A Timeline of Port Deposit & Environs
By Erika Quesenbery Paw Paw Museum Curator

Susquehannock Indians migrate south encamping in the area of Lancaster, Pa.

1608

Captain John Smith left the Jamestown, Va., settlement to explore the upper Chesapeake Bay and her tributaries, including the Northeast, Sassafras and Susquehanna Rivers. On the Susquehanna he marked a stopping point, due to rocks and waterfalls, as Smith Fayles, with an “X” on his later published map. There were at least 600 Susquehannocks living along the shore of the Susquehanna when Captain Smith visited.

1612

Captain John Smith’s map and text, The Proceedings of the English Colonie, are published in London in 1612 providing a description of the people and lands he encountered at the Head of the Bay, and offering an excellent description of the 60 Susquehannock Indians he met in the area of Port Deposit.

1616

The powerful Susquehannocks are known to have had a village called Poppemetto about 3-miles above Port Deposit and a palisaded town at the mouth of Octoraro Creek between 1616 and 1662.

1621

William Claiborne arrived at the Jamestown settlement in Virginia where he quickly developed “get rich quick schemes” based on the fur trade of the area, which would later include Palmer’s Island in Cecil County.

In the early 1620’s, prior to 1625, George Calvert, while in the service of James I, started a plantation at New Foundland.

1622

Edward Palmer received a land grant for Palmer’s Island, now known as Garrett Island in the Susquehanna River. He intended founding a university, not unlike Oxford in England, upon his island.

1625

Lord Baltimore George Calvert converted to Catholicism in 1625 and destroyed his public career but spurred his interest in New World colonization after his failed Newfoundland effort in the early 1620s.

1626

From 1626-1627 William Claiborne explored the northern Chesapeake Bay establishing trade networks with the Indians.

1629

One cold winter at Newfoundland caused George Calvert to ask King Charles I for a grant of land in the northern Chesapeake, which is later granted in 1632.

1631

William Claiborne established his trading post on Palmer’s Island. His Kent Island settlement was thriving at this time, as a “large permanent community with a stockaded ford, church, store and docks – surrounded by plantations.” Palmer’s Island was used by Claiborne as an “advance” trading station.

1632

Cecilius Calvert, at the age of 27, became the First Proprietor of Maryland.

1634

Cecilius Calvert established Maryland Colony on the Potomac River.

1637

The Susquehannocks gave Palmer’s Island to William Claiborne by treaty.

1638

            The British Committee of Trade and Plantations ruled in favor of Lord Baltimore and granted him unchallenged proprietorship of his colony, against the efforts of William Claiborne. Therefore, Palmer’s Island was now in the hands of Lord Baltimore.

1640

            Richard Hall patents a large tract of land on the Octoraro and builds Octoraro Mansion on the land he calls Mount Welcome.

1643

Palmer’s Island is fortified with “ffort Conquest” and garrisoned.

1645

Ingle’s Rebellion – Captain Richard Ingle, using letters of marque issued by Parliament, raided St. Mary’s on the grounds that the Calvert’s supported the King and Proprietary.

1649

Cecilius Calvert wrote out his policy of toleration for all Christians, in the Act of Religion of 1649.

1650

The Susquehannocks reach their peak population of about 3,000.

1652

The Susquehannocks sign a treaty and William Claiborne is once again in control and possession of Palmer’s Island.

Nathaniel Utie settled a plantation on Spesutie or Spesutia Island, where he lived (further down the bay from Port Deposit, in Harford County.)

Maryland makes a treaty with the Susquehannocks.

1658

The first documented settlement in Cecil County occurred at Carpenter’s Point near the mouth of Principio Creek – other than Palmer’s Island, of course.

John Bateman’s original patent for Perry Point dated 1658, was named for his wife Mary Perry.

1659

The Assembly established Baltimore County in 1659 encompassing all of present-day Cecil, Harford, and Baltimore Counties, Baltimore City, and parts of Anne Arundel, Howard, Carroll and Frederick Counties.

1660

Tobacco industry boom helps Maryland colony grow and by 1660 there were 6,000 inhabitants as compared to about 100 in 1645.

1670

The Post Road opened connecting what is presently Perryville (then Lower Susquehanna Ferry) and Stockett’s Plantation (now Havre de Grace), linking southern and mid-Atlantic states to New England on the coast raod.

300 acres of land known as the “Widow’s Lot” and “Rycroft’s Choice” was patented to John Rycroft. The Widow’s Lot would eventually come into the possession of Col. John Creswell, who ran a ferryboat operation. The Widow’s Lot contained all the land north of Port Deposit’s town square.

1674

A portion of Baltimore County was cut off east of the Chesapeake Bay to form a new county named in honor of the proprietor, Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore. There were enough settlers in the area of what became Cecil County to warrant this move. The name of the county was actually put forth years earlier by Augustine Herman of Bohemia Manor. The county was officially established June 6, 1674 by proclamation of Charles Calvert, as Captain General of Maryland.

Mary Wheeler filed a paper “A Renunciation in Cecil County” wherein she disowned her husband, a planter named John Wheeler Sr., of Cecil County, on June 23, 1674.

1675

            Cecil County was actually “bigger” than Baltimore County with 399 tithables to Cecil County and 319 in Baltimore County in 1675.

1676

In 1676, the above referenced John Wheeler sold by deed his dwelling and plantation called Wheeler’s Point on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay and north side of the Sassafras – his wife was not listed on the deed.

1678

At this time there were no ships being built in Maryland, according to the writings of Governor Charles Calvert. Citizens used ships built and owned by people in England, New England and Holland to carry supplies and transport goods.

            In 1678 Edward Jackson owned a tract of land on the east bank of the Susquehanna, at Perryville, and settled there calling it Heart’s Delight. He was a Captain in the Colonial wars and also a Captain in the Susquehanna Rangers.

1680

A tract of land embracing most of Port Deposit, was given by Lord Baltimore to his cousin Col. George Talbot, under the name Susquehanna Manor. George called it “New Connaught,” meaning New Ireland. Parts of this tract within present town limits were known as Anchor & Hope and Lucky Mistake.

1684

Col. George Talbot killed the King’s Tax Collector Christopher Rousby during a bitter argument. He was arrested and taken to Loyal Virginia, but with the help of his wife and two of the Irish friends he brought over to his Manor, he escaped and hid in Talbot’s Cave at Port Deposit, on Mt. Ararat, where he was fed by falcons, according to local legend.

1695

Cecil County in this year was larger than Baltimore County with 618 “tithables” to Baltimore’s 496.

The provincial capital of Maryland moved to Annapolis from the more distant St. Mary’s City.

As early as 1695 a public ferry linked portions of the Post Road across the Susquehanna at modern-day Perryville and Havre de Grace, and likely linking at Palmer’s Island.

1696

The monopoly of the Royal African Company on the slave trade ended allowing any English merchant to participate in this lucrative market.

Pre-1700

Sometime before 1700 Anchor & Hope was built as the first inn in the neighborhood of Port Deposit. The ticket window for the stagecoach is still in place.

1704

Cecil’s population is 407 masters & families; 489 free women & servant women;716 free boys & girls; 430 free men & servant men; 95 servant boys & girls; and 198 slaves.

Public roads, it was decreed, were to be cleared and grubbed at least 20-feet wide with roads leading to courthouses marked by two notches cut in trees on both sides of the road with another notch cut above the other two while roads to a church were to have a slit cut down on the bark of the tree, near the ground. Roads to a ferry were marked with three notches.

1705

Francis Makemie encourages the harvest of seafood from the Bay in 1705 and develops an elaborate plan for exporting pickled oysters.

1712

Cecil County’s entire population declined by 10%

1715

General Assembly Act of 1715 was passed punishing the assistance of escaped indentured servants and convict labor fleeing across the Susquehanna.

An association of British investors formed the Principio Company and constructed the Principio Furnace about 1715 to provide pig iron and other cast iron products. It was operated on a plantation model with slaves and indentured servants carrying out the heavy labor.

1720

            The area of Port Deposit looks much like the rest of the “tobacco colony” of Maryland, but settlers are beginning to look for fertile new ground further inland.

1726

Principio Ironworks carried a worker known as “Indian James” on their books.

1727

            Thomas Cresap, who would become known as the Rattlesnake Colonel and the Maryland Monster, operates a ferryboat service between present-day Port Deposit and Lapidum, then called Bell’s Ferry. The town at that time was known as Smith’s Ferry, for the ferry boat and Smith’s Falls, a place in the river Captain Smith marked with a German cross on his map bequeathing it Smith Fails, but history gave it a more kind interpretation. Cresap continues operating the ferry until at least 1729.

1728

            The earliest recorded date for operation of the Rock Run Mill in Port Deposit is 1728 with some records indicating the mill began operations in 1729 or 1731. John Steele was proprietor of the mill.

1731

The people of “Upper Ferry” petition for a road from the ferry toward Philadelphia, urging that there were only small paths to mark it and they were obliged to roll their tobacco their to be shipped. Upper Ferry was a former name of Port Deposit.

1733

Born in Cecil County this  year, George Read was a U.S. Jurist and Statesman who signed the Declaration of Independence and was a U.S. Senator from the State of Delaware from 1789 to 1793, before his passing in 1798.

There were 1,787 taxable persons living in Cecil County with about 2/3 in St. Stephen’s Parish (below the Elk River) and 1/3 in St. Mary Anne’s Parish, above the Elk River.

1737

The founding of our Harford County neighbor Darlington is dated by its residents to 1737, when Nathaniel Rigbie conveyed to the Quakers 3 ˝ acres for the Society of Friends to build their meeting house, although it wasn’t actually built until 1784.

1740

            Rodger’s Tavern in Perryville, an important stop on the Old Post Road or Queen’s Highway, was built circa 1740 and originally known as Stephenson’s Tavern or the Ferry House.

1742

An Act of General Assembly established Charlestown on the Northeast River to improve trade on December 1.

1743

James Rumsey, mechanical engineer and inventor, was born in Cecil County this year. He was a pioneer in steamboat building and died in 1792.

Charlestown lots advertised.

1744

Notice released of Charlestown’s semi-annual fair, enacted by the General Assembly on October 1.

An academy was started in West Nottingham – West Nottingham Academy -  by Samuel Finley, a native of County Armagh, Ireland. He stayed in charge of the school until 1761 when he was named President of the College of New Jersey – which is now known as Princeton University.

1745

Richard Bassett was born in Cecil County in 1745. This Revolutionary War statesman signed the United States Constitution and was a U.S. Senator from 1789 to 1793, then went on to serve as the Governor of Delaware from 1799 to 1801.

1747

Maryland passed a tobacco inspection act with three warehouses in Cecil named official inspection points – Fredericktown on the Sassafras, John Holland’s at Bohemia Ferry and Charlestown.

1752

John Ford, who was Captain of an independent company of militia guarding the Elk and Susquehanna River outlets at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, was born. He later joined the Continental Army and was commissioned a Captain of the Sassafras Battalion on April 21, 1778. He fought in the Battles of Long Island, Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, King’s Mountain, Guilford Courthouse and Camden. At Camden he was one of 170 men of the Maryland Line taken prisoner, August 16, 1780. He owned “The Tanyard” at the head of North East River and St. John’s Manor in Elk Neck.

1755

Cecil’s population was 7,731 and Baltimore County’s was 17,238. In Cecil the population had shifted with 60% of the people in St. Mary Anne’s parish and the rest in St. Stephen’s Parish below the Elk River.

1763

Paxton’s Boys, a mob of settlers, murdered the few remaining Susquehannock Indians, who had been placed in Lancaster Jail for protection, during mob violence after Pontiac’s uprising. The Susquehannocks in the jail were artisans who had converted to the Quaker faith leading a peaceful life, about 20 old men, women and children.

1765

Marylander’s strongly protested the Stamp Act of 1765, forming Chapters of the Sons of Liberty

1766

The Stamp Act was repealed.

1767

The boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland is finally, and officially, determined by two English mathematicians, Mason & Dixon, after years of fighting between the Lord Proprietary of Maryland and the “Pennites.”

1768

Newspapers report that the “great quantities” of fish formerly found in the Susquehanna River “are much diminished.” The Maryland General Assembly immediately banned weirs, dams, pots and other devices erected for the taking of large hauls of fish from the Susquehanna.

1773

Harford County is carved out of Baltimore County, over 100-years after Cecil County was founded.

1774

Maryland’s extra-legal body, the Provincial Convention, formed, lasting until 1777.

Richard Caswell, born in Cecil County in 1729, becomes a member of the Continental Congress serving from 1774 to 1776. This U.S. Revolutionary War soldier and political leader became the first Governor of North Carolina from 1776 to 1780. He died in 1789.

1775

George Washington begins writing about his visits to Rodger’s Tavern in Perryville in 1775 and his diaries continue to record such entries through 1800.

Col. John Rodgers, of Perryville, raises the 5th Company of Maryland Militia and served as its Commander in 1775. This company became part of the famous Flying Corps, which marched north to help Washington at the beginning of the Revolution.

The Council of Safety, an executive body, formed in 1775 in Maryland.

1776

Robert Eden, the last proprietary governor, left the colony on a British ship in June.

Declaration of Rights is adopted November 1776 by Maryland ending the position of the Church of England as the state-supported religion and granting all Christians, including Catholics, freedom to worship.

1777

Senate and House choose Thomas Johnson as the first Governor of the State of Maryland.

Fishermen began using haul seines to take croakers and spot.

On August 27, 1777, Sir William Howe (with his army of 17,000 English) came up the Elk River en route to Philadelphia, disembarking at Oldfield Point and burning Revolutionary soldier John Ford’s home and carrying away his property. John Ford was Captain of the independent militia guarding the outlets of the Elk and Susquehanna Rivers.

1781

The French Army, under Count de Rochambeau and part of the American Army under Marquis de Lafayette, passed through Port Deposit on their way to Philadelphia.

The first church services in Perryville were held in Rodger’s Tavern in 1781.

Colonel Tench Tilghman rode across Cecil County and countrywide, at the time, in 1781, with news of the Revolution on October 22.

In 1781 Col. Elihu Hall welcomed George Washington for a visit of Elihu’s Mount Welcome at Octoraro.

1782

Cecil’s population at the close of the Revolutionary War was 10,383 with 75% white and 25% black.

The city of Havre de Grace was laid out by Robert Young Stokes.

1783

Cecil and Harford County tax lists revealed there were several free blacks living in the two counties.

Peace with Britain.

The Susquehanna Company received a state charter to build a canal and locks from the state line to Tidewater. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Aquilla Hall and Augustine Washington, among others, invested in the canal. It was to be no less than 30 feet wide, and not less than three feet deep with locks to pass vessels 80 feet long and 12 feet wide and to be completed by 1790.

1784

The Deer Creek Friends Meeting House in Darlington, Harford County, was built in 1784.

1785

Havre de Grace was incorporated.

1789

State assembly exempted Cecil County from having to maintain tobacco warehouses and inspections as no more tobacco was grown for export in Cecil.

The first known report of granite being quarried in Port Deposit.

1790

During the first Federal census Cecil was divided in 15 hundreds – North Sassafras, South Sassafras, Bohemia, Bohemia Manor, Middle Neck, Back Creek, Elk Neck, Charlestown, South Milford, North Milford, East Nottingham, West Nottingham, Octoraro, South Susquehanna and North Susquehanna.

The date set in 1783 for the completion of the Susquehanna Canal was 1790 – but it was no where near complete so the incorporators were given an extension.

Cecil had 13,625 inhabitants, 25% slaves and 163 free blacks.

1791

            Colonel John Rodgers dies in 1791 and leave is Rodger’s Tavern, in Perryville, to his wife Elizabeth, who continues to operate it.

1793

The building of the Conewago, a one-mile long channel around the falls in southern Pennsylvania was undertaken between 1793 and 1797. It eventually became part of the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal. The village of Conowingo was born on this site.

1795

            Sometime between the period of 1794-1798 a Rock Run Gristmill is built and operated as a commercial enterprise into the 20th century.

1796

A German miller named Breider, from Huntington, built and floated the first ark to what is now Port Deposit, down the Susquehanna this year, impatient for the completion of the promised canal. It was “flat bottomed” and “crudely constructed,” for this one-way journey.

1797

Again the Susquehanna Canal, due to be completed in1790, wasn’t don, so an extension until 1798 had been granted, but by 1797 the work was so far from  being done that the completion date was pushed all the way back to a new century, 1805.

Nottingham Lot No. 2 was sold by the Tory William Edmanson to Thomas Richards in 1797. The tract containing the famous and massive Richard’s Oak remains in the Richards family for over a century. The famous Oak was preserved and marked by the ladies of Port Deposit’s Hytheham Club years later.

1798

The 15 “hundreds” in Cecil County were supplanted by four election districts.

1799

A map shows construction of the canal from the Pennsylvania line to Port Deposit, in this year.

The heading of a letter written by George Washington references Rodger’s Tavern in “Lower Ferry,” distinguishing Perryville’s old town name from that of “Upper Ferry,” the name for Port Deposit at that time.

1800

            John Stump buys the Perry Point property, containing a 1,800-acre farm, from the Thomas Family in 1800.

1801

            The Susquehanna River was declared a public highway by the Maryland Legislature in December 1801.

1802

Captain Leonard Krauss, General George Washington’s tailor, built the Cross Keys Tavern at Calvert in 1802 on the busy Lancaster to Port Deposit Road.

1803

A final completion date extension of 1805 for the Susquehanna Canal had been given in 1797. This time the Canal was finally completed, ahead of final schedule, in 1803 and put in operation. It had issues of swift moving water and heavy siltation due to mills, though.

In 1803 mails for Brick Meeting House, Rising Sun, Unicorn, Black Horse and Sorrel House closed every Friday at 12 o’clock noon, according to Alice Miller’s Cecil County A Study in Local History published in 1947. Sorrel House or Sorrel Horse, as it was also known, was built before 1803 and is located on North Main Street.

            State election laws are changed in 1801 establishing white manhood suffrage, while prior to this time some Free Blacks who met state property qualifications did vote.

1806

Sarah Ewing Hall of Rowlandsville published Sketch of A Landscape and the bestseller of its time, Conversations on The Bible.

Granite quarries were officially opened in what is present-day Port Deposit.

1807

            All ports in Cecil County, including those at Port Deposit, are closed by an embargo on British ships in 1807.

1808

            The Port Deposit Bridge Company is organized because people felt the need for something better than a ferryboat to transport them across the river.

1810

Cecil’s population was 13,006 with slaves making up 20% of the population and 7% of the population being free non-white persons. There were also 50 sawmills in Cecil County, one blast furnace and five iron forges.

Jacob Tome, the man who would become Cecil County’s first millionaire, and one of Port Deposit’s most influential citizens, is born in Manheim Township, York County, Pa., August 13, 1810.

1812

Surveyor Hugh Beard, at the prompting of Philip Thomas of Mt. Ararat, made a plat of a town he called “Creswell’s Ferry.” It contained all the land south of the square in present-day Port Deposit to Mt. Ararat.

On December 5 Gov. Levin Winder signed a bill changing the name of Creswell’s Ferry to Port Deposit for “it has become a port of deposit, why not call it as such.”

On December 5, 1813 Governor Levin Winder signs a bill changing the town’s name from Creswell’s Ferry to Port Deposit, “as it had been a port for ocean ships and arks and rafts coming down the river.” The town is now officially a town only requiring elections to form a government.

May 3, 1813 the British, under Rear Admiral George Cockburn, visited the Susquehanna River with 19 barges at Havre de grace starting a tremendous fire of shot, shell and rockets. Ferryboats and fishing craft were destroyed and farmhouses plundered and burned. A detachment went to Bell’s Ferry were a vessel and warehouse were destroyed by fire, but Port Deposit, across from Bell’s Ferry, was not visited. On May 6 they set said for the Sassafrass River with 150 Marines.

Gerry House, S. Main Street, Port Deposit, was built.

The site for the first Susquehanna River Bridge was surveyed at Port Deposit in 1813.

1814

The Vanneman House was built of Port Deposit granite prior to 1816, likely in 1814, at 88 South Main Street. It was the home of John Vanneman who owned the wharf opposite house and became known as the lower boarding house, which was quite popular among river pilots and ark men.

1815

Falls Hotel was built prior to 1818, possibly in 1815. It was originally known as Farmers and Commercial Hotel in Port Deposit.

The Baltimore firm of Charles Reeder built steam engineers for two of Baltimore’s first four steamboats between 1815 and 1816.

U.S. Jurist David Davis was born in Cecil County in 1815 and went on to serve as a Justice of the Supreme Court from 1862 to 1877, during the Civil War. He also served as a U.S. Senator from 1877 to 1883. He died in 1886.

According to historian the late Morton Taylor a Boys’ Academy was held in the old stone house at the corner of St. Mark’s Church Road and Route 222 in Perryville.

1816

The Port Deposit Bridge and Banking Company was incorporated in 1816. Dr. John Archer, of Harford County renowned, was President, with Thomas L. Savin as cashier.

The Port Deposit Post Office was also established by the federal government in 1816.

1817

The Susquehanna Canal, a disappointment to investors, was sold at a great loss in1817. It closed altogether in 1836.

Some $1,870,000 worth of goods passed through York Haven en route to Port Deposit. From April 1 to July 5, 1817 there were 343 arks and 989 rafts recorded in the river.

1818

            Construction on a bridge between Port Deposit and Lapidum in Harford County was begun in 1818 near the present-day VFW, on piers. It was for these piers and the construction of this bridge that the Port Deposit quarry was opened. The covered bridge was built by a Mr. Burr.

Port Deposit Bridge & Banking Company incorporated.

1819

The ground on which St. Patrick’s Church at Pilottown, Conowingo, was built was purchased April 19, 1819, from Daniel Glackin of Octorara Hundred and later Port Deposit, by Father Roger Smith of St. Ignatius Church in Hickory, for $10. The Glackin family provided several of Port’s more popular boat captains with one of their member owning the Old Sorrel Horse Tavern on North Main Street.

1820

Cecil’s population grew from 13,006 in 1810 to 16,048 in 1820.

Transport of oysters in vessels registered out-of-state was forbidden.

The fishing industry on the Susquehanna River booms from 1820 to 1830.

1821

A total of 525 arks and 925 rafts reached Port Deposit carrying goods totaling $1,121,000 value.

The Paw Paw Building was erected in Port Deposit as the first church edifice of any denomination in the town. It was built by the Methodist congregation.

James Touchstone was born October 11, 1821. A Port Deposit resident and blacksmith he served as First Lieutenant and Quartermaster of the 6th Regiment of Maryland Infantry, made up primarily of Cecilton area men, during the Civil War and later served two terms as a member of the Maryland Legislature.

1823

Talk begins for a still-water inland canal from Havre de Grace to Baltimore.

Fire on Rock Run Toll Bridge on New Year’s Day occurs when an iron-shod sleigh driven too rapidly across it causes sparks and puts the bridge out of use.

1824

The citizens of Port Deposit entertained General Lafayette on his way from Philadelphia to Washington November 6, 1824. The committee met him at Kelligher’s Crossroad and escorted him to town. He was entertained at the Washington Hotel with Mr. McGraw acting as Master of Ceremonies. Lafayette boarded a steamboat in Frenchtown at 2 a.m., October 7, 1824.

The first election of Town Commissioners was held at Daniel McGredy’s tavern on the last Monday of February 1824 wherein the town was authorized to elect “five discreet and judicious persons, commissioners for said village.”

1825

Port Deposit’s first charter was granted January 17, 1825 and was signed by Governor Samuel Stevens.

A lot was conveyed in trust to build a Church for the Methodist Society near Jackson’s Schoolhouse, near Asbury and Craigtown, in 1825.

1826

The first recorded steamboat servicing the lower Susquehanna, and bearing the name Susquehanna, was built in 1826. She was wood hull and stern wheel and constructed in Baltimore. She was 82-feet long and had a 26-inch draft.

1,500 arks arrived in Port Deposit with lumber, anthracite coal, flour, potatoes, grain and whiskey for Baltimore markets.

Maryland adopted legislation allowing Jews access to public office holding and equal rights, a privilege previously enjoyed only by Christians.

1827

            The Concord Point Lighthouse is built by John Donohoo in Havre de Grace in 1827. Donohoo built the structure of Port Deposit granite and is responsible for many early Chesapeake lighthouses. John O’Neill, Havre de Grace’s hero of the War of 1812, was named keeper of the light as a sort of reward for his heroism, and remained keeper until he died in 1838. His descendants took charge of the light until it was automatedin 1920.

1828

Rock Run Bridge, burned in 1823, is re-built and back in operation five years later in 1828.

The first iron foundry in Port Deposit was started by John A.J. Creswell, who was born in this year at #1 Center Street, Port Deposit.

1829

Authorities differ as to when the first quarries were in operation. One states it was 1851, another says 1887, but history emphatically records it in 1829 when the Old Maryland Canal Company operated a quarry at the north end of Port Deposit. This was the beginning of the trade in granite, which has added so much to the prosperity of the town.

The Port Deposit Town Commissioners of 1829 were Cornelius Smith, President; John Creswell, Secretary; A. Crandall, Charles W. Newlands, Isaac Nowland, and James Barney as Bailiff, Harbor Master and Collector.

1830

Restoration work on the burned Port Deposit Bridge, or Rock Run Bridge, continued from 1829 to 1830, when work was completed by a Mr. Wormwag, and the bridge was thrown open to the public, again.

According to historian Morton Taylor the first Presbyterian church service in Perryville were held at Rodger’s Tavern in 1830 where Mrs. John Stump, Mary Alicia Mitchell Stump, held a Sunday School.

1831

1830 to 1850 is the 20-year period of Port Deposit’s greatest prosperity.

In 1831 the General Assembly adopted legislation prohibiting non-resident free blacks from entering the state of Maryland.

1833

            Jacob Tome, poorly educated and pocketed, arrives in Port Deposit on a raft likely in the spring of 1833 from his home in Pennsylvania. He will go on to become Cecil County’s first millionaire and Port Deposit’s greatest philanthropist.

1834

May 6, 1834 land for Battle Swamp Road was donated to the Town by Cornelius Smith, Samuel Rowland, J.W. Abrahams and others, with Cornelius Smith contributing the lion’s share of the expenses for labor.

The Port Deposit Bridge & Banking Company built what would become known as the Old Bank House at 20 N. Main Street. Later wings would be added to it and it would become the Junior School for Jacob Tome Institute, dedicated as Jefferson Hall in honor of President Thomas Jefferson.

There were two newspapers published in Port Deposit in this year - the Central Courier by L.A. Wilmer and the Port Deposit Intelligence by Herbert Gerry.

Maryland chartered the Tidewater Canal Company in December 1834.

1835

Pennsylvania chartered the Susquehanna Canal Company in April 1835 after Maryland chartered the Tidewater Canal Company in December 1834.

The Hosanna A.M.E. Church in the Berkley Crossroads, Darlington Section of Harford County, dates to 1835 or earlier, and has a cemetery associated with it.

David C. Rinehart, a lumber merchant from Marietta, Pa., and Jacob Tome form a partnership for lumber business in Port Deposit in 1835. By 1851 Rinehart’s $5,000 investment in the firm had multiplied many times over.

The Cecil Whig & Port Deposit Weekly Courier is published in Port Deposit in 1835 and 1836.

To cross the Susquehanna River, the railroad cars were ferried across on boats beginning in 1835 and continuing to 1866 when a railroad bridge was built.

1836

The Susquehanna Canal, which had been sold by disappointed investors in 1817, closed in 1836.

The Baltimore & Port Deposit Railroad built tracks to Havre de Grace in 1836 later becoming the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company.

The first edifice for the Port Deposit Presbyterian Church was erected.

Col. John Creswell died and leaves most of the land on the upper side of the street as far as Rock Run from Center Street to his widow Rebecca E. Webb Creswell, including the home at 1 Center Street.

1837

July 14, 1837 the railroad line from Wilmington to Perryville opened.

Nesbitt Hall was built on North Main Street, Port Deposit, of Port Deposit granite, it being the second structure erected for the Methodist congregation replacing the smaller Paw Paw building. The Paw Paw was then used as an academy and alter for fraternal organizations and as a store and restaurant.

The corporation issued small notes for the amount of $1,325 for the purpose of building pavements.

A movement was started to lay stone pavements through the village of Port Deposit. Mr. Janney was employed to survey the village.

Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore rail lines were opened with the building of the railroad along the Susquehanna on July 14, 1837, but the lines don’t come as far as Port Deposit.

The Port DepositTown Commissioners passed an ordinance, February 24, 1837, to the effect that Commissioners shall receive $5 per year at the expiration of their services and that the Judge of Elections shall receive $1.

Perryville’s first post office opened under the name Chesapeake with John G. Heckart as Postmaster, commissioned April 14, 1837.

1838

Gill nets were introduced in commercial fishing and revolutionized this prosperous industry on the Susquehanna and Chesapeake Bay.

Frederick Douglass boarded a train in Baltimore bound for freedom in Philadelphia and crossed the Susquehanna on the Maryland railroad car ferryboat.

1839

The 45-mile Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal (Harford side) opened. It had 29 locks that were 150-feet long and 18-feet wide and raised boats a total of 233 feet from Wrightsville to Havre de Grace. It cost a total of $3.5 million or an average of $80,000 per mile – the third most expensive American canal built before the Civil War.

Jim Rice was born a slave at Perry Point about 1839. He stayed at Perry Point with the Stump family after slavery ended and died there in 1916.

The Port Deposit Rock and Cecil County Commercial Advertiser is published in Port Deposit in 1839.

1840

The Susquehanna & Tidewater Canalw as opened to water in 1839 but damaged by heavy rain and floods and had to be repaired. It opened to traffic in the spring of 1840.

Cecil’s population was 17,232 with 13,329 white, 2,551 free blacks, 1,352 slaves. There were 2,205 people working in agriculture, the majority occupation, with only about 30% of the population in non-agricultural employment.

1841

Jacob Tome, of Port Deposit, married Caroline M. Webb, an aunt of John A.J. Creswell, on December 6, 1841.

1842

Maryland began regulating hunting for waterfowl in 1842.

1843

Free and escaped blacks, skilled artisans and mechanics, were living at Snow Hill in Port Deposit with church serves at the Old Factory Building and Still House Hollow. These courageous people had their own fully functioning community they had erected of their own skill, although they did business in Port Deposit as well.

Upon the resolution of Jacob Tome, Treasurer of the Town Commissioners, the Commissioners were ordered to pay Cornelius Smith and James L. Maxwell $30 expenses for lobbying at Annapolis for the passage of a bill granting permission to raise money to build an outlet lock at Bell’s Ferry opposite Port Deposit on February 20, 1843.

A $100 reward is offered for the discovery and arrest of persons who caused the fire that destroyed the shop and dwelling of Elijah Reynolds, dwelling of Alonzo Snow and M.E. Church Parsonage, Saturday Morning, July 29, 1843.

A town meeting was in Port Deposit held petitioning the commissioners to buy fire apparatus on August 7, 1843

1844

The first fire engine was purchased by Jacob Tome by order of President and Commissioners from J. Shannahan and Sons, Baltimore, Md. The engine cost $400 and had 100 feet of hose with two nozzles, for a cost of $57.50 on August 30, 1844.

Mount Welcome at Octoraro was used as a military and Naval headquarters by Lafayette and again in 1844 by Commodore David Connor.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church was built in 1844 at Perryville. The graveyard antedates the Church and was the original burial ground of the Gale family where George Gale, delegate to the First U.S. Congress from Maryland, is buried.

Mr. and Mrs. John Stump donated part of their estate, Perry Point, for erection of a Presbyterian church in Perryville.

1845

1845

A petition was delivered to the Port Deposit Town Commissioners requesting they build an engine house.

Rebecca Creswell owned in 1845 a wharf, tavern, storehouse, nine vacant lots and 255-acres of land in Port Deposit, for which she collects rents. When she later marries Dr. Thomas Murphy she has her son, Attorney John A.J. Creswell, draw up a prenuptial agreement so she will retain ownership of her family property.

1846

The Port Deposit Band applied for aid from the town, but was denied.

1847

On motion of Port Deposit Town Commissioner Elijah Reynolds, who was also the town’s pre-eminent builder, $50 was appropriated to pay the expenses of a committee appointed to go to Annapolis to oppose the building of the P.W. &B. Bridge at or near Havre de Grace, on February 20, 1847.

1848

Area slaves and free or escaped blacks met secretly in homes and would become the foundation of the Bethel A.M.E. Church in Port Deposit.

1849

Magnetic Telephone Company of Washington, D.C., made application to be allowed to establish an office in Port Deposit on November 28, 1849.

Jacob Tome organizes, with others, a steamboat company to run steamers between Baltimore and Port Deposit in 1849.

1850

Magnetic Telephone Company of Washington D.C. granted permission by Town Commissioners to establish an office in Port Deposit on February 18, 1850. This is the first telephone office in Port Deposit.

Congress petitioned to make Port Deposit a Port of Entry on April 15, 1850.

In this year the lumber industry in Port Deposit has declined enough that the business of Port Deposit granite has become more significant than the business of lumber.

Jacob Tome’s great mansion, Hytheham, is built, along with his carriage house, gardens, cistern, terraces and gashouse. This is also the year that Jacob Tome establishes his bank, Cecil National Bank, in the basement of his home with a capitalization of $25,000.

Cecil’s population was 18,939 with 15,472 or 81.7% white; 2,623 or 13.8% free blacks and 844 or 4% slaves. Port Deposit’s population was 1,008 people with 788 whites or 78.2% and 220 free blacks or 21.8% and no slaves.

1851

Captain David White, who owned the “White House” at 33 High Street, was the steamship captain of the ferryboat Port Deposit, which was commissioned in 1850. The boat ran between Havre de Grace and Port Deposit.

1852

Ice on the Susquehanna River in Maryland began to break on February 24, 1852 During the preceding 40 days, an ice bridge across the river was used for the crossing of 1,378 loaded freight cars.

1853

Howard Methodist Episcopal Church’s congregation of freed slaves built their church in the area of Center Street in 1853 and was very active in the Underground Railroad.

During the hard winter of 1852-53 the Susquehanna River froze solid and railroad tracks were laid on the river between January 15 and February 24, 1853, to haul 1,378 cars loaded with freight and passengers on the frozen surface. This total counts for some 10,000 tons and no accident of any kind occurred, with all material removed without the loss of a cross tie or bar or iron before the ice finally broke.

1854

The Rock Run Bridge, rebuilt in 1829/30 following a disastrous fire, was destroyed when a drove of cattle being driven across it broke down two spans.

In June 1854 the Armstrong family, consisting of three brothers, formed the Armstrong Stove Works, Inc., in Port Deposit, in what became known as Foundry Hollow along Center Street.

1855

Jacob Tome forms a partnership with Thomas C. Bond in 1855 in the lumber business, which proves to be yet another successful undertaking.

Blythedale, between Perryville and Port Deposit, was known as Whitaker’s Mill in 1855 when William Taylor opened a general store there. The village was later called Independence. The Taylor store housed the Blythedale Post Office and was operated by the Taylor family for 95 years and the building now stands on Jacob Tome Highway beside Cummings Tavern.

1856

Stove manufacturing in Port Deposit was begun in 1856.

On May 12, 1856 Solomon was ordered to survey the town with his survey accepted October 12, 1856.

The Presbyterian Manse as 23 S. Main Street was built on Oyster Shell Alley by lumber magnate James H. Rowland, who lived there until 1904, when the Presbyterian Church bought it for their manse.

1857

The three-story brick Vandiver House, 20 South Main Street, Port Deposit, was built by Benjamin Vandiver as a hotel and restaurant.

Rock Run Bridge was destroyed in a terrible flood and ice gorge.

The Touchstone House was built at 46 S. Main Street and the rose garden, tended by three generations of Touchstone’s with a Touchstone still in the home now in the 21st century, was begun. The graceful iron fence to the property was made by great-grandfather Touchstone at a neighboring foundry. During the harsh winter of 1857 Amelia Caroline and Ella Virginia Touchstone died during a flood and ice gorge of Port Deposit. For this reason James Touchstone built his house so floodwaters could floor through a first floor designed only for storage with the living quarters on the second and third floors exclusively.

John A.J. Creswell marries Hannah Richardson at Elkton on May 17, 1857.

1858

Peter E. Tome, lawyer, businessman and City Comptroller and Police Commissioner of Baltimore, was born in York County, Pa., October 24, 1858. His uncle, Port Deposit’s millionaire Jacob Tome, greatest influenced Peter and he was on the board of trustees of Tome Institute since 1899 and was also a President of that board.

1859

Conowingo Bridge, a covered bridge seven miles above Port Deposit, opened. During the Civil War troops guarded this new bridge and also plugged it with dynamite as defense.

Robert Smith took over as owner of the Farmer’s & Commercial Hotel and renamed it Smith’s Hotel.

July 11, 1859 $525 was paid to purchase a second fire engine, reel and 1,500 feet of hose.

Asbury Methodist Church was built at Craigtown in 1859.

1860

Jack ordered to make a survey of Port Deposit.

The town population soars to nearly 2,000 people, making Port Deposit the eighth largest “city” in the State of Maryland. There were 23,862 people living in Cecil County with 19,994 being white, 2,918 free blacks and 950 slaves in the county.

John Bell, candidate for the Constitutional Union party, carries Cecil County by a slim margin although John C. Breckinridge, Southern Democrat, carried the state by a margin of less than 500 votes out of 90,000.

Subscription records from the Black Christian Recorder of 1860 indicate significant subscriptions from Port Deposit.

1861

A meeting was held in Elkton where it was resolved, “Let Maryland do what she will, Cecil County will not secede.” There were 800 people in attendance at this wholly Union meeting, many of them hailing from Port Deposit.

In the spring the Federal government took over Perry Point, forcing the owner, John Stump, a slave owner, to go to Harford County. Perry Point, under General George B. McClellan’s order, became the great Civil War Mule School and by the winter of 1861 there were 1,600 troops at Perry Point.

Snow’s Battery B, 1st Maryland Light Artillery, was organized at Port Deposit by Captain Alonzo Snow, 1st Lt. L.A.C. Gerry, 1st Lt. James Kidd and 1st Lt. Theodore J. Vanneman in August through October 1861. The battery served for nearly four years and took part in battles of the Peninsular Campaign.

Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Wiley ordered to prepare a list for patrol duty in northwestern Cecil County.

Some 1,600 troops of the 11th and 14th Regiments of the U.S. Infantry prepared to winter near Perryville in 1861, as well.

John A.J. Creswell assumed his post as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1861 and on February 17, 1861 is named Captain of the Cecil Guards 49th Regiment Maryland Militia.

1862

Snow’s Battery joined the Army of the Potomac in the Virginia Peninsula Campaign May to August 1862 and fought at New Bridge June 5, Seven days before Richmond June 25 to July 1, Battles of Mechanicsville June 26, Savage Station on June 29, White Oak Swamp on June 30 and Malvern Hill on July 1. September 14 they participated in the battles of Crampton’s Pass, Md.

Snow’s Battery fought with great distinction in the bloodiest day’s battle of the Civil War at Antietam September 16 & 17, 1862, losing only one horse in the bloody fray.

At the Battle of Malvern Hill in 1862, Sergeant Edward T. Thompson of Snow’s Battery, had a mini-ball pass through his hat cutting his hair off close to the temple but doing no other damage. He bore the scar for the rest of his life, with a streak of white hair, until his death at his home in Port Deposit in 1898.

Each of the Port Deposit Town Commissioners donated one-fifth of their salary to the ladies of the Union Relief Society on July 11, 1862.

200 teamsters were sought for Perry Point mule school at $25 a month. On March 29 the school moved south to be closer to the lines and a huge auction of mule school equipment was held at Perry Point on May 26.

David R. Armstrong, son of pioneer Port Deposit stove manufacturer Thomas Armstrong, was born March 27, 1862 in Port Deposit. He served many times as mayor and devoted his time and money to the common interests of his hometown and was known as being “ripe with historical facts of his native community.”

1863

Port Deposit’s John A.J. Creswell became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1863 to 1865.

Sarah Collins Fernandis was born in Port Deposit in 1862. An educator, author, poet, social worker and prominent Black Club Woman, she was the first African American woman employed in a public welfare agency in Maryland. Her campaigns in Baltimore brought settlement houses, trash removal, sanitary stores and milk to the Black communities.

1864

Snow’s Battery took part in the campaigns in western Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 as they were occupied at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia until April 1864. While engaged in battle in Virginia on May 28, 1864 the battery suffered five casualties as they fought with Siegel’s Army. Lt. L.A.C. Gerry commanded Snow’s Battery as Captain Snow was in command of the Maryland Artillery. They participate in the Battle of New Market May 15 and Hunter’s Raid on Lynchburg May 24 to July 1.

A Town meeting was held to relieve the condition of the poor in Port Deposit on January 4, 1864.

The Port Deposit President of Commissioners was ordered to employ the County Surveyor to survey the Town in accordance with the Acts of 1864, on December 6, 1864.

Abolitionist spokesman and escaped Maryland slave Frederick Douglass was scheduled to speak in Havre de Grace in 1864, but civil authorities prevented the appearance, fearing a riot.

J.G. Larkin wrote a letter inviting Port Deposit’s commissioners to consult with him at his office in Havre de Grace in regard to location of draw of the P.B.&. W. Bridge on June 1, 1863.

Jacob Tome was elected to the Maryland Senate in 1863 and became chairman of the Finance Committee.

Two dozen men of Snow’s Battery B were captured while watering their horses at Mason’s Cove and transported to Rebel prisons at Andersonville and Millen, Ga., and Florence Stockade in South Carolina, where many perished.

Cecil County troops were engaged in the Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia, during the Civil War on October 19, 1864.

The Cecil Democrat reported that 25 African-American men enlisted at Port Deposit to fight in the War Between the States and they are credited toward Philadelphia’s total in 1864.

1865

John A.J. Creswell was a member of the U.S. Senate from 1865 to 1867.

January 2, 1865 permission was given to the Columbia and Port Deposit Railroad Company to pass over any street or public property other than Main Street, providing that they do not occupy more than 30-feet and paid all damage done to private property. The Committee representing the railroad consisted of C.F. Kaufman and J.A. Sheaf, while Jacob Tome represented the Town. This is the year that the Columbia and Port Deposit Railroad first began activities.

The services of Snow’s Battery were dispensed with and disbanded in Baltimore on July 8, 1865.

At a special meeting it was ordered that a pavement be laid from M.E. Church to Mrs. Murphy’s Corner to cost $1.68 per foot on the east side of the street, with the sidewalks made of Port Deposit granite, many sections of which still exist today.

Captain Vanneman’s steamship Alice was chartered on July 4, 1865 to make a trip from Port Deposit and Havre de Grace to Annapolis at a cost of $1 round trip.

Cecil County officially welcomed her soldiers home on Friday, July 28, 1865 with celebrations in Elkton. The soldiers and councils all marched to Landing Lane where they met the steamboat that took them to Port Deposit for their noon celebration.

The Columbia and Port Deposit Railroad was begun.

1866

John A.J. Creswell served in the U.S. Senate, a post he has held since 1865 and continued to hold until 1867.

The Railroad ferry was replaced with the first railroad bridge across the Susquehanna at Perryville in 1866 and Perryville begins to establish itself as a railroad center. However, there is a setback when the railroad bridge is wrecked by a tornado July 25, 1866.

In 1866 a convention of Southern Delegates loyal to the Union meet in Philadelphia to discuss plans for reconstruction with Sen. John A.J. Creswell among the leading Republicans. He authored a public address that was highly praised and unanimously approved, which set forth the adoption of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1867

The first train to Port Deposit arrived on December 17, 1867, and came as far as Stillhouse Hollow with Captain Donaldson serving as conductor. The Captain called the town Bloomingdale in honor of the number of pretty girls who came to meet the train.

The cornerstone for St. Teresa’s Catholic Church in Port Deposit was laid.

The Registrar of Wills for Cecil County reports in 1867 that since November 1864, 142 black children had been bound out.

The Hosanna School, built with the help of the Freedman’s Bureau in 1867 by local residents, is part of the Berkley Crossroads neighborhood of free African Americans who established their own church, cemetery and the school.

The first Methodist Church in Perryville was built between 1866 and 1867.

1868

The Municipal Building, also known as the Old Lock Up, was erected with costs shared equally by the Town Commissioners and the Board of Supervisors of county Schools who held classes on the second floor. The Masons also shared costs, using the 3rd floor for their meetings. The town used the first floor for the fire department and also as a lock-up.

1869

In 1869 the trains to Port Deposit came as far as McGrady’s Stone Wharf, just north of the center of town.

John A.J. Creswell was appointed U.S. Postmaster General in the Cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant from 1869 to 1874, the only Cecil County to earn such a high rank.

1870

The Susquehanna & Tidewater Canal profits reached their peak the Pennsylvania section closed in1890 and the Maryland, or lower section, closed circa 1900.

Black men began to vote in Cecil County after the 14th and 15th amendments helped kill Jim Crow suffrage locally.

Cecil’s population was 25,874 with 84% or 21,860 whites and 16% or 4,014 lacks. Port Deposit’s population reached 1,839 people with 73.5% or 1,352 being white and 26.5% or 487 blacks.

Port Deposit’s Jacob Tome, along with three other stockholders in the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad, which passed the site of Ridley Park, Pa., drew up plans for a suburban real estate development and incorporated the Ridley Park Association for this purpose in 1870. There is a Tome Street named for him and a Tome Street School in Ridley Park, Pa., to this day.

1871

Jacob Tome of Port Deposit received the Republican nomination for Governor of the State of Maryland, but does not win the election, even though he had served in the State Senate on the Finance Committee during the Civil War.

The Woodlawn Camp Meeting, an annual event for two weeks in August until 1913, began off the Old Post Road near Port Deposit in 1871 and was established by the Methodist Episcopal Church with Rev. John W. Weston, pastor of the Rising Sun Circuit, in charge.

1872

The Port Deposit Presbyterian Church was re-built – it is now the 1st Baptist Church of Port Deposit.

The Tome Memorial Methodist Church, North Main Street, Port Deposit was built in 1872 as a gift of Jacob Tome costing a total of $65,999. It was dedicated October 30, 1872.

            Funds are received from the General Assembly for the first time to establish schools for black children, as prior to this schools for black children were built and run with private funds, like a school funded by Jacob Tome in Port Deposit. One of these new schools was Conowingo School No. 5.

Vanneman’s lumber inspection report shows a schooner sailed from Port Deposit to Washington with 693,000 feet of lumber in 1872.

1873

The Pennsylvania Railroad built a single-track bridge over the Susquehanna River at Perryville.

An iceboat first asked for by the committee consisting of Jacob Tome and John McClenahan on February 10, 1873. The officer in charge refused to allow the iceboat to come into the river unless the committee gave personal bond.

Port Deposit’s John A.J. Creswell, as Postmaster General of the United States, introduced the penny postcard, or one-cent plain, in America in May 1873.

The Woodlawn Camp Meeting grounds, gently sloped and thickly wooded, were purchased on October 14, 1873 from F. Marion Rawlings and Theodore J. Vanneman.

1874

Postmaster General John A.J. Creswell resigned his post as Postmaster General of the United States, the last original member of President Grant’s cabinet.

1875

Perryville decoy carver Henry Davis was born in 1875.

Ice harvesting began in Perryville about 1875 and become a mainstay of the town’s economy with at least 100,000 tons of ice harvested each winter.

1876

Perryville was firmly established as a railroad center when it become the junction point of the Columbia & Port Deposit Branch with the main line from Washington and Baltimore to Wilmington and Philadelphia.

The Cecil Whig reported in 1876 that a game of baseball was played in one of Mrs. Murphy’s fields by the Port Deposit Baseball Club and the Rock Run Club, and that both clubs had been practicing.

Perryville decoy carver Asa Owens was born in 1876 and often carved with Henry Davis, also of Perryville.

Jacob Tome deeded land over for a schoolhouse for black children to be built in Port Deposit in 1876.

1877

A special levy of 15 cents was made to pay the claim of Fesperus Watts who fell in a ditch and broke his leg, by order of the Circuit Court of Cecil County with the total cost being $694.66, on December 8, 1877.

The first train passed over the Columbia & Port Deposit Railroad tracks on, appropriately enough for the predominantly Irish workers who built it, St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1877.

The Household of Faith Church was organized at Blythedale on October 3, 1877, and built largely through the efforts of Edward Jackson V.

1878

The steamer Columbia was stopped from landing excursions by the Port Deposit Commissioners on August 28, 1878.

1879

Port Deposit purchased the Cook Lot for $300, a price agreed to on December 10, 1878, on January 13, 1879.

1880

Cecil County’s population was 27,108.

The Philadelphia extension of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is built through Cecil County in the 1880s. At this point Perryville, even as a railroad town, had a population of only 250. The population of Cecil County, as a whole was 27,108, with the population reaching a high point in the number of African-American inhabitants. After 1880 the African-American population of Baltimore City nearly doubles while outlying areas lose many of their African-American citizens.

1881

George Johnston’s History of Cecil County, Maryland was published.

1882

Even though the population of Perryville stood at only 250 the January session of the Legislature in 1882 found the officials incorporating the town, six-years after it had become a railroad junction, on May 3, 1882.

The Water Witch Fire Company of Port Deposit was incorporated August 31, 1882.

1883

Port Deposit’s Commissioners protested to the Superintendent of the Railroad against Sunday excursions. The Superintendent replied he had never intended to run Sunday excursions so the matter was dropped, May 29, 1883.

William K. Brooks records nearly 15 million square yards of Susquehanna River Oyster Beds in 1883.

1884

On July 21, 1884, S.C. Rowland made application for the Overland Telegraph and Telephone Company, to obtain permission to use the street for poles, which was granted.

On August 18, 1884 a committee was appointed to erect a firebell in Port Deposit, it still stands in front of the fire house on North Main Street.

After the death of his first wife, Caroline Webb, Jacob Tome marries Evalyn S. Nesbitt on October 1, 1884 in Port Deposit, when he is 74 and she 29.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Bridge across the Susquehanna was built in 1884, according to the late historian Morton Taylor.

1885

President Grover Cleveland is a familiar sportsman on the Susquehanna Flats between 1885 and 1897, staying at Charlestown’s Wellwood Club.

1886

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, or B&O, built their own bridge over the Susquehanna.

The disastrous flood of 1886 destroyed most of the early records of the town, obliterating documentation on the early town commissioners.

The Port Deposit Call began publication October 24, 1886.

The first Baltimore & Ohio Railroad passenger train passed through Frenchtown, later called Aikin and now a part of Perryville, on May 25, 1886.

1887

S.C. Rowland asked the Commissioners for $150 to fight in court against the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Bridge, with Rowland to supply any additional funds needed, on May 7, 1887.

George Johnston’s The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland was published by the editor in 1887.

The development Jacob Tome started in 1870 at Ridley Park, Pa., was chartered as the borough of Ridley Park, Pa., on December 12, 1887.

1888

May 12, 1888 the Port Deposit commissioners paid $78 for use of the tug Baltimore to break the ice.

The Nesbitt House was built in 1888 by Henry Clay Nesbitt, whose parents lived next door to this home at 42 S. Main Street. It is the best example of Victorian Queen Anne architecture in the town of Port Deposit.

Port Deposit Electric Company was given permission to erect poles and stretch wires and conduct business in the street on July 27, 1888.

The Presbyterian Church at Perryville was incorporated on October 10, 1888.

1889

John A.J. Creswell and others gave a deed dated October 11, conveying to President and Commissioners a certain street “25 feet wide from Main Street to the land of the Baltimore & Susquehanna Steamboat Company,” on November 11, 1889.

The Jacob Tome Institute was incorporated by the State of Maryland.                                 

The Port Deposit Town Hall burned to the ground on March 2, 1889.

1890

The Port Deposit Electric light plant burned November 1, 1890. The population of Port Deposit reaches 2,347 and there are 52 places of business in the town.

The Pennsylvania portion of the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal closed.

The population of Perryville stood at 344 residents.

Perryville, incorporated in 1880, had 344 residents a decade later in 1890.

Cecil’s population declined to 25,851 while the population of Port Deposit continued to grow, reaching 2,347 in 1890 with 52 places of business.

1891

Port Deposit’s son John A.J. Creswell an Unconditional Unionist, Postmaster General of the United States, lawyer, orator, Senator, Congressman and bank president, died in Elkton December 23, 1891.

1892

In 1892 the name of Smith’s Hotel, which was known as Farmer’s & Commercial Hotel when it was built circa 1815, is officially changed to Falls Hotel by the new owner, John Falls. It is most commonly referred to as Falls Hotel today.

Elizabeth Foreman Lewis is born in Baltimore, May 24, 1892, and will be educated and graduated from Tome School. She goes on to become supervisor of the Chunking, Szechuan District School in China and earns the John Newberry Award in 1932 for youth writing.

1893

Jacob Tome received high honors in Philadelphia during a reunion of the Old Guard, also known as the Illustrious 306, who stood in 1880 as a unit “in the best interests of their country during the Republican National Convention in Chicago.”

1894

September 14, 1894 the Jacob Tome Institute opens its doors to pupils for the first time with 250 expected and over 400 arriving for the glorious opening day exercises that shut down traffic in the streets.

The Port Deposit Press began publication.

The Silver Canning Company is established by W. Scott Silver in 1894 in Colora, with factories in both Colora and Rising Sun specializing in cream-style corn. The family-run operation continued until the late 1950s.

Mrs. Woodward Abrahams gave the Order of the King’s Daughters and Sons in the State of Maryland the Silver Cross Home in January of 1894 and by June 30, 1894 it opens as the Silver Cross Home for Epileptics. The home operated for 50 years until it was sold and moved to Reisterstown, Md.

1895

Lock gates on the Susquehanna Canal were closed for the final time.

1896

October 9, 1896, permission was granted to J.M. Johnson of Millersburg, Pa., to lay water pipe through the streets of Port Deposit. The permission, which had been given to Jacob Tome in 1893, for a “water works” was rescinded.

The present Perryville Methodist Church was dedicated June 28, 1896 and rededicated December 17, 1915, after a Sunday School auditorium and classrooms had been added.

The Armstrong Stove Co., by then moved from Port Deposit to Perryville, received an order from Johannesburg, South Africa, for 50 ranges, December 25, 1896.

1897

The water company completed their plant on February 8, 1897 in Port Deposit.

On April 28, 1897 Stephen Krauss caught an 8 ˝ pound shad at Port Deposit on the shore along the Susquehanna.

1898

A propeller-driven steam vessel named the Susquehanna was built by Charles Reeder of Baltimore for the Tolchester Beach Improvement Company.

The Jacob Tome Savings Bank was organized by students of Jacob Tome Institute in 1898. There are 600 students at the school when it re-opens for the spring term.

Jacob Tome died March 16, 1898 leaving a multi-million dollar estate. The Maryland Legislature passes a resolution in honor of Tome on March 22. Jacob Tome Institute and Tome Memorial Methodist Church are draped in mourning for 30 days. His widow, Evalyn S. Tome, is elected Director of the National Bank of Elkton and President of Cecil National Bank, to succeed him.

Port Deposit and Cecil County dug out under a very severe blizzard in 1898.

Port Deposit’s elected officials announced plans to install a watering trough for horses in town-square in 1898.

A memorial service was held for the naval officers and sailors of the ill-fated Battleship Maine at St. Teresa’s Catholic Church in 1898. In May of this year, George E.M. Stengle, editor of the Port Deposit Press, enlists in the Delaware National Guard and turns over management of the paper to Herbert N. Gerry.

James A. Harding, of Port Deposit, was granted a patent for a device to fasten numbers on jockey’s arms March 3, 1898.

Robert C. Davidson, former Mayor of Baltimore, whose sensational elopement caused a stir in Cecil, sues to divorce his wife, the former Miss Laura Noyes of Port Deposit, on June 16, 1898, on grounds of misconduct. At the time of the divorce filing Mrs. Davidson was 46 and her husband is 72.

1899

The Old Bank building was remodeled by Tome Institute with wings added and taken over for kindergarten and primary classes.

Tome Institute’s Board of Trustees hires James Cameron MacKenzie as their Headmaster to oversee construction of the new Tome School for Boys and develop plans for the institute after the death of Jacob Tome in 1898. MacKenzie immediately goes to Europe to tour schools for inspiration and in November submits his recommendations to the board. The Committee for the school also hears a report from Frederick Law Olmsted on site recommendations for the campus, including one along the river that Mr. Olmsted prefers, and the old Abraham’s farm on the bluff. The farm was chosen.

1900

Architects Boring & Tilton, who had recently completed the main building of the Ellis Island Immigrant Station, were selected to build the campus of the very exclusive Tome School for Boys on the bluff above Port Deposit. Construction of the Tome Inn, later called Van  Buren House, is begun in mid 1900 and completed in December 1900, it is furnished and occupied by March 5, 1901.

The lower, or Harford, portion of the Susquehanna & Tidewater Canal finally closed down completely. It is merely abandoned and quickly becomes a stagnant harbor for mosquitoes and malaria.

There were 770 residents in Perryville in 1900 and in Cecil as a whole there are 24,662 residents, and Port Deposit had 1,575 residents, down from 1,908 in 1890.

The first reported sighting of an automobile in Cecil County occurs in April 1900 when a “horseless carriage” rumbled through Elkton startling a horse named Poor Excuse.

The National Bank of Port Deposit commenced business November 12, 1900.

1901

Construction began on the major structures of Tome School for Boys, designed by architects Boring & Tilton who had recently completed the main building of the Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York. Tome School for Boys would be their “second most famous” work.

The McClenahan Granite Company in Port Deposit employed 300 men for the work.

1902

The Port Deposit Presbyterian Church (44 South Main Steet), also designed by Boring & Tilton while they were in Port Deposit for the Tome project, was erected largely from the generosity of the Rowland family.

Evalyn Nesbitt Tome bought the Nesbitt-Ryan House and added the bay window rooms and tower.

As late as 1902 a trip to the floats anchored midstream in the Susquehanna River for commercial fishing, was a favorite spring excursion.

The Tome School for Boys opened on the bluff above Port Deposit after two years of hurried building. Also the football field is completed, two steps of steps are built from the palisades to Port Deposit and at this point the Director’s Residence, Monroe Hall, Madison House, Infirmary and three master’s cottages are done.  

Likely started in 1900, the Tome Steps were completed by 1902. The stairway next to 66 S. Main Street, consists of 75 steps from Main Street to High Street and used to carry workers to the bluffs for construction of the Tome School for Boys Campus. Later the steps of Tome School boys graced the steps and still later, when they became known as the Steps to Liberty, it was U.S. Sailors who traversed the courses.

1903

The Beach Fountain was erected in Center Square by Martha Beach of Connecticut, “In Remembrance, Miranda E. Beach, 1903.” Miranda, a Port Deposit teacher, was Martha’ mother and held her exclusive school on High Street. The fountain was constructed to refresh horses, cats, dogs, man and birds and is made of three massive pieces of Port Deposit granite. It was completed and accepted by the town in 1904.

Jackson House Dormitory at Tome School for Boys was completed, as is the Harrison House dormitory and by next year three more master’s cottages will be completed. At this point Memorial Hall is dedicated in a formal ceremony with the installation of a pipe organ in the chapel.

1904

Beach Fountain accepted by the Town of Port Deposit on May 9, 1904.

Rev. Benjamin Brown is said to have mortgaged his home to obtain the former Presbyterian Church at Rock Run for the congregation of the First Baptist Church in 1904.

Lewis Abrahams Jr., of Port Deposit, was the first person to acquire an automobile license in Cecil County for his four-horsepower locomobile with state certificate 502.

Tome School for Boys suffered from severe typhoid outbreaks and the board chooses Wyatt & Nolting as architects for a new Dining Hall, blaming the outbreaks on the old smaller facility, their plan was not, however, used.

1905

The train station was built in Perryville.

Adams Hall was built at 64 S. Main St., for a lower gymnasium for the Jacob Tome Institute. The structure now serves as the Town Hall and Library.

Cecil National Bank was built in Town Square of Port Deposit granite faced in Indiana limestone.

Port Deposit Water Company’s stock purchased by the town January 25, 1905.

The last legal execution in Cecil County occurred October 20, 1905.

The indoor swimming pool is added to Monroe Hall at Tome School for Boys and the golf links are accepted by the Trustees who also accept the new dining hall plans of Wyatt & Nolting.

1906

The Pennsylvania Railroad erected a new bridge over the Susquehanna and their old one was converted to a highway bridge. The single track bridge built in 1873 was taken over, at no cost, by seven men who converted it for auto use, investing $100 each> They made $700,000 in tolls their first year on the “Gold Mine Bridge,” that was extremely narrow and double-decked going one-way on each deck. They later sold it to the state in 1923 for $585,000.

The new dining hall, attached to Van Buren House, was completed at Tome School for Boys.

1907

Part of the Conowingo Bridge was destroyed by fire in 1907, but quickly rebuilt.

The batting cage was added to Monroe House gymnasium as designed by architects Parker and Thomas.

Edmund W. Parker, who was born and educated in Port Deposit in 1860, was appointed to the 11th Census and in 1891 became Statistician of the United States Geological Survey. In 1907 he was advanced to the office of the Division of Mineral Resources.

In 1907 a section of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Bridge between Havre de Grace and Perryville collapsed hurling 11 cars of coal into the river. A new bridge was started that same year and completed in January 1910.

1908

Austin Lane Crothers, of Cecil County, was elected Governor of Maryland in 1908 and served one term, until 1912.

Port Deposit protested against Governor Crothers signing a bill to transfer the abandoned P.B.&W. Railroad Bridge at Havre de Grace to the Havre de Grace and Perryville Bridge Company on March 28, 1908.

1909

Landscape architect Charles W. Leavitt adds landscape touches to the golf links, tennis courts and other areas of Tome School for Boys campus.

One time general store keeper and postmaster of Blythedale, at Taylor’s Store, E. Kurtz Taylor was elected Cecil County treasurer in 1909.

1910

The most destructive ice gorge in the history of Port Deposit destroys homes, washed out streets and mostly all of the records of the town are destroyed when it arrived on January 23. Mrs. M.N. to Miss Clara L. Gable of Baltimore on an “ice jam” postcard of 1910: “…I am still in Port Deposit and feeling much better. I wish you could come down and look at this stricken town. No pen could describe what it looks like. It is an awful sight. I hope this card will find your mother, Nellie, and you well.” Miss Mayme Pierce, in a card of a wrecked house, wrote: “Am writing this in a big hurry, Don’t know if can read or not – this house was carried in the middle of the street and then on down. Had big coal fire in it when it started.” The legislature of Maryland appropriated $20,000, the County Commissioners $1,200 and public subscriptions brought in $2,300.

The punt gun, a large barreled gun that could kill 30 or 40 ducks at a time, is outlawed in Maryland in 1910.

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company erected a new double track bridge across the Susquehanna in 1910.

The founder of Port Deposit Heritage Corporation and the Paw Paw Museum, Grace Humphries, was born February 25, 1910.

1911

Maryland bought the Conowingo Bridge and ended the tolls.

William Winchester bought Winchester Hotel in 1911 and used it as a double dwelling with a candy-making business on the north side and later a soda fountain. It was frequented by Tome Boys and later Sailors, all of whom called it “the Winnie.”

The congregation of Bethel A.M.E. Church moves to 196 N. Main Street, the old Presbyterian Church, in 1911.

The Seventh Day Adventist Church at Blythedale was organized in 1911.

1912

A huge centenary celebration was held in Port Deposit.

Howard M. Ernst was Cum Laude of the Class of 1912 at Tome School for Boys. He went on to found Ernst & Company, of which he was a senior partner until1964. He also wrote numerous articles on horticulture, angling, finance and travel.

St. James Episcopal Church purchased the former “White House” at 33 High Street, Port Deposit, and added a stone section to square the house, which was used as the church rectory until 1951.

The Havre de Grace racetrack, The Graw, opened to horse racing on August 24, 1912, bringing economic success and the nickname of Little Chicago to the area.

1913

A celebration for the naming of the Town of Port Deposit was held this year with a special speech on the history of the town researched and read by then-Mayor David Armstrong.

In the Port Centennial parade of July 1913 an automobile carried “the first women’s rights banner through Port Deposit,” with Miss Gertrude Brady, Miss Elizabeth Rowland and Miss Emily Rowland in the vehicle. Also Miss Virginia Bond drove Old Dick, the oldest and best-known horse in Cecil County, in the parade.

1914

John S. Knight attended Tome School for Boys from 1911 to 1914 and would later earn the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, while the Detroit Free Press, one of his many newspapers, earned the Pulitzer for local reporting and a cartoonist for another Knight publication won for editorial cartoons – the first time in history of the Pultizer that one publishing group took three awards.

The first public school to operate in the Perryville area was at Frenchtown and called Oakhurst Private School, conducted by Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Currier of Blythedale in 1914, with two students graduating that year.

1915

            Women’s Suffrage meetings are held in Elkton, Port Deposit and Fredericktown.

1916

Jim Rice, born into slavery at Perry Point circa 1829, passed away in 1916 and was buried with great honor and respect at Cokesbury Methodist Church, Port Deposit.

Quarries operated and owned by Port Deposit Quarry Company through to 1922. Prior to this time, since 1865 to 1914 the McClenahan’s dominated the business.

1917

A number of Port Deposit women form a branch of the Woman Suffrage League of Maryland with Mrs. C.I. Benson as President in 1917.

George J. Liddell and Brother Canning Company was started in Colora in 1917, canning corn and tomatoes.

The Pennsylvania Railroad now employs over 300 people, although the number will drop some in the 1920s, but increase again with the building of the Conowingo Dam.

1918

June 19, 1918, Thomas Fields Sr., a black man from Port Deposit who likely worked at the quarry, was inducted in to the army along with fellow black men Oscar W. Giffin and Edward Jones of Port Deposit and Charles H. and Ernest L. Boddy of Conowingo. They were all sent overseas to serve in the Meuse-Argonne region of France. As evidenced by the large number of black expatriates who went to France in the 1930s, blacks were treated there more as equals than they had been in the U.S. When Fields returned from the war he began working for the Pennsylvania Railroad and therefore received a free travel pass. He loved baseball and frequently traveled to Philadelphia and Balitmore to attend games. In the late 1920s he, with fellow WWI veterans, organized a balck baseball team in Port Deposit borrowing the name of his favorite Baltimore ball Club and calling them the Port Deposit Black Sox. The players included names like Griffin, Stewart, Boddy, Jones, Henry and McMullen.  Many of the players on the original team worked at the quarries.

The first artillery was fired at Aberdeen Proving Ground on January 2, 1918, with APG firing 416,294 rounds in 1918.

Armistice Day found 4,905 troops and 6,000 civilians at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

The Gunpowder Neck Reservation was renamed Edgewood Arsenal in May.

On February 16 the Federal government purchased the Stump family’s Perry Point and leased it to Atlas Powder Company to make ammonium nitrate.

1919

Senator Joseph I. France, former Tome School teacher and owner of Mt. Ararat, lead the fight and spoke against Jim Crowism in Washington D.C. on December 16, 1919, when he introduced his amendment to the Cummins Bill, known as the Jim-Crow Car in interstate commerce. The bill was to do away with the separate car system for blacks and whites.

Water Witch Fire Company formed a committee in January to get inform

ation in regard to various hose connections used by Perryville, Havre de Grace, Perry Point and the Jacob Tome Institute Fire Departments. This was a major step in developing good mutual aid relations.

1920

Prohibition in effect from 1920 to 1933 but local law enforcement refused to enforce it.

Albert C. Ritchie, Democrat, served as Governor of Maryland from 1930 to 1935 – the first Governor to be re-elected since 1838 – he served 4 terms. He favored state’s rights and opposed both prohibition and the New Deal.

1 Center Street, known as Mrs. Murphy’s Hotel, and the birthplace of John A.J. Creswell, was sold to Dr. G.H. Richards Sr., in 1920. He added the large wing to turn it into a hospital, which was kept quite busy during the construction of the Conowingo Dam a half dozen years later.

Women finally earned the right to vote, courtesy the 19th Amendment in 1919, although there were mixed feelings about women voting in Cecil County. Still almost 1,000 Cecil County women registered the very first day, although the novelty soon wore off.

Havre de Grace’s Millard E. Tydings, 1890-1961, sponsors the bill that created the University of Maryland in 1920. He went to Tome School for Boys.

Seventh Day Adventist Church at Blythedale dedicated in 1920.

1921

The Hytheham Club of Port Deposit began their initiative to save Richard’s Oak, an effort they continue until 1960.

1922

Water Witch Fire Company bought an American La-France pumper for $10,500.

Port Deposit Quarry Company purchased by Mr. George W.M. Shaffer, who sold it to the Port Deposit Granite Company in 1926.

The first smoke mask purchased for Water Witch Fire Company, which had been in operation since 1880.

A native of Port Deposit, author, poet, and pioneering social work, Sarah Collins Fernandis’ article Inter-racial Activities of Baltimore Women is published in the October 22, 1922, issue of The Southern Workman.

1923

The steamer Susquehanna made her last trip.

M. Virginia Foulk, who attended Jacob Tome Institute from 1903 to 1904, was the granddaughter of T.C. Bond, President of Port Deposit’s Cecil National Bank and on the Board of Trustees of J.T.I. Foulk became the first female county superintendent of schools in Cabell County, W.Va., in 1923. The Bond family farm was The Maples, which was on the property now known as Bainbridge.

For the 21st consecutive year in a row C.A. Morrison is elected President of Water Witch Fire Company On Sat., October 12, 1923.

The seven investors in the Perryville Gold Mine Bridge have made $370,000 in tolls off of their cheap investment and in 1923 sold the bridge to the state for $585,000.

A very “warm” campaign for Port Deposit postmaster is reported in the papers between Lizzie Atkinson, sister of the present postmaster, and Edwin Boynton, Thomas Bond Jr., Theodore Vanneman and William R. Coulson in 1923.

Following land condemnations, application was filed by Susquehanna Power Company to build a 360,000 horsepower hydroelectric dam across the Susquehanna in 1923. That is 20,000 more horsepower than produced at Niagara Falls at the time.

The Community Fire Company of Perryville organized September 13, 1923.

The Captain Jeremiah Baker Chapter, Daughters of the American Legion, was organized at Perryville by Mrs. Cordelia Jackson Simmons in 1923.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then Undersecretary of the U.S. Navy, was one of the more prominent guest speakers at the Tome School for Boys this year.

1924

Walter P. Andrews, Tome School for Boys 1924, of Tenerife, Canary Islands, worked with Chase Manhattan Bank until his retired in 1932. He was Treasurer of the alumni organization that tried to keep the boarding school going by purchasing the property from the corporation.

There were so many students lined up to attend Jacob Tome Institute, and on an extensive waiting list, that the Board limits day pupils to Cecil County residents only in 1924.

Tome School’s annual track and field meet drew hundreds of spectators to the state-of-the-art cinder running track.

The Federal Government attempted, quite unsuccessfully, to change the name of Perry Point to Federal Park, amidst strong public outcry.

1925

Two volumes of Sarah Collins Fernandis’ poetry were published in 1925. She was born in Port Deposit in 1863.

A new siren for Water Witch Fire Company is purchased from F.S. Semle Co., at a cost of $414.

The George J. Liddell and Brother Canning Company at Colora, established in 1917, burned in 1925, but was rebuilt.

1926

The $52 million Conowingo Dam and Hydroelectric Plant is begun about five miles from Port and it furnishes electricity for the area, with work continuing until 1928. Some 3,800 workers live in construction camps around the dam.

The returns from the 1926 election showed an overwhelming Democratic victory. Cecil Clyde Squier, a Port Deposit Democrat earned 3,852 votes against John Wallace Scott, Republican for Senator at 2,351. The State Legislature is overwhelmingly Democratic. Apparently, 22 of the 29 members of the State Senate are of that party, and it is expected that complete returns will show that the Democratic majority in the House of Delegates is almost as large, according to the Midland Journal.

In 1926 Tome School graduate Milward Simpson ran as a Republican candidate for the State Legislature in Hot Springs County, Wyoming, on a staunch anti-Prohibition ticket. When asked by a woman his view on prohibition he said, “Madam, if I were any more wet, I’d ripple if you blew on me.” He won the election handily but retired after one term.

The Community Fire Company of Perryville built their first firehouse, now the Town Hall, in 1926.

The Aiken Homemaker’s Club was organized in 1926 near Perryville.

1927

Water Witch Fire Company organized a band from the membership roll. Second hand instruments are purchased from Conn Co. in Baltimore for $693.

The Conowingo Dam began commercial operation in 1927.

Havre de Grace’s Millard Tydings elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served for 24 years until 1951. He was destroyed in the 1950 election for allegedly being soft on communism.

The 1877 Household of Faith Church at Blythedale was sold by receivers in 1927 and is now apartments next to the old Blythedale Public School.

Port Deposit citizens fought increasing of the railroad grade through town by the Pennsyvlania Railroad, which would put the town in a big ditch.

Chester Tome Kimble bought the Nesbitt-Ryan House and converted it to three apartments with addresses on two separate streets, South Main Street and High Street.

1928

Conowingo Bridge finally destroyed by dynamite to make way for the Conowingo Dam.

March 1, 1928 the Conowingo Dam is finally completed and is operational as one of the largest hydroelectric plants in the nation.

1929

During the Great Depression (1929 to 1933) Maryland’s per capita income dropped 45%, industrial production dropped 60% and construction declined 87%.

A switch is installed in the telephone exchange to operate the fire siren for Water Witch in August. The siren is also tested every Saturday at noon to show that the fire department is standing by at all times.

The old  Perryville High School was built in 1929 along Aiken Avenue at Route 40, and was enlarged several times over the years.

1930

After World War I the Atlas Powder Company buildings at Perry Point were converted into a rehabilitation center and psychiatric hospital for veterans, called Perry Points Veteran’s Administration Hospital and dedicated in 1930.

Water Witch Fire Company holds their first Tag Day Fund Drive on June 21, 1930.

1931

George McMullen started with the Port Deposit Black Sox at third base, using the field at the wharf where Wiley Manufacturing later stood and where Tome’s Landing is today. Left-handed batters often knocked the ball into the Susquehanna River. Early opponents included teams both black and white. They played and beat all of the local high school teams and started looking further a-field for better competition.

1932

The Rev. Robert Hoover, pastor of the Perryville Presbyterian Church for 45 years, was especially helpful to the many hobos who traveled the area of Route 40 during the depression years. He became known as the “Friend to the Forgotten Man.”

1934

The Port Deposit Black Sox built a new field on the old log pond of the Susquehanna Canal.

In July black citizens of Port Deposit send a petition to the Cecil County Board of Education asking for a new elementary school as the old school of the same name was falling down. This old wooden schoolhouse was located on Main Street, just north of Center Street and had two classrooms and an outhouse, making it dangerously overcrowded.

1935

President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlawed the sink box in Chesapeake Bay water fowling.