Tag: maryland

Old Commercial Maps for Delaware & Maryland Available from Philadelphia Free Library

McLear and Kendall Carriage Factory hesamere 1882
McLear & Kendall Carriage Factory, French Street, Wilmington, by the Hexamer General Survey. Source: Philadelphia Free Library

While digging up some historical records on a Delaware property earlier this week, I discovered a large body of helpful online maps published by the Philadelphia Free Library. This urban institution has substantial online collections, including a large holding of maps.

The resources that helped with my investigation was the Hexamer General Survey collection. Between 1866 and 1895, Ernest Hexamer sketched out detailed plates on nearly 3,000 industrial and commercial properties in the Greater Philadelphia area.  These meticulous illustrations included breweries, textile mills, printers, car works, dye and chemical plants, planning mills, and much more.  The renderings were created for fire insurance underwriters and are similar to the Sanborn Maps, which are available for many Delmarva communities.

Hexamer was a German immigrant, according to the blog, Hexamer Redux. “He began his career creating insurance maps in New York City.  In 1856, he moved to Philadelphia and established the fire insurance map business in the city.”

For researchers on the upper part of the Delmarva Peninsula, there are a many industrial plates from Wilmington, as well as New Castle and Cecil counties. The Star Bone Phosphate Works at Rothwell Landing is the only one for Kent County, DE.  Companies such as the Jackson & Sharp’s Delaware Car Works, Bancroft and lots of others are represented in the records.

In addition to floor plans similar to architectural drawings lots of additional details are provided. There are notes about the construction, fire protection, occupancy, and other elements of interest to an insurance carrier.  Many include perspective sketches of the actual building, which is great.

This will be a valuable resource for many Delmarva researchers. Thank you Philadelphia Free Library for providing this excellent resource.

 

providence mill hexamer 1890
Providence MIll, Wm. M. Singerly, 1890 by Hexamer General Survey; Source: Philadelphia Free Library.
new castle mills hexamere phila free library 1886
New Castle Mills, New Castle, DE., 1887 by Hexamer Surveys. Source: Philadelphia Free Library

 

jackson and sharp phila free library hexamore 1872
Jackson and Sharp Rail Works, 1872, by Hexamer General Survey. Source: Philadelphia Free Library

 

19th Century Travel Guide for Travel between Philadelphia and Baltimore Helpful for Local History Researchers

The Stanton Railroad Station
The Stanton Railroad Station, From the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad Guide via Hathi Trust http:hathitrust.org

When we hit the road these days for a trip to some unfamiliar destination, we often consult travel directories and guidebooks. These handy sources, whether online or on the printed page, are packed with information about a place, providing details for sightseeing and accommodations

They were there in the 19th century too, filling the need of itinerant types for information to orient them to things on their journey to unfamiliar places.  While there are a number of works available from the 1800s for the Delmarva Peninsula, I recently worked with two as I prepared for a Delaware Humanities forum talk for the Newark Historical Society.

My talk was about the social history of railroading in Delaware and I was reorienting it to matters more of interest to the heritage group’s members. So I surfed over to the Digital Library of America, an excellent portal for starting online searches.  That search yielded the sought after reference, the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Guide published in 1856 by Charles Dare.  This little volume was designed, the author said, to communicate information that was most interesting to passengers over the route.  Dare updated his first publication with a second issue in 1877.

The handy guide described for the traveler the route from Philadelphia to Baltimore, providing pages of details about the destinations on the upper Delmarva Peninsula, such as Claymont, Bellevue, Wilmington, Newport, Stanton, Newark, Elkton, North East, Charlestown and the Susquehanna River crossing. As the miles rolled by on those long ago journeys the guide described items of interest for sightseers and provided practical destination information on local accommodations.

There are also plenty of sketches. The author offered a special thanks to D. C. Baxter for his work, the transformation of “photographs of scenery upon the route into well-executed wood engravings.”  The maps were done by J. E. Larkin.

Just as this guide was handy to people living in the 19th century, the modern day researcher will find it helpful for understanding places along the road.  Fortunately these rare books have been digitized by academic libraries and are now readily available for on demand use.  I purchased a copy of the original work from a rare book dealer in New England probably 30 years ago.  Otherwise it would have taken a time consuming trip to a special collections or large academic library.

But as digitization expands our easy contact with heritage-related materials, it helps advance our understanding and appreciation of our past as practically everyone has the ability to conveniently access rare materials.  The physical copy of the e-resource I was using is located at the Harvard University Library.

Proposed railroad bridge between Perryville and Havre de Grace
Proposed railroad bridge between Perryville and Havre de Grace. Source: Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad Guide, via www.hathitrust.org
The Newark Train Station.\
The Newark Train Station. Source: Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad Guide, via www.hathitrust.org

1807 Gazetteer of Delaware and Maryland Helps Genealogists and Local History Researchers

Geographical description of Maryland and Delaware
Joseph Scott’s Geographical Description of the State of Maryland and Delaware. Source: Hathi Trust via the Digital Public Library of America

In the decades before state directories and similar resources appeared, there were gazetteers or geographical dictionaries.  These valuable titles, many over 200 years old, focused on geography as they examined an area in detail, presenting information about a community, its landscape, political economy, business enterprise, population, and natural resources.

Today genealogists and local historians will find these works helpful as they offer detailed insights into a county, town, or village. Since hard-to-find details, such as social statistics, are contained in the works, I often consult the volumes when trying to understand the changes that have taken place in an area over the centuries.

In this region, “A Geographical Description of the States of Maryland and Delaware,” published by Joseph Scott in 1807, is helpful.   As its nearly 200 pages focus on this region, it contains a large amount of productive information.  In addition to details on most of the towns and villages of any size on Delmarva, there is lots of text discussing the states and each county.

This title was once hard to access.  I purchased one from an antiquarian bookstore in New England decades ago to have it instantly available for my needs.  Before that, I had to travel to a distant special collections library.

But now, thanks to the Digital Public Library of America and other public domain e-content providers, we all have instant access to this and many more titles.

Click here to go to the Digital Public Library of America’s catalog item for this product.

page examines geography and population of Delaware
Delaware Social Statistics showing the population in 1800 by hundred for free persons and slaves, along with the start of the description of New Castle. Source: Hathi Trust, via the Digital Public Library of America
Delaware map in Joseph Scott's 1807 Geographical Description of Maryland and Delaware
The Delaware map in Joseph Scott’s 1807 Geographical Description of Maryland and Delaware: Source: Hathi Trust via the Digital Public Library of America

Bringing Communities Together to Remember Tragedies: Southern Flight 242 in New Hope, Ga & Pan Am Flight 214 in Elkton, MD

This afternoon while driving home from the University of Delaware during a heavy downpour, I listened to Transom, a new public media show. The broadcast, “Southern Flight 242:  Bringing My Father Home” by Will Coley, was the piece that had me attentively listening as the rain came down. In it, an audio documentarian digs deeply into the story of his father’s death in a commercial plane crash in New Hope George on April 4, 1977.

Will was seven when Southern Flight 242 went down, taking 72 lives, including nine residents of New Hope, but 22 passengers walked away from the wreckage.  He was reluctant to search out the narrative for decades, although many people encouraged him to look into the tragedy.  As times made the sad event grow a little more distant, Will stumbled onto a New York Times article describing how surviving passengers and townspeople, who were “brought together by fate and a relentless hailstorm,” came back together in the town of New Hope twenty years after the impact on a Georgia highway.

At the reunion, “eight of the surviving passengers joined more than 100 others whose lives crossed the path of flight 242, including rescue workers, volunteers, doctors, nurses, and relatives of the deceased.  Jack Barker, a retired Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, said he had never heard of a similar reunion,” the newspaper reported.

This tragedy deeply affected many people, and Will lost his father when he was seven years old.  Left with some photos and a few audio tapes to remember him, it took 35 years before he was ready to look more deeply into the occurrence memorialized in New Hope, GA, as the big jet came down in the center of town.

But while he was cleaning out his grandmother’s house after she passed away, he found a cassette tape with a few brief moments of sounds from long ago as his father showed him how to record something.  He had no memory of this as his dad explained audio to the child, a medium he now works in.

With this, he decided to look into the tragedy, as it might help him better understand his father and himself.  The material was put together for the show Transom, and the broadcast essay is now available on public media.

This excellent audio essay reminded me of an experience we had in Cecil County on December 8, 2013, when the community and family members of Flight 214 paused to mark the passage of 50 years since the crash of Pan American World Airways Jet, Flight 214, took 81 lives in a cornfield at the edge of Elkton.  On the day that marked the passage of a half-century, we invited family members, first responders, and community residents to come together to honor the memory of those who lost their lives and to remember a generation of first responders who answered an unimaginable call that changed so many lives in a split-second.

There are some great new public media outlets, such as Transom and Unfictionalized, sharing first-person stories these days.

Click here to hear the full program

HowSound:  The Backstory of Good RadioStorytelling

From the Blog Confessions of an Oral Historian:  “A Forgotten Hero of Southern Airways Fligh5 242:  New Hope Fire Chief John R. Clayton.”