Removal of old bridge piers completed at site of Amtrak’s new Susquehanna River Bridge

 

(Trains) An Amtrak contractor has completed the removal of 10 bridge piers dating to 1866 from the Susquehanna River, a required move in advance of construction of new bridges connecting Havre de Grace and Perryville, Md. Continued

The Traveler’s B & O Christmas Tree, a Holiday Tradition

(WoCCP) The tradition for kicking off the Christmas Season in Cecil County is the annual lighting of the “Holly Tree by-the-tracks.” The Baltimore & Ohio held the first public ceremony in 1948 when thousands of people gathered to ring in the season as lights from thousands of colorful bulbs on the evergreen softly illuminated the Jackson [Station], MD hillside. Continued

Link to the Cecil County Holly Tree Website.

Photos: MDRails

The Honeymoon Express

On Saturday, February 13th, the Historical Society of Cecil County will present a program titled "The Honeymoon Express: When the Marriage Industry Thrived in Elkton." It starts at 7:30 p.m. and the admission is free. Link

Elkton Doughboy Monument

(MDDVA) The World War I Doughboy Memorial stands in front of the Maryland National Guard Armory in Elkton. The Vermont marble memorial was dedicated in 1921 and was relocated from its original site on Main Street in 1941. The carved inscription recognizes the men and women of Cecil County who served and died in the Great War. The pedestal also carries bronze plaques commemorating World War II and veterans of all wars. The memorial was rededicated in 1995 by the Monuments Commission after it was cleaned, the mortar joints were repointed, the bronze plaques were waxed and new lamps were fabricated to match the originals. Landscaping was added in 1997 with generous support from Elkton Memorial VFW Post 8175. Link

Photos: Nightening

Shipwrecks on the Chesapeake

Via Windows on Cecil County's Past (WoCCP)

Garrett Island area reopened to public

(Baltimore Sun) - Part of Garrett Island is open to the public again. Suzanne Baird, the manager of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, said Friday that public access has been restored to one-quarter acre of beach across from Perryville's municipal pier. Continued

Photo: Garrett Island, Canon EOS 20D & EF 70-200 mm f/2.8L IS lens (MDRails)

New Book About World War II Era Bainbridge Naval Football Team

(WoCCP) - 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. Continued

George Read

(Wikipedia) - George Read (September 18, 1733 – September 21, 1798) was an American lawyer and politician from New Castle in New Castle County, Delaware. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Continental Congressman from Delaware, a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, President of Delaware, and a member of the Federalist Party, who served as U.S. Senate from Delaware and Chief Justice of Delaware.
Read was born in Cecil County, Maryland, near North East, the son of John and Mary Howell Read. John Read was a wealthy English resident of Dublin, Ireland who came to Maryland as a young man and was one of the founders of Charlestown, Maryland in Cecil County. Continued

Photo: Wikipedia

The Almighty Oyster

See Window on Cecil County's Past for more information.

Old Jail Managed to Outlive Its Usefulness in Just 128 Years

(WoCCP) - Twenty years ago, the old, shabby Cecil County Jail on North Street in Elkton was abandoned for the modern detention center that now serves the county from its location on Landing Lane. The passing of the old jail was largely unnoticed, it routinely having been maligned as a lockup that somehow managed to outlive its usefulness in just 128 years. That old prison has an interesting history, one that evolved from the days of gallows and whipping posts. Continued

August 15, 1790: John Carroll Becomes First Bishop of Baltimore

(LoC) - On August 15, 1790, John Carroll became the first bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. The son of a wealthy Catholic merchant, Carroll was born in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, in 1736 and had significant Revolutionary connections. His cousin, Charles Carroll, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence; his brother, Daniel Carroll, signed the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution.
After receiving a Jesuit education at the Bohemia academy in Cecil County, Maryland, Carroll studied abroad at the English-language Jesuit College of St. Omer in Flanders. Continued

Photo: Sacred Heart Church at Whitemarsh, Bowie, Maryland, Jack Boucher, photographer (Library of Congress).

Mission to boost access to Garrett Island gaining

(The Record) - Perryville's town commissioners are on a mission to get more public access to Garrett Island so people can see the island's history.
The Town of Perryville, along with the Friends of Garrett Island, are actively seeking support to have the island transferred from the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge to the National Park Service.
Supporters of the change in jurisdiction say it could result in the island in the Susquehanna River being opened up to some limited public use. Continued

Photo: CSX bridge over the Susquehanna and Garrett Island (left).

Cecil County Village of Sylmar Examined in New Book, "Edge Effects"

(WoCCP) - 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. Continued

Photo: Edge-Effects.com

Hold the mayo! When did crab cakes get so bland?

There was a time in Harford County when corn on the cob came in two basic varieties: white or yellow. The yellow corn started disappearing from roadside stands some 20 years ago. "Can't sell it, the yuppies think it's cow corn," one local proprietor told me.

Around the same time, crab cakes started getting snotty too, or perhaps I should say "phlegmy," the culprit was too much mayonnaise. To be fair, mayonnaise has been a standard ingredient of many Maryland crab cake recipes since the 1930's, but the levels were reasonable. Take the recipe on the side of the Old Bay can for example:

2 slices white bread, crusts removed and crumbled
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 teaspoons OLD BAY® Seasoning
OR OLD BAY® 30% Less Sodium Seasoning
2 teaspoons McCormick® Parsley Flakes
1/2 teaspoon prepared yellow mustard
1 egg, beaten
1 pound lump crabmeat

Two tablespoons of mayonnaise for a pound of crab meat is fine and tasty, but any more and you're getting into crab imperial territory. It used to be an easy choice: if you wanted mustardy, you ordered a crab cake, if you wanted creamy, you ordered the imperial.

Believe it or not, there was a time when Maryland crab cakes didn't contain mayonnaise at all. Here's a recipe from 1685:

To fry Crabs Take the meat out of the great claws being first boiled, flour and fry them and take the meat out of the body strian half if it for sauce, and the other half to fry, and mix it with grated bread, almond paste, nutmeg, salt, and yolks of eggs, fry in clarified butter, being first dipped in batter, put in a spoonful at a time; then make sauce with wine-vinegar, butter, or juyce of orange, and grated nutmeg, beat up the butter thick, and put some of the meat that was strained into the sauce, warm it and put it in a clean dish, lay the meat on the sance, slices of orange over all, and run it over with beaten butter, fryed parasley, round the dish brim, and the little legs round the meat.

Here's another, more recent version from the 1950's (This one comes from the University of Maryland Agriculture and Home Economics Extension Service, circa 1956, and is a personal favorite - sans onions):

1 pound blue crab meat
2 tablespoon chopped onion
2 tablespoons butter or other fat, melted
1 egg beaten
1/2 teaspoon powdered mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
Dash pepper
Dash cayenne pepper
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs

Now that's a list of ingredients that'll make a good, authentic mid-20th century crab cake. Fried or broiled? One of each please.

Photo: Falmanac

Chautauqua 2009 Coming to Cecil County in July

(HSoCC) - ... 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. Continued

Live-in curators fix up historic, often run-down woodland houses

(Baltimore Sun) - ... She is among 43 resident curators in an unusual program run by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources in partnership with the Maryland Historical Trust. It is aimed at saving historic buildings the DNR acquired over the years as it purchased or accepted parklands that had houses, corn cribs and cabins on them. Continued

Photo: Toll house at Susquehanna State Park

Hearings begin on Conowingo Dam relicensing

(Ægis) - The first local public meeting on the relicensing of Conowingo Hydroelectric Project drew a handful of people in Darlington Thursday, most with concerns about the environmental impact of the 80-year-old dam and power plant, whose federal license expires in 2014.
... Abrams also asked that Port Deposit's historic properties and all town and county comprehensive plans for the area be considered, asked that an environmental impact statement be conducted in addition to an environmental assessment, and noted that the mailing list for the process is inadequate and only two Maryland elected officials are listed on it. Continued

Later in the article, Mary Ellen Marsh, "general manager of Conowingo and Muddy Run," seems to be shocked, shocked that the folks who live downstream of the dam, mind being flooded out on a semi-regular basis. I imagine she lives upstream of the thing. - Falmanac

May 30, 1947: Eastern Airlines Flight 605 Crashes Near Port Deposit

(WoCCP) - Sixty-two years ago on a gorgeous Memorial Day, a DC-4 with 53-people on board suddenly plunged from the sky into a 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. Continued

Photo: "The Douglas C-54 is the military version of the commerical transport DC-4 used by the airline companies." (Library of Congress)

Austin Lane Crothers

(Wikipedia) - Austin Lane Crothers (May 17, 1860 - May 25, 1912), a member of the United States Democratic Party, was the 46th Governor of Maryland in the United States from 1908 to 1912.
Crothers was born near Conowingo in Cecil County, Maryland, the eighth son of Alpheus and Margaret Crothers. He was raised on his father's farm, spending much of his life there. Educated at West Nottingham Academy, he spent several years in the work force, first as a store clerk, then as a public school teacher. Continued

1918 Spanish flu epidemic killed more than 150 in Cecil County

(Cecil Observer) - ... 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. Continued

Via Window on Cecil County’s Past