An article about a Salem County Cold Case, a murder in 1874, published in the Salem County Historical Society Newsletter.
While studying the array of officials who made up New Jersey’s 19th-century criminal justice system, I often pore over aging coroner’s reports, trial transcripts, and police blotters. While doing that in South Jersey, I came across an unsettling Salem County Cold Case, the murder of Abigail Dilks in 1874.
From the beginning, the mystifying case stumped 19th-century lawmen and prosecutors. They swept the fields and marsh for evidence and interrogated the “usual types,” but the investigators failed to find a motive. Also, no one provided even the slightest information that might lead to a credible suspect, so the killer escaped.
The questions that stumped law enforcement lingered for decades, but those faded as one generation gave way to another. Still, the coroner’s verdict remains in the aging book of inquests at the Salem County Clerk’s Office. Abigail Dilks died at the hands of an unknown person in a lonely area of Lower Penns Neck near Harrisonville nearly 150 years ago.
Since true crime stories and unsolved mysteries are popular these days, I wrote a piece about this horrendous murder for the summer 2022 edition of the quarterly newsletter of the Salem County Historical Society. The case had mostly been lost in the recorded histories and written records of Salem County.
Delaware Humanities has selected a new program I have been researching for inclusion in the speaker’s bureau and visiting scholar programs. The lecture, “Life in the Past Lane; Delaware Roads,” encourages people to get off the highway and enjoy some of the State’s most scenic, cultural and historic roads — along with the surrounding landscape and resources.
Here’s the description of the program:
With the arrival of modern, high-speed highways, many of Delaware’s scenic routes and the small hamlets and villages clustered around those old corridors are overlooked. This talk explores the character, ambiance, and history of some of these lesser-traveled roads today. These historic roadways are much more than just a line on the map. So come along for an enjoyable trip. You will hear intriguing stories about waterfront towns, agricultural communities, and country hamlets and villages, where discovery awaits you.
Come along and find your road in this talk. Along the way, we will explore science byways, old historic corridors, and the connections between the past and today.
Travel was difficult in mid-March 1923 as this automobile travels along. The road connects Kirkwood and Tybouts Corner. (Source: Delaware Public Archives)
In My Memory Oldsmobile, by Edward Gus, 1905 (Source: Historic America Sheet Music, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University)
The Maryland State Archives is gradually introducing new online records. And on 6/22/2002, the Archives announced that partial scans of the male and female marriage indexes for Cecil County are available online. The male index covers 1928-1977, while the female index is 1928-1935. Access is free.
For Dorchester, the Archives added the Dorchester County marriage records for 1865-1886
A poster at the Havre de Grace Colored School honors Dr. George T. Stansbury
For years, I have studied African American health care, seeking to understand the history of practices before Black Americans gained access to mainstream medicine. This fieldwork has given me the opportunity to interview nurses, aides, physicians, and tradition bearers in communities across Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
So when the Association for the Study of African American Life and History selected “Black Health and Wellness” as its 2022 theme, a couple of organizations asked me to discuss the contributions of two medical pioneers in Maryland.
Dr. Stansbury in Havre de Grace
In the 20th century, African American physicians established practices in more communities. In Harford County, Dr. George T. Stansbury opened his office in Havre de Grace in 1950. But the Howard University College of Medicine graduate could not admit patients to Harford Memorial Hospital, which maintained a segregated ward.
In 1960, a tragedy occurred at the hospital when the staff initially denied a young Black woman full access to all the labor and delivery facilities after medical complications developed. Dr. Stansbury spent the night with the patient, doing what he could to save the newborn and mother. But, both passed away. The father sued, and in 1963, the hospital agreed to integrate.
For the Cecil County Chapter of the NAACP, I talked about Dr. James L. Johnson. The graduate of Meharry Medical College, a Freedmen’s Bureau-era School in Nashville, TN, came to Elkton to open his office in 1934. When Dr. Johnson started practicing medicine in the middle of the Great Depression, the county’s health care system was segregated, like every other aspect of life in Cecil County. To admit patients to Union Hospital, Doctor Johnson made arrangements with one of the community’s white physicians.
The segregated system for patient care remained in place until landmark civil rights decisions in the 1960s forced changes. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, hospital desegregation rulings in the federal courts, the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, and other initiatives created a Civil Rights era in health care. Consequently, the separate wards system ended in Elkton as Doctor Johnson received full staff privileges. The respected physician maintained a busy practice until the 1970s.
It is important to remember those who paved the way for the current generation and the difficulties they faced.
