Cecil County
MDGenWeb
In July, 1652, the Susquehanna Indians, by treaty, gave up to the province all their territory
on the west side of the bay from the Patuxent River to the Susquehanna, and all
on the east side from the Choptank River to the North-East Branch near the
Susquehanna. This territory includes the present Talbot, Queen Anne, Kent,
Howard, Carroll, Baltimore, and Harford counties, with the greater part of Cecil
county. [page 32]
The religion of the first settlers of Maryland, - that
is, of the Kent Island colony, A. D. 1629 – was that of a church of England. In
1634, with Lord Baltimore's colony, the Roman Catholics with their priests came
into the St. Mary's settlement. Soon after, the Lutherans, from the Delaware,
were established in what afterwards became Cecil county. [page 106]
In
1723 an act was passed establishing a free school in every county. Accordingly,
these schools were erected, endowed, and successfully carried on til the
Revolution. Soon after we had achieved our independence, the free schools ....
Those of the four lower counties …. During this period, many of the parish
clergy had classical schools, and there were public academies at Lower Marlboro,
Calvert county, the Eden School in Somerset, and the academy at West Nottingham,
Cecil county. [pages 111-112]
Contributed 2022 Nov 15 by Norma Hass, extractions from 1866 History of Maryland, by E. Allen and L. VanBokkelen, published in 1866, pages 32, 106, and 111-112.
Cecil county, named in honor of the second Lord Baron of Baltimore, was erected in 1674, the tenth county in order of formation, and it is situated in the northeast corner of Maryland, on the borders of Pennsylvania and Delaware, and cut off from the remainder of the state by the Sassafras river on the south, and the Chesapeake bay and Susquehanna river on the west. It is one of the smaller counties in area — 350 square miles — much of which is, however, under water, as it is intersected by several rivers, notably the North East, the Elk and the Bohemia. The surface throughout is rolling, the northern portion being hilly; this gives considerable water power which is utilizied by a number of large paper, iron, cotton, flour, phosphate, kaolin and fluor-spar mills. The third largest pulp and paper mill in the United States is located at Elkton the county-seat. In the eighteenth century the output of pig and bar iron at the Principio Company's furnaces was the largest in America. The soil generally is fertile, varying from a yellow clay in the south to a disintegrated rock in the north, producing fruits, grain and hay in abundance. So noted has its hay crop become that the highest grade on the Baltimore market is known as "Cecil county hay." Along the Susquehanna river are several large granite quarries, affording the best building material, a stone which when polished, as is done at Port Deposit, is excelled in beauty by no other. Kaolin is largely worked for use in the manufacture of paper and in porcelain factories, and chrome has been extensively mined. Although possessing such excellent water facilities, marsh land is almost unknown. The banks of the Susquehanna river rise abruptly to a height of from 80 to nearly 600 feet. At Port Deposit the granite banks rise almost perpendicularly 200 to 300 feet. The fisheries, as might be expected, are of much importance. Elkton, the largest town, has about 3,000 inhabitants, followed by Port Deposit, Perryville, Rising Sun, North East, Chesapeake City, and Cecilton. The scenery in places is picturesque in the extreme. That along the Susquehanna, near Conowingo, and on the Octoraro, near Porter's Bridge, attracts artists from a distance, and compares most favorably with the Wissahickon and other rugged streams so often delineated by the painter's brush. The county is about equi-distant from Philadelphia and Baltimore, is intersected by the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore; the Philadelphia division of the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Baltimore Central Railroads, also by the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Cecil county was one of the first to engage in school work. In 1723 the Colonial Legislature appointed a committee consisting of John Ward, John Dowell, Benj. Pearce and others, to open free schools, and they opened one. St. Stephen's Church, organized in 1692, opened a public school about 1734. The Friend's Meeting House at Calvert was organized by William Penn in 1702, and soon after opened a school. The church of St. Francis Xavier was organized in 1704, and afterward opened a school. The county in 1859 organized a system of free public schools, thus antedating that of the state six years. Among the more prominent private schools are the West Nottingham Academy, opened about 1741 by Rev. Samuel Finley, who afterward became the president of Princeton University. It is situated near Colora. The Tome Institute, most beautifully situated on the bluff at Port Deposit, presided over by Dr. A. W. Harris, with a corps of 63 teachers, and over 500 pupils, was endowed by the late Jacob Tome with several millions of dollars.
Contributed 2022 Nov 15 by Norma Hass, extracted from Leading Events of Maryland History, by J. Gambrill and S. Bates, published in 1903, pages 219-220.
Cecil is always included among the Eastern Shore counties. At first this is a little confusing since the county extends around the head of the Bay and lies partly on the Western Shore; however, a glance at the map is explanatory. Chesapeake Bay is, in effect, the great estuary of the Susquehanna River and as Cecil lies entirely to the east of the river, it is definitely a part of the Eastern Shore. Coming up to Cecil one passes beyond the influence of the sea; a chain of hills appears to the westward.
The Bohemia River repeats the Sassafras on a gentler scale. Its name is indissolubly connected with that of Augustine Herman, a native of Prague who was a surveyor’s clerk in New Amsterdam in the days of Peter Stuyvesant. He came to Maryland for the first time in 1659 as an envoy from the Dutch colony. He was so charmed with the country that, later, having quarreled with Governor Stuyvesant, he came back to settle and was duly naturalized as a citizen of Maryland. He offered to make an ‘"‘exact mapp" of the province in exchange for a grant of land. The Calverts accepted, and Herman spent ten years in surveying the shore lines and boundaries. His map was a good one. Many of the place names that he bestowed have survived until this day. Meanwhile, he was granted four thousand acres on the river that, along with his manor, he called Bohemia after his native country. His holdings were increased from time to time until they amounted to more than fifteen thousand acres. He became the greatest man on the Eastern Shore. His open-handed hospitality was legendary; he had a deer park; he kept a coach and four and owned hundreds of slaves.
Herman’s house disappeared long ago. Of the many tall stories that cling to his name, there is one to the effect that after having lived in Maryland for several years, he returned to New Amsterdam to try to recover his property there. In the meantime the city, captured by the British, had become New York. Instead of getting his property, Herman was arrested, thrown into prison, and sentenced to death. Feigning insanity, he asked to be allowed to see his horse for the last time. An amiable jailer brought the beast to him up the high steps and into the ‘"‘Round House," where he was confined. Herman sprang on his back and put him to one of the tall windows. The horse crashed through and, landing unharmed fifteen feet below, carried his master to the bank of the North River and swam it to safety. According to the story, the horse was maintained by his grateful master for the rest of his life without working, and provided with a handsome tombstone when he died.
The next waterway to be crossed on the way around the Bay is an artificial one; the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Only fourteen miles long, it joins the waters of the two great bays and shortens the voyage between Baltimore and Philadelphia by almost three hundred miles. Also, vessels from Baltimore to Europe can save a hundred miles by coming this way.
At the Chesapeake end there is a pleasant early American village which, in a hundred years, has not grown up to its name, Chesapeake City, and is not likely to do so now. Alongside the canal rise a pair of gigantic steel towers which hoist the highway bridge high in the air when a vessel has to pass. The operation is so intriguing to the eye that even the villagers stop to look when the bridge is carried aloft and a big vessel slips silently through. At dusk, when the running lights go on, it has a quality of mystery.
Elkton, Maryland, the seat of Cecil County, enjoyed until 1938 a nationwide notoriety as a place to marry in haste. Even before you reached the town, huge signs illuminated at night rose beside the road advertising the residences of ministers, while the main street of the town was plastered with them. There grew up between ministers and taxi-cab drivers an alliance which became such a scandal that at last the Maryland legislature was forced to take action. There was a great local opposition, naturally, since marriage had become the town’s leading industry, but a bill was passed requiring couples to give forty-eight hours’ notice of their intention to marry.
Elkton, an old town with an interesting history, has better claims to attention than its marrying ministers. In Colonial days it was known as Head of Elk, and passengers changed here from coach to packet and vice versa. General Howe, on his way to take Philadelphia in 1777, landed his army on Elk Neck; Lafayette’s troops embarked here for Annapolis in March, 1781, and Washington’s troops on the way to Yorktown followed in September of that year. Always having been on the main route of travel, and possessing good water power in the Elk River, Elkton was one of the early industrial towns of the colonies. In the first years of the nineteenth century, it was a leading American grain market; grist-mills are running still which have been grinding grain for two centuries. In Cecil County there are paper-mills as old as the Federal Government; soapstone and chrome mines which have been worked as long.
Nearly the whole of Elkton is stretched along its one street. Naturally, this is Main Street. The fine old houses are giving place one by one to chain-stores, filling-stations and other improvements, but some are left. There is the Hermitage, over two hundred years old, a stone house with dormers. Robert Alexander, a tory, entertained British officers here in 1777 and paid dear for it. Local patriots confiscated his estate and sold it off in lots. A short distance outside of town on this side is Graymont. From this hill Washington is said to have watched Howe’s army disembarking.
At the other end of town, the old Hollingsworth Tavern survives, now somewhat cramped by a filling station. The Hollingsworths were a great family in Elkton. George Washington spent the night in the tavern on August 27, 1777, while watching the progress of the British fleet up the bay. Two nights later, it is said that General Sir William Howe occupied the same room and was served by the same Negro servant. Not far away is Partridge Hill, a stone house built in 1768, with well-preserved interior woodwork: cornices, mantels, cupboards, and fine paneling.
Cecil County has lately built itself an expensive new courthouse in Elkton, and I looked with a good deal of interest to see what 1940 would produce in the way of court-houses. I was both surprised and disappointed. The building stands directly upon Main Street without a tree or a bit of grass to grace it. The material is handsome enough, being the native stone of Cecil County, but the bronze trimmings seem strangely out of place and the design, inclining to L’Art Moderne, hopelessly out of character with the simple, pleasant American town that surrounds it. The desire to be up-to-date leads men into strange aberrations.
In making a circuit of Maryland, one turns south again at Elkton, or, to be exact, southwest for the first few miles. The first town is North East, where we again come in sight of an arm of the Bay, now to the east of us. There is an ancient church in this town, officially St. Mary’s but popularly known as St. Mary Ann’s. It is said to have been built in 1700, but the tower is of 1904! In the churchyard are to be found the graves of some of the once so dreaded Susquehannock Indians, the scourge of the infant province.
Further along, the main highway crosses Principio Creek. An iron works was established here as long ago as 1715; the furnaces supplied cannon balls to the Revolutionary Army, and through various vicissitudes the furnaces actually operated until the year 1936. Ruins of an ancient brick-lined furnace and a turbine water wheel are to be seen in the tangled growth that lines the mill-race below the dam.
Between here and the river the road passes through Susquehanna Manor, a thirty-two-thousand-acre tract granted in 1680 to Colonel George Talbot, a favorite of Charles, third Lord Baltimore. Before Talbot had got far in colonizing the tract, he became involved in a dispute with Christopher Rousby, Collector of Customs for the King. Rousby had had trouble with Lord Baltimore, Proprietary and Governor of the province, and Talbot was eager to take the part of his patron. The two met aboard the Quaker Ketch anchored in the Patuxent River, and Talbot stabbed Rousby to death.
The captain of the ketch carried Colonel Talbot to Gloucester, Virginia, where he was imprisoned. Madame Talbot, accompanied by certain "red-haired Irishmen," sailed to Gloucester in a shallop and liberated Talbot. He was heard of in various places in the province and it was said that he even had the temerity to return to his own plantation where his Irishmen kept "watch and ward at the places and Avenues leading to his house." Although a great hue and cry was raised throughout the province, the Colonel remained at large, "Flyeing and betakeing himself for refuge to the remotest parts of the woods and deserts." According to tradition, one of his hiding places was on Palmer’s (now Garrett) Island at the mouth of the Susquehanna, where, it is said, he was fed by the hawks or falcons that he had trained for hunting gamebirds.
Talbot finally surrendered and was tried at Jamestown, Virginia. He was found guilty of murder and sentence of death imposed. An appeal was made to England and the King sent a pardon to Talbot, which the Virginia court was obliged to honor. He returned to England in 1687.
Perryville, an unremarkable village, is built on the high bank of the Susquehanna River. There was, of course, a ferry here from the earliest time. Motor traffic was until recently carried across the river by a quaint, double-decked structure which served the Pennsylvania Railroad as a bridge for many years. When the railroad built its new bridge, the old one was offered to the state at a low price, but the state declined to buy and it was sold to private parties. For some years protesting motorists had to pay a dollar to cross, and the owners reaped a fortune. In the end the state was forced to buy the bridge at five times the original asking price. A magnificent new bridge has been built a little farther upstream, where a moderate toll is imposed.
The view of the mouth of the river where it empties into the wide and misty Bay is a fine one. On the right bank, half hidden among trees, is the little town of Havre de Grace. The new bridge passes over Garrett (or Palmer’s) Island where Colonel Talbot hid. It received its original name from Edward Palmer who attempted to found a trading-post here in 1622 but failed. Palmer wished to establish the first college in America and left this island in his will for that purpose. Nothing came of it, however, and the honor which should have been Palmer’s has gone to John Harvard.
Six miles up the river on the Cecil side is Port Deposit, in the past a place of some importance because it was at the head of navigation. Great rafts of log and "arks" of lumber were floated downriver and broken up here; extensive quarries were worked in the cliffs along the river. It is a quiet place nowadays with less than half its former population, but very picturesque. Squeezed between the lofty cliffs and the river there is room for only one street and the railway tracks. To make room for a church they had to hollow out the cliff behind. Many of the houses are built of the granite quarried in the neighborhood; others, of wood, break out in galleries overhanging the street.
Port Deposit’s greatest citizen was Jacob Tome, who arrived here penniless on a raft in 1833, and went into the lumber business. In later years, to obtain the education he felt he must have, he rode to Perryville every day after the day’s work, took the train to Philadelphia where he attended night school, and was back in Port Deposit in time for breakfast. The only sleep he got was on the train going and coming. His determination earned its reward; he became one of the leading financiers of Maryland, and when the lumber business fell off in the East, extended his operations to Michigan. Among his many benefactions is the Jacob Tome Institute, an educational foundation which furnished town schools to Port Deposit and the magnificent Tome School for boarders on the cliffs above. Every old-timer in Port Deposit has a story to tell of Jake Tome. I will quote one. Mr. Tome, entering the village hotel one day, was hailed by a servant with ill-concealed impudence. "Hey, Jake, I remember when you was a hostler here just like me." "Yes," said Mr. Tome, "and you’re still a hostler."
A few miles north of Port Deposit on the cliff
high above the river, stands Octorara, one of the most charming houses in the
whole state. One side of the grounds descends steeply to Octorara Creek. The
stone house, built two centuries and a half ago and frequently altered and added
to, has no particular architectural pretensions, but the various parts, old and
new, are tied together with double galleries, and the ancient trees, the ivy,
the box, and the glorious site high above the river combine to create a harmony.
Like certain people you meet, this house has an unforgettable personality.
A short distance above the mouth of Octorara Creek, the Conowingo Dam
stretches across the Susquehanna, a huge source of water-power for several
states. It is just under a mile long, a hundred feet high, and backs up the wide
stream for fourteen miles. United States Route 1 is carried across the river on
top of the dam.
Contributed 2024 Dec 29 by Norma Hass, extracted from 1942 Maryland Main and the Eastern Shore by Hulbert Footner, pages 246-253.
An important early Jesuit school in Maryland. Around 1741 the growth of religious intolerance in the Maryland colony induced the Jesuits to move the center of their activities, at least for a time, to a remote location in Cecil County, not far from the Pennsylvania border. Here at Bohemia Manor, they opened a boarding school for boys. Although there is no record of the opening date, among the more likely ones are 1742 and 1745. Thomas Poulton, SJ, under whose jurisdiction the school was established, is mentioned as being at Bohemia Manor in 1742. Other indications make 1745 the more probable opening year. For example, it is believed that one of the school's most outstanding pupils, "Jacky" Carroll, later Abp. John Carroll, was about 11 years old when he came to Bohemia Manor, which would be in 1745 or 1746.
The organization and curriculum of the school at Bohemia Manor was quite simple but no doubt similar to that of its European predecessors. The duration of the school is uncertain; it was probably discontinued shortly after Poulton's death in 1749. According to the financial account of Mr. T. Wayt, the schoolmaster, there were apparently two courses available: a classical course for which he received 40 shillings as tuition, and an English course, probably a type of commercial course, for which he received 30 shillings. On the other hand, there may have been two programs: college preparatory and elementary. The scantiness of the records, however, gives us no complete answer to their exact nature. It would seem that the program was not limited to the three "Rs," for it certainly prepared students to be admitted to St. Omer's College in Flanders on completion of their studies at Bohemia Manor. Besides Carroll, among the early students were the three Neale brothers, Benedict, Edward, and Leonard, founder of the Georgetown Visitation Convent; James Heath; George Boyes; and Robert Brent.
Whatever the courses offered at Bohemia, the school, like Newtown Manor in St. Mary's County, was of great importance in the early educational endeavors of Maryland. Both schools were of significance to the future of the Church in the U.S., for they were to prepare many students for entrance into European colleges, whence these young men would return to be leaders of the Church in Maryland and the U.S.
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