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Way Back Machine

Quote of the Day

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “On his arrival in Vienna, the people were filled with astonishment and alarm”

Set on a gorgeous bend of the Nanticoke River, Vienna is one of the prettiest little towns on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Home to around 300 people nowadays, it dates its history clear back to 1706. There is a lovely stretch of public green space on the waterfront today. As you stroll around there and admire the views, try to imagine this place back in the…
September 4, 2017
DestinationsWay Back Machine

The Phillips Packing Company Strike of 1937: Black and White Together on the Picket Lines

    The next time you drive through Cambridge, Maryland along Route 50, take a good look behind the Wawa convenience store, toward Dorchester Avenue and the western horizon. The towering pair of old smokestacks there have some faded lettering on them, “PPCO,” for Phillips Packing Company. This year marks the 80th anniversary of a big strike there that made headlines around the country back…
August 30, 2017
Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day: The Old Wye Island Bridge Tender

    In Hulbert Footner’s 1944 book “Rivers of the the Eastern Shore,” the author takes note in his chapter on the Wye River of a little-used old drawbridge leading out to Wye Island: WYE BRIDGE, WHICH CROSSES to the island, is a long, creaking, wooden structure, dry and silvery with age. In the middle it has a true drawbridge like the one at Crisfield, that…
August 27, 2017
Tubman TravelsWay Back Machine

TUBMAN TRAVELS: The Price of Freedom

    The most popular route from Dorchester County into Delaware along the Underground Railroad ran through Samuel Green’s old stomping grounds of East New Market. Today, Faith Community United Methodist Church is tucked off to the east of the highway there, behind the tracks that give that Railroad Avenue its name. The church dates its history to 1844, when it was known as Colored People’s…
August 20, 2017
From the BooksQuote of the Day

ROAD TRIPS 2 EXCERPT: A Tight Fit in Tyaskin, Md.

This excerpt from Eastern Shore Road Trips #2: 26 More One-Day Adventures on Delmarva features a historical nugget that comes as a bonus section at the end of a chapter called "Wicomico Wanderings," set on the lower Eastern Shore of Maryland. The trip starts at history-laden Pemberton Park outside of Salisbury, Md. and then leads you along backroads and into the Nanticoke River towns of…
August 8, 2017
Tubman TravelsWay Back Machine

TUBMAN TRAVELS: Young Frederick Douglass in the Fight of His Life

This is an excerpt from Tubman Travels: 32 Underground Railroad Journeys on Delmarva. More info about the book is here. Standing in downtown St. Michaels today, with its tourist-friendly bevy of upscale shops and interesting eateries, it’s not easy to imagine the sort of place this town was when Frederick Douglass arrived from Baltimore in the early 1830s. Still known as Fred Bailey then, he…
July 28, 2017
Tubman TravelsWay Back Machine

TUBMAN TRAVELS: Love Comes in a Box

    This story of Lear Green's escape from slavery is a free preview from Chapter 27 of Tubman Tales: 32 Underground Railroad Journeys on Delamarva, which will be published in September 2017. 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,…
July 27, 2017
Quote of the Day

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “That morning, we’d all pile in the workboats and go to Red Hills”

    Back before Chincoteague was a big tourism deal, folks from all over the Eastern Shore and points beyond used to flock to a resort called Red Hills to do their swimming and picnicking. Named for the color of the dirt on tall ridge behind the beach, Red Hills was on the Chincoteague Bay near Sinnockson, a tiny hamlet between Greenbackville and Horntown. There…
July 11, 2017