Category: Uncategorized

Rising Sun History Book Digitized

Rising sun history book, centennial celebration, 1960
Rising Sun Centennnial Celebration book cover, 1960; from the Allen County Public Library via the Internet Archive

RESEARCH TIP — 1960 RISING SUN MD CENTENNIAL BOOKLET DIGITIZED — FREE ACCESS PROVIDED BY ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY — For the centennial of the town of Rising Sun, a committee published an informative 96-page booklet in 1960. It is jammed with helpful information about the town, and I pull it from my bookshelf often to look up something.

But now, the Allen County Public Library has digitized this rare title, helping to preserve it and make it available to a vast audience. It’s been out of print for many years and is a hard title to acquire.

The Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN., has vast genealogical holdings, one of the world’s largest research collections, and a staff specializing in genealogy. It has been a go-to place for family history researchers for a long time. And the library has kept up with the times by digitizing its vast holdings. It now has nearly 115,000 titles online, the one from Rising Sun being added on Dec. 7, 2021.

Once the library digitizes a title in the stacks, it is uploaded to www.archive.org. The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library providing free access to resources.

Digitization is important for many reasons, one of them being preservation. Paper was never designed to last centuries and deteriorates as the years pass. Plus, creating online, free-access digital copies helps a far-reaching audience.

I’m thankful whenever I find heritage groups and libraries working to preserve print media from the past and make it available to a far larger audience than ever could be done in earlier years.

Click here to go to the Rising Sun Centennial Celebration Booklet from 1960. It is also text-searchable for searching names on the pages.

I have added a link to the Allen County Genealogical Dept. in the remarks section of this post.

https://archive.org/…/risingsuncentenn…/page/n3/mode/2up

rising sun baseball team, 1904, cetennial book
A page from the Rising Sun Centennial Book shows the Rising Sun Baseball Team in 1904

Talking About Murder and Railroad Accidents with WBOC

Tuesday, WBOC’s Delmarva Life asked me to stop by the Salisbury studio to talk about terrible railroad accidents and crimes, a time when murder and mayhem rode the rails on the Peninsula.

In the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, trains were the dominant form of transportation and unsettling accidents and violent deaths frequently disrupted excursions, dominating the headlines of newspapers and alarming the traveling public.

Since I kept encountering these horrific tragedies while investigating the past for community studies, I started exploring the dark underside of train travel, the unexamined stories of murder and mayhem on the rails, including cold-blooded killings, Jesse James-like train robberies, devastating explosions, and serious accidents.

As I studied them I developed a talk called Murder and Mayhem Rode the Rails. Here’s a link to information on the talk.

Murder & Mayhem Rode the Rails on Delmarva

Here are some links to blog posts about incidents in the region,

Young Edwin Roach Killed in Greenwood Explosion

Disastrous Railroad Accident Takes Seven Lives in Delmar in 1909

Terrible Railroad Calamity at the C & D Canal Drawbridge

During Midnight Raid on Freight Car in 1900, Clayton Police Officer Slain

The Day the Railroad Cars Crashed into the Susquehanna River

railroad accidents and train wrecks.
Railroads were the leading cause of violent deaths in 1907 and railroad accidents were common. This accident probably took place on the line between Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Jim Crow and the Spanish Flu

African American Nurses and the Spanish Flu
Nine African-American nurses at Camp Sherman (Base Hospital Ohio) during World War I fought the Spanish Flu; (W.E.B. Du Dois Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Amherst Libraries, University of Massachusetts)

I have been asked to discuss the connections between Jim Crow and the Pandemic of 1918 for a program sponsored by the Harford Community College Civil Rights Project on May 13, 2021, at 4 p.m.

Here is more information on the program

JIM CROW AND THE SPANISH FLU – DEADLY CONNECTIONS

A Discussion about the 1918 pandemic & today Harford Community College, Harford Civil Rights Project

May 13, 2021, 4 – 5 pm

In an era when Jim Crow had a firm grip on the nation, the Spanish Influenza of 1918 swept across the country, devastating America’s Black communities. As people of color wrestled with that deadly novel virus 103-years-ago, they also struggled with segregation and discrimination, at a time when access to healthcare was scarce. Thus, as the world continues to cope with COVID-19 in 2021, we will discuss historical echoes connecting 1918 with today’s public health emergency from the African-American Community’s perspective.https://harford.presence.io/…/deadly-parallels-a…

Feb. 12, 1919, New York regiment returns home on Stockholm from World War I battlefield in France . — Some of the men of the 369th (15th N.Y.) who won the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in action.” Left to right. Front row: Pvt. Ed Williams, Herbert Taylor, Pvt. Leon Fraitor, Pvt. Ralph Hawkins. Back Row: Sgt. H. D. Prinas, Sgt. Dan Strorms, Pvt. Joe Williams, Pvt. Alfred Hanley, and Cpl. T. W. Taylor. 1998 print. Records of the War Department General and Special. Staffs. (US National Archives
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/26431282)

Maryland Cemetery Conference, 29th Annual Meeting

For the 29th annual Maryland Cemetery Conference, I’m pleased to be talking about the history of cemeteries and burial grounds at the top of the Chesapeake Bay on May 1, 2021.

  • Darlington Cemetery
    A summer thunderstorm at the Darlington Cemetery (photo: Kyle Dixon)
Cemetery Conference Agenda, 2021