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Talbot County

Coulbourne and Jewett Featured Image
The St. Michaels Seafood Packing Plant that Helped Blue Crabs Rise To a Whole New Level in the Early 1900s CharactersWay Back Machine

The St. Michaels Seafood Packing Plant that Helped Blue Crabs Rise To a Whole New Level in the Early 1900s

The next time you’re at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Md., take a few moments to remember that you’re walking in the entrepreneurial footsteps of William H.T. Coulbourne and Frederick Jewett. It’ll be easy—the Coulbourne & Jewett seafood-packing plant stood at the heart of the museum’s campus on Navy Point. Founded on a shoestring in 1902, Coulbourne & Jewett is notable for…
February 19, 2021
Jack Messick Memories of Life on the Choptank River Lighthouse
Sweet Memories of Life on the Lighthouse CharactersWay Back Machine

Sweet Memories of Life on the Lighthouse

A sad introductory note to this post that originally went up in 2020: Jack Messick passed away in July 2024. May he rest in peace. My friend Jack Messick is probably the last living person who spent a lot of time in the original Choptank River Lighthouse. In the late 1940s, when Jack was around 10 years old, his father asked a question that would…
December 31, 2020
A Quick Visit to Claiborne, Md. Featured Photo
A Quick Visit to Little Claiborne, Md. with Six Great Old Photos DestinationsWay Back Machine

A Quick Visit to Little Claiborne, Md. with Six Great Old Photos

I lead the way along “Talbot County Backroads” in a chapter from my book Eastern Shore Road Trips #1: 27 One-Day Adventures on Delmarva. On this trip we wind along one country road after another—they’re all beautiful, and they all have interesting stories to tell. Case in point: Here is the snippet from the book about Claiborne, Md.: "Back on straight and narrow Route 33,…
December 7, 2020
Quote Harvest Liquors in Trappe, Maryland FEATURED IMAGE
Harvest Time, 1850s: Roast lamb for lunch, swigging rye whiskey in the field … Quote of the DayWay Back Machine

Harvest Time, 1850s: Roast lamb for lunch, swigging rye whiskey in the field …

This Delmarva "Quote of the Day" comes from the 1976 book Trappe: The Story of an Old-Fashioned Town by Dickson Preston. Trappe is located just up from the Choptank River in Talbot County, Md. "Trappe was an up and coming place , the market center for a large and prosperous farming area. It had at least eight storekeepers, three doctors, five shoemakers, seven carpenters, two…
October 30, 2020
Tench Tilghman 5 Things Featured Photo
HEROES OF DELMARVA: 5 Things About Col. Tench Tilghman, Revolutionary Star CharactersWay Back Machine

HEROES OF DELMARVA: 5 Things About Col. Tench Tilghman, Revolutionary Star

Tench Tilghman served in the Revolutionary War as a top aide to George Washington, who praised the Talbot County, Md. native generously for his advice, loyalty, and trustworthiness. After the British surrendered at Yorktown, Washington assigned to Tilghman the task of making a mad dash to the nation’s capital in Philadelphia to deliver official word of the triumph. (1) That Weird First Name The tench…
October 24, 2020
Sunset atBlackwater 2013 Featured Image
Book Signing at Vintage Books in Downtown Easton, Md. on Fri., Oct. 2, 2020 The Newsroom

Book Signing at Vintage Books in Downtown Easton, Md. on Fri., Oct. 2, 2020

Writer Jim Duffy of Secrets of the Eastern Shore will be in Easton for a book-signing event on the evening of Oct. 2, 2020 as Vintage Books & Fine Art joins in the monthly First Friday Gallery Walk festivities featuring an array of exhibit openings in the downtown area. Duffy is the author of the bestselling Eastern Shore Road Trips series. Subtitled "One-Day Adventures on…
September 26, 2020
First Steamboat on the Chesapeake Featured Image
How Capt. Edward Trippe Brought the Steamboat Revolution to the Chesapeake CharactersWay Back Machine

How Capt. Edward Trippe Brought the Steamboat Revolution to the Chesapeake

In tumultuous times, we sometimes miss the forest for the trees. Wartime news ruled the day during the summer of 1813. Nearly 40 British ships prowled the Chesapeake Bay. The bad guys burned a pair of Maryland towns, Fredericktown and Georgetown, and attacked another, St. Michaels. A vessel named Chesapeake dominated newspaper headlines that June--she was a U.S. Navy frigate captured by the bad guys…
June 28, 2020
St. Michaels Character of the Day: The Crazy Life of James Michener, Millionaire & Cheapskate CharactersWay Back Machine

St. Michaels Character of the Day: The Crazy Life of James Michener, Millionaire & Cheapskate

This is an excerpt from Eastern Shore Road Trips #2: 26 MORE One-Day Adventures on Delmarva. At the end of each trip in the book, there is a postscript section that tells a bit of historical or natural lore attached to the trip. This is at the end of the chapter about visiting St. Michaels, Md. By the time Chesapeake was published in June of…
June 10, 2020
WAY BACK MACHINE: The Great Poplar Island Bootleg Booze Factory of 1929 Way Back Machine

WAY BACK MACHINE: The Great Poplar Island Bootleg Booze Factory of 1929

On a Sunday afternoon in May 1929, Talbot County (Md.) Sheriff Thomas L. Faulkner and a team of local officers and federal agents sailed from Lowe’s Wharf, just up the mainland from Tilghman Island, heading past storied old Poplar Island and into the open Chesapeake Bay. But then the boat spun around and headed back for the island from the north. Poplar Island was a…
March 28, 2020