Historic Elk Landing Foundation, Inc.

Hetty Boulden: Elk Landing and the War of 1812

Having been driven back by the militia at Fort Defiance, the British landed at White Hall, a farm owned by Frisby Henderson. They tried to persuade him to show them the way to Elkton. When he refused Hetty Boulden, an enslaved woman, was engaged to be their guide. Instead of leading the British to Elkton, Hetty led them to Cedar Point, just opposite Fort Hollingsworth at Elk Landing. Captain Henry Bennett, commander of the militia at Fort Hollingsworth, ordered them to fire on the British. The British were not up for a good fight and hastily retreated back to their waiting barges. They returned to their waiting schooner and the rest of the fleet near Turkey Point. Elkton had been spared due to the bravery of an enslaved woman and the well-placed plan of the local militia.

https://www.elklanding.org/copy-of-hollingsworth-house

photo: Historic Elk Landing Foundation, Inc.

George Washington’s military trunk bed used during the Revolutionary War, 1775.

More: https://thetravelbible.com/museum-of-artifacts/

The “In Freedom’s Name” exhibit chronicles and commemorates the selfless contributions men and women from Maryland have made to our national defense and the expansion of freedom over nearly 400 years. Visit the North East Branch Library before the exhibit ends this Saturday, March 2.

Special thanks to Greg Lanuza for these wonderful drone shots

Just imagine all this silted in marsh underwater, it really helps us to reimagine how the Landing once sat prominently at the top of the bay. The “head of the elk” was once a booming port rivaling that of Boston and Baltimore. This site was pivotal to both the Americans and the British in moving troops , playing an important role in both commerce and war

Our mighty Stone House still resolute despite another high tide.

On this day January 1 in 1812, John Adams broke his bitter 11 year silence with Thomas Jefferson—a reunion engineered by their mutual friend Dr. Benjamin Rush.

Adams wrote a short letter recapping his family’s wellbeing with the promise of sending “a packet containing two pieces of homespun lately produced in this quarter by one who was honoured in his youth with some of your attention and much of your kindness.” They were the two volumes of his son John Quincy Adams’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory, Delivered to the Classes of Senior and Junior Sophisters in Harvard University.

Adams closed with the words: “I wish you sir many happy New Years and that you may enter the next and many succeeding years with as animating prospects for the public as those at present before us. I am sir with a long and sincere esteem your friend and servant, John Adams.”

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Come meet the Historical Society of Cecil County and enjoy a festive celebration of books, authors, vendors, a used book sale, and more!
Book Lover’s Market will be held on Saturday, November 11 from 10 AM - 1 PM at the Elkton Library. For more details, click here: https://www.cecilcountylibrary.org/event/book-lovers-market-0

Journeys Of Courage | Cecil County Before 1829, boats bound for Philadelphia from the Chesapeake Bay had to take the roundabout route, sailing down to the mouth of the Bay and then circling back up along the Atlantic Coast, into the Delaware Bay, and, finally, up the Delaware River.  The opening of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal ma...

Also August 26, 1813, British forces were probing the defenses of St. Michaels following the August 10 attack, this time with twenty-one hundred men in sixty barges.

The large force landed about six miles from town and sent three hundred men to attack a nearby militia camp. More troops, sailing up the Miles River, alerted locals that if they stayed in their homes no trouble would come their way.

About one and one-half miles from St. Michaels, eighteen hundred attackers collided with five hundred determined Americans supported by cavalry and artillery. The largest Eastern Shore battle of the war lasted only a few volleys as the English quickly withdrew. The relieved citizens of St. Michaels had repelled the invaders twice in a month.

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

[excerpt from "In Full Glory Reflected: Discovering the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake" by Ralph E. Eshelman and Burton K. Kummerow; used with permission from the authors; image: aerial illustration of a battle with a line of troops in blue uniforms in the foreground; (c) Gerry Embleton]

Join us once again for a historic trip down the elk river

Yakking about History - Saturday 9/9/23

Click the link below to sign up today! BYO or Rental must register in advance. Contact Bay Venture Outfitters or visit our website to learn more. https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/bayventureoutfitters/items/170175/availability/1207258523/book/?flow=711883&fbclid=IwAR0JVThgrTYtwb5Z0nbxQtZ_ws3RHDiUeisDYe9RAcRLaNWE9CJdRNXlNVM

1812 | Historic Elk Landing | Elkton Elk Landing brings history to life. Visit, experience, and imagine history - the struggle, the work, the life that helped shape a town, a region and a nation.

Map of the Middle Colonies in 1638

"Although Delaware's present-day boundaries are shown for reference, these were not established until the mid-18th century."
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/delaware-new-sweden/

Did you know : the landing is part of this rich history. This site was the home of the Bryson Family’s dairy Elk Landing Dairy in the 1940’s

JOIN US Saturday August 12th 10am. CECIL COUNTY MILK BOTTLES
Do you remember having milk delivered to your door in glass bottles? Did you know that some of those bottles are highly collectible? Mark Barczewski, Farm Museum Board Member, will give a presentation on Cecil County Milk Bottles. Learn about the location of the dairies and their history. He will also discuss the milk bottle collecting hobby as well as some information on Cecil County Dairy Farms in general as well as the state of modern dairy farming. He welcomes any new information that can be offered as well, so bring your local knowledge. Also have the rare opportunity to see nearly all of the Cecil County Milk Bottles that can be collected.

Ever since its publication in 1820, Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" has been one of America's favorite ghost stories. But surprisingly, the larger-than-life tale of the headless horseman may actually have a basis in reality. Historical records from the Revolutionary War show that a Hessian soldier was decapitated by a cannonball during a battle in White Plains, New York in 1776. He was then reportedly buried at the Old Dutch Church near Tarrytown — in a village traditionally known as Sleepy Hollow.

As the story goes, the soldier started rising from his grave every night in search of his missing head, killing any hapless villager who happened to cross paths with him. This is the eerie tale that Washington likely heard when he moved to Tarrytown with his family as a teenager in the late 1790s. When he started writing a collection of short stories as an adult, he based many of them on his time in the quiet village of Sleepy Hollow and incorporated the infamous haunted soldier into his most famous story of all. Go inside the chilling history behind the headless horseman: https://bit.ly/3VZKtlb

3D animation of how drones reconstructing Whitby Abbey 📍

Although, Whitby Abbey was said to not have had a spire, this is a very cool concept.

📷 Drift/ Cyberdrone

All are welcome to drop in on Thursday!
For more info about Preservation MD: https://www.preservationmaryland.org/

Yakking about history is back!!! Save the date - September 9th.

Powerful Booking Software, Unmatched Support | FareHarbor FareHarbor is the all-in-one booking solution and business management platform that helps you operate your tours, activities, attractions and rentals.

45+ Thrilling Historical Fiction Books for Kids A large list of historical fiction books for kids that cover a wide variety of topics and time periods from medieval to 20th century.

Cecil County in the Civil War
Cecil College Lifelong Learning Class
Starts: Dec 14, 2022, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. -- 2 sessions
includes site visit
by Mike Dixon
Last offered Nov. 2018.
Only 2 seats remain open.

In the decades before the Civil War, slavery steadily declined in Cecil County and yet open support of abolition was dangerous. How did the county on the Mason-Dixon Line, in a slave-holding border state, react to the political tensions that turned deadly and threatened to split the country? While taking up this question, we also consider events in the county, the contributions of citizens on both sides of the struggle, and how the county changed.

For more information or to register, click here. The course description is on page 26.https://www.cecil.edu/wp-content/uploads/cce-course-schedule.pdf

Photo Note:: President Abraham Lincoln visited General George McClellan following the Battle of Antietam in Sept. 1862. Alan Pinkerton stands on the left. Photo Credit: Library of Congress Online Digital Collections.

that the British did not immediately leave the Chesapeake Bay following their unsuccessful attempt to take Baltimore in September 1814?

Enemy raids on American towns continued throughout the region, including Nomini Bay and Dividing Creek in Virginia and Castle Haven and Tracey's Landing in Maryland.

Additionally, the British overtook Tilghman and Poplar islands in October 1814. The islands offered ready-access to Annapolis, Baltimore, and other potential targets. A regiment of a thousand men began building winter barracks on Tilghman in 1814, but within the month the British troops were gone.

“The enemy in the Chesapeake have taken possession of Tilghman’s Island with the apparent view of fixing winter quarters there.” --Baltimore Niles’ Weekly Register, October 29, 1814.

Image description: a historic map showing Poplar and Tilghman Islands; credit: a close-up of the Maryland Map by Mathew Carey, 1814; Maryland State Archives

In order to ascend and descend the Potomac River in late summer 1814, the British naval squadron was forced to use kedge anchors to ease their warships over the shallow and ever-changing Kettle Bottom Shoals, near the bend in the river.

This time-consuming and exhausting work, called "warping," continued uninterrupted for five successive days. Each ship reported going aground at least twenty times.

"I believe each of the Ships was not less than twenty different times aground and each time we were obliged to haul off by main Strength - and we were employed warping for five whole successive days, with the exception of a few hours, a distance of fifty miles." --British Capt. Sir James Alexander Gordon, commander of the the British diversion up the Potomac River

[image: illustration of four men in a boat, two of which look overboard; caption: the larger British vessels has to "warp" through the sand bars of the Kettle Bottom Shoals, rowing a kedge anchor out ahead of the ship, dropping it overboard and then winching the vessel forward foot by foot; image: © GERRY EMBLETON; text from "In Full Glory Reflected" and used with permission from the authors]

The Mason Dixon Line: The Story Behind the Boundary
Free History Program
Bear Library
Saturday, July 23, 2022 @ 11 a.m. .
by Mike Dixon

Born as the result of a bitter territorial dispute over royal land grants, the Mason-Dixon Line was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 to settle the boundaries for Pennsylvania and Maryland. After 1820, when the Missouri Compromise created political conditions that made the line important to the history of slavery, it became associated with the division between the free and slave states. Today the line is still seen by many as a symbolic dividing line for regional attitudes and customs. This program explores the story of the line, which runs through our land and history, along with the perceptions about the boundary.

Click the link to the Bear Library FB page for more information.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1465301080555809/?ref=newsfeed

July 12, 1814, the British attacked Elkton, MD for the second time during the . The defenders "gave them in all eleven guns, so well directed, that they hastily...retreated down the river..."

The British first attacked the town in April 1813. Elkton, at the head of Elk River, was expected to be a target because it could be a landing site for an advance on Philadelphia. Citizens of Elkton built three earthen forts and placed a chain across the river for defense and fended off the British assault.

Only one other place in Maryland --St. Michaels--succeeded twice in repulsing British attacks during the war.

"Two small batteries...in the town...opened their fire upon the barges, and...compelled them to retreat with considerable precipitation..." Report on Elkton Skirmish in Alexandria Gazette, August 18, 1813

[image: color illustration of earthwork and wood fortifications with artillery, overlooking a river, (c) Gerry Embleton]

James T. Wollon Jr., noted architectural preservationist revered for his insatiable curiosity, dies James T. Wollon Jr., a noted architectural preservationist, died from complications of dementia June 2 at Birch Bay Village, a Bar Harbor, Maine, memory care facility. The former longtime Churchville resident was 83.

On Nov. 1, 1864, Enslaved Emancipated in Cecil County - As the nation celebrates Juneteenth, Nov 1, 1864 marks the day emancipation came to Cecil County for enslaved people.

"Any Soldier who is guilty of any breach of the Articles of War, by Swearing, getting Drunk, or using an Obscene Language; shall be severely Punished, without the Benefit of a Court Martial." George Washington, Garrison Orders, Fort Cumberland, September 19, 1755

Compliments of George Washington Society