beach’s popularity was rising, according to the newspaper. That summer, before the nation knew anything about the dark, dark days of the Great Depression, thousands of people visited the beach at one time, the Democrat observed. The next season, the newspaper noted that J. W. Holloway had one of “the most attractive resorts to be found in the entire country.” If you visited any day during the season, you would realize that “a miniature Coney Island, right here in our own county,” was easily accessible by auto, the reporter said.
Charlestown Becomes One of the Most Popular Destinations
A 1920s or ’30 brochure marketing Cecil County as a vacation spot (Source: peronal collection)
Once summer was underway, a ride in a car around Cecil’s shoreline would turn up beaches crowded with day-trippers and people on short jaunts during a number of decades in the 20th century. As sinister war clouds gathered over Europe, mobs crowded county beaches, guests rented cottages, and children merrily played at the water’s edge. Down in Cecilton, traffic heading to the beaches has been a problem since the 1930s, Henry Mitchell recalled in an interview in the News Journal in 1991. “Visitors to the resort area of Crystal Beach” jammed the highway through town every weekend.
Nevertheless, the times were changing. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge between the Eastern and Western shores opened in July 1952. This shortened “the long automobile trip around the head of the Bay” and eliminated the “uncomfortable slow trips” of the ferry to Kent Island, the State Highway Commission reported. The John F. Kennedy Expressway (I-95) opened in 1963, providing even faster cruising to more distant destinations. All this time, jumping in the car and heading to the Atlantic Ocean or other distant resorts was getting easier.
The Times Changed
Now that the summer season is well underway, chances are you will pile in the car and brace yourself for traffic jams on I-95, Route 50, or Delaware 1 as you head to your vacation spot. While taking that outing, think of how hard it would have been to reach those places on the narrow, rough roads of the early 20th century. Of course, you may have other thoughts — perhaps a Cecil County vacation spot — if you are sitting on a traffic-choked highway.
On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1978 (April 30), two normally quiet railroad stations in Cecil County buzzed with activity. At Elkton, more than 150 people gathered, and a larger crowd of over 200 stood trackside in Perryville. They were there to celebrate the return of commuter rail service between Philadelphia and Washington D.C. to Cecil County. After the inaugural run, the train made weekday trips between the two cities. Stopping at Elkton at 7:52 a.m. and Perryville at 8:06. In the evening, it was scheduled to arrive at Perryville at 5:58 p.m. and Elkton at 6:09.
The formerly quiet Perryville Amtrak Station is crowded on the morning of April 30, as the crowd waits for the commuter passenger train, the Chesapeake, to come into site.
At Elkton, Mayor Paul C. Dennis is joined by a large crowd for the return of passenger train service to the county seat. The mayor is holding a ticket for the inaugural run.
Criminal codes on the Delmarva Peninsula permitted judges to sentence perpetrators of crimes such as theft, breaking and entering, wife-beating, and more to lashes on the bare back well into the 20th. Under the original colonial statutes, wrongdoers received this ancient punishment for a broader range of crimes, including forgery, counterfeiting, Sabbath breaking, blasphemy, witchcraft, and dozens of other offenses. As enlightened corrections emerged in the nation primarily based on imprisonment, this punishment was dropped from the codes in most states, but it persisted on the Peninsula far longer.
The Whipping Post at the Old New Castle DE Jail. (Photo Credit: Delaware State Archives)
Maryland, perhaps the next to last state to use flogging, moved more quickly than Delaware to eradicate whippings. Until 1809, the post figured prominently in the early administration of justice in the Free State when the code was repealed, and only slaves were whipped, the Baltimore Sun reported. “The constitutional convention of 1864 abolished the entire law of punishment by whipping, and it remained dead until the Legislature of 1882 resurrected it and applied it solely to wife beaters.”
Under this law, a convicted wife-beater stood at the whipping post and received ten lashes in 1896. The punishment took place in the jail yard on North Street in Elkton, “opposite where James H. Truss was executed a few months earlier. The yellow pine post had been erected by ex-sheriff Clinton J. White and Sheriff Mackey, who had borrowed a whip from Sheriff Gillis of New Castle, De.
The last time a corporal punishment sentence was handed down in Cecil County was December 1940 when the Circuit Court ordered that a 42-year carpenter convicted of wife-beating serve 60 days in jail and receive ten lashes at the whipping post. A local newspaper, the Cecil Democrat, remarked that this was the first time in 46 years that a person was sentenced to the whipping post in Cecil. The cat-o-nine-tails were wielded by Sheriff David Randolph, who carried out the punishment in public. The whip was last used on the Western Shore in Prince Georges County in 1945 when Judge Marbury ordered lashes for a prisoner. A Frederick County magistrate in 1952 ordered ten lashes for a defendant, but Governor McKeldin pardoned the “barbarous and inhumane” punishment.
Delaware’s criminal code permitted floggings to occur until 1972. That year, Governor Russell W. Peterson signed a revised criminal code in Delaware, which abolished the outdated punishment. With the passing of that act, Delaware became the last state in the nation to hold onto the pre-Revolutionary punishment. Flogging was last used in 1952 in the first state when a wife beater was flogged.
In Cecil County, the whipping post was in the yard at the old jail on North Street in Elkton. (Source: personal collection)
The last time a regularly scheduled passenger train stopped at the Elkton Railroad Station was April 25, 1981. The Chesapeake, train 420, scheduled to arrive at the depot at 6:29 p.m. on its run north from Washington, D.C., completed its final run that spring evening a quarter-of-a-century ago. Passenger service had returned in 1978, when the Chesapeake, a new Amtrak train, started running between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. When it made its first run across the top of the Chesapeake on the morning of April 30, 150 over people greeted it at Elkton. Once the dignitaries disappeared after the inaugural run, a small cluster of passengers gathered along the southbound track each morning, waiting for the locomotive around the bend east of town so they could continue their journeys to Baltimore and Washington. In the evening, as people in Cecil County settled down for dinner, the train screeched to a stop at Elkton, as tired workers climbed off to head home for the night.
Since 1981 the quiet at the old depot has not been broken by the conductor shouting “All Aboard,” though many Acelas and other fast trains thunder past the old station that once served as an important commuter station in Cecil County.
The Elkton Passenger Station in the 1930s
This photo shows Elkton’s Pennsylvania Station soon after the modern depot opened about 1930, the cars of commuters and travelers jamming the parking lot during those days of the Great Depression.
—- Elkton, a railroad town — Chronology
1837
January 9 — A train operated by the Wilmington & Susquehanna Railroad makes an experimental run to Elkton, as work continues on building the line to the Susquehanna River. Many townspeople were on hand to greet the first arrival of
a train of cars.
1837
July 31 — the road opens for regular service. For more than a century, the
railroad plays an ever-growing role in Elkton’s development.
1858
The Philadelphia Wilmington & Baltimore railroad guide says: “The railroad has proved of great advantage for Elkton . . . The population of this place prior to construction of the road was about 900 although 160 years had elapsed since its settlement, while since that time the number of inhabitants has increased fully 50-percent.
1938
Eighteen passenger trains a day stop at the Elkton station.
1963
Only three trains a day stopped at the depot.
1967 — When the Pennsylvania Railroad published a new timetable on April 30, Elkton was no longer listed as a stop.
1978
After a period of interruption, passenger service returned to Elkton in 1978 when the Chesapeake, a new Amtrak train, started running between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. When it made its first run across the top of the Chesapeake, 150 people greeted it at Elkton.
1981
April 25 — Train 420, scheduled to stop in Elkton at 6:29 p.m. on its trip north from Washington, D.C., makes its call at the old depot. Since then, the quiet at the old depot has not been broken by a conductor shouting “All Aboard” through Acela and other fast trains thunder past the old station that once served as an important commuter station in Cecil County.
Family members on the rear platform of the Kennedy Funeral Train wave as they pass the Elkton Station
Forty years ago on Saturday, June 8, 1968, a hot sweltering day, thousands of people lined the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks in Cecil County, waiting for the funeral train carrying Robert F. Kennedy’s (RKF) body to pass through on its trip to Washington, D.C. The coaches carrying the Senator’s coffin on this special run departed from New York City on time at 1 p.m. It was scheduled to arrive in the District of Columbia at 5 p.m., but because of the millions of people huddled along the line waiting to pay their respects the special was running about four hours late.
I was a teenager waiting near the Elkton Station in ’68, and as I recall it was around 6 p.m. when it passed through the county. I remember seeing the flag draped casket through the window as the passenger cars passed by as members of the Kennedy family sadly waved to those huddled along the right-of-way. An Elkton Police Officer, Marshall Purner I believe, was at the station, helping to make sure the shocked crowd stayed safe as the funeral train passed by. It was largely a scene of grief and shock here. The people were stunned, many had tear stained faces and some individuals were holding hands as it became obvious that the train was nearing the depot. Some people in the quiet, respectful crowd carried flags. All along the road at North East, Charlestown, and Perryville, as well as at bridges and others spots, residents stood quietly by to pay their respects. A photographer for the Cecil Democrat, one of our weekly papers, snapped a shot of the rear passenger platform as it passed through here. Three members of the Kennedy family on the rear platform, grief obvious on their faces, acknowledged the Elkton crowd. The newspaper estimated that there were 2,000 people at Elkton, 1,500 at Perryville, 1,000 at North East and smaller groups at almost efvery railroad crossing in the county.
Click here to see another Cecil County photo of RFK’s funeral train passing through Eklton
