As the mercury rose and fell each day and rain drenched Cecil County every so often one person carefully observed the changing Elkton weather. That gentleman, H. Wirt Bouchelle, trudged out to the backyard of his home at 6 p.m. each evening to check the temperature, note the day’s highs and lows, and read the rain gauge. 

The summer day he launched his nearly fifty year career as a volunteer observer for the National Weather service was an unusually comfortably one by Chesapeake Bay standards. The thermometer climbed to a comfortable 77 degrees while overnight it fell to 66 degrees on July 22, 1927. There was no precipitation. Almost Fifty years later on November 30, 1976, the aging weather observer dutifully took his last observation. That chilly autumn day, the temperature never climbed above freezing, the mercy just hitting thirty degree. Overnight it fell to a frigid 12 degrees, but at least it didn’t snow. 

Over the year’s he recorded the weather extremes here.  The highest temperature was on 106 degrees on July 10, 1936 and the lowest was 14 below zero on Feb. 9, 1934. The largest amount of precipitation, 6.05-inches, was dumped on Elkton on June 27, 1938.  On January 30, 1966, he noted the record for snow-fall, 20-inches.

Born near Mechanics Valley, he moved to Elkton in 1908 to become a rural letter carrier. He delivered mail by horse and buggy that year.  In 1915, he was appointed the assistant postmaster and served in that capacity until he retired in 1968. At the suggestion of County Extension Agent Tom Bartilson he began making those backyard weather observations in 1927, giving us a valuable historical record of day-to-day conditions in Cecil County. He died at the age of 90 on July 19, 1979.

His daily observations are available through the Utah State University Climate Center. It is something I use as a research source while writing articles. Click here to reach the database.  The database contains plenty of other data reporting stations, which are helpful too.

A block full of century old buildings on North St. are blanketed with snow in March 1978.

Local veteran Joseph Lofthouse was a radioman and paratrooper for the 502nd regiment and participated in such major events as D-Day, Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, and the occupation of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.  Hear his first hand experiences of an extradordinary time and events that changed the work at the Elkton Central Library on Tuesday, Nov. 3rd at 7:00 p.m.

As the local chapter of the NAACP prepares to celebrate 50 years of civil rights advocacy a Window on Cecil County’s Past has checked the old newspapers for that year for information.  The Cecil Democrat carried a front page story, but nothing was found in the Cecil Whig.

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In February 1962, the Cecil Democrat announced the organization of the Cecil County NAACP branch. A front page photo showed the officers meeting to organize at Wright’s AME Church in Elkton. McKinley Scott of North East was the Vice-President; Mildred Johnson of Elkton was the treasurer and Rev. H. R. Curtis, Ekton, President; and Laurie Loper Charlestown was the secretary.

The Cecil County branch of the NAACP gathered for its annual banquet Saturday evening in Perryville. The national civil rights organization is observing its 100th anniversary this year and the local chapter will mark 50 years of advocacy in 2012. The evening’s keynote speaker was Major General (retired) Joseph McNeil. On Feb. 1, 1960, General McNeil along with, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond and Franklin McCain, protested a segregated lunch counter at a Woolworth department store in Greensboro, N.C., by conducting a sit-in. Their non-violent protest quickly attracted the attention of the national media , which called them the Greensboro Four. Their protest at the lunch counter, which sparked sit-ins across the country, became one of the defining moments for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Since the local chapter is getting ready to mark its 50th anniversary, I put together a video slide show of images related to African-American history in Cecil County in the 20th century. Many of these images were used in a Power Point slide show during the Saturday evening program.

Four hundred years ago Englishman John Smith and a small crew of adventurers set out in an open boat to explore the Chesapeake Bay. Between 1607 and 1609 Smith mapped and documented nearly 3,000 miles of the Bay and its rivers. Along the way they visited many thriving Native American communities and gathered information about this “fruitful and delightsome land.” In December 2006 the U.S. Congress designated the routes of Smith’s explorations of the Chesapeake as a national historic trail—the first national water trail.

As part of the planning process to develop a trail, which will allow you to learn about this aspect of the Chesapeake’s past, the National Park service is seeking public input through meetings held across the Chesapeake Bay region. These are opportunities to meet directly with representatives of the national historic trail.

The meeting focuses on topics related to interpretation, education, and trail use to help guide the interpretive plan for the trail. Based on input from the 2008 meetings, the National Park Service is currently developing several alternative proposals for ways to manage, interpret, and access the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail.

The meeting in Havre De Grace takes place on Oct. 22 at the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum

100 Lafayette Street, Havre de Grace, MD from 6 to 8 p.m.

Click here for more details

The Friends of the Cecil County Public Library will host an exciting historical program, “Shipwrecks on the Chesapeake Bay,” on Wednesday, November 4, at 7 p.m. at the Elkton Central Library. The Chesapeake Bay is a key feature of Maryland’s geography, but less well known as a graveyard for ships, passengers, and their crews. More than 1800 shipwrecks have been documented on the Bay from Colonial Era to present. Presenter Don Bonsteel, from the Maryland Department of the Enoch Pratt, will discuss five of the most interesting documented cases for shipwrecks on the Bay.

The program is free and open to the public. For more information or to register please call the Elkton Central Library’s information desk at 410-996-5600 ext.481, or visit our website at www.ebranch.cecil.info.

The Fair Hill Natural Resource Center opened one of Cecil County’s surviving one room schools to the public Saturday.  Located in the center of the state park, the structure was restored by the Elk Creeks Preservation Society about a decade ago.

Built about 1830, the fieldstone schoolhouse predates the establishment of the county school system in 1850.  It was a subscription school, a place built by local residents to educate their children but in 1852 Center School was incorporated into the county system.  Classes were held here until it closed about 1920.

A ticket to the 1905 execution. After the 1879 hanging, the sentences were carried out behind the jail house walls and only a small number of witnesses were admitted

Death sentences were carried out in the counties until 1923 when Maryland centralized executions in the state penitentiary. Consequently from the county’s founding in 1674 until the law changed, at least six convicted murderers made the final walk to the gallows here in Cecil. The county’s executioner, the sheriff, got ready to perform the grizzly deed on the appointed day, as crowds gathered to witness the doomed convict’s final moments.

As many as 5,000 people watched some of the executions, but by 1893 when Alfred Stout was executed the law required the sheriff to execute death in as private a manner as possible.  So for the first time, the execution took place inside the jail yard.  The Baltimore Sun hoped that the Elkton hanging wouldn’t be a repetition of the turbulent scene which attended the recent hanging in Chesterton, in direct disregard of the law.  It was not for just his legal and spiritual advisers, law enforcement personnel, and a few other people stood inside the old jail house yard for the death watch.

The last public execution took place at the Alms House in Cherry Hill and Medford Waters was the doomed man.   Here is a description of the day when a line of carriages a mile long made the trip from Elkton to Cherry Hill and a crowd of between 1,000 to 1,500 assembled on the poor house property.

On the morning of December 5, 1879, Elkton was a stir at an early hour. It was to be a memorable day in the town’s history for the resident were to be treated to a spectacle the likes of which they would never be permitted to witness again. A man was to forfeit his life on the gallows for the crime or murder and his execution was to be public. The central figure in the proceedings was an African-American youth named Medford Waters who not yet 18 years old. He worked on a farm near Cecilton.

On November 25, 1878 he and another man were husking corn when a quarrel erupted between them. Waters got a pistol and fired two bullets into the other man, killing him instantly. He fled to Queen Anne’s County and after hiding for two nights was arrested by the sheriff there and turned over to Sheriff William T. Boulden. Having been indicted for murder in the first degree, his trail started on Jan 6, 1879. A verdict of murder in the first degree was returned.

Friday, Dec., 5th the date set for the execution having arrived, the Groome guards at 8 a.m. assembled at the armory and marched to the jail under command of Capt. Wm. G. Purnell who formed them in marching order to lead the procession to the Alms House which had been selected as the place of execution. The gallows with a platform eight feet from the ground had been framed in Elkton the previous day.

At 10 o’clock the sheriff accompanied by the prisoner and two deputies, Eli W. Janney and John S. Cooling, came out of the jail and entered the carriage which was to convey them to the Alms House. A squad of soldiers led the process, then came the officers and prisoners, followed by the remaining soldiers and a line of carriages which extended for more than a mile. The gallows was reach at 5 minutes after eleven, and the sheriff accompanied by the prisoner and Mr. Janney, who had some experience at an earlier execution and Mr. Cooling ascended the platform. Mr. John Perkins and the Rev. C. H. Williams also ascended the platform, where Mr. Williams at the request of the prisoner read the 15th chapter of the book of Revelations and Mr. Perkins offered a fervent prayer, and the entire audience joined in signing a hymn.

Waters then made a speech to the crowd, admonishing them to restrain their tempers and expressing the hope that t none of them would come to an end like his. Mr. Perkins then sang another hymn to conclude the exercise. The prisoner asked the sheriff to lengthen the rope, which he did, and at 11:35 severed the cord and the drop fell.  The number of spectators was variously estimated at from 1,000 to 1,500.

The table below is a registry of the capital punishment cases, prior to centralization, which have been identified thus far.

Click here to go to article on 1905 execution, the last one carried out in Cecil County

From Cecil Observer

Earleville resident Jenifer Grindle Dolde will be giving a talk about her book and oral history project, “Cecil’s Soldiers: Stories from the World War II Generation,” at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 19, at the Chesapeake City Library. The book was published by the Historical Society of Cecil County and provides an insightful look at how the war shook up sleepy little Cecil County. Dolde, a Washington College graduate and alumnus of the University of Delaware’s Museum Studies graduate program, was formerly a museum curator and now works as a historian and museum consultant.

Article Continues on Cecil Observer

Earlier we posted a piece on Robert F. Kennedy’s Funeral Train passing through Cecil County and there has been a lot of interest in that subject.  Here’s a photograph of the image published in the Cecil Whig that June day in 1968.  Here is the link to our earlier post.