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Quote of the Day

The way things were in days gone by on the Delmarva Peninsual–theEastern Shore of Maryland, the Eastern Shore of Virginia, and Delaware.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: The Heyday of Garment Factories in Crisfield, Maryland Quote of the DayWay Back Machine

QUOTE OF THE DAY: The Heyday of Garment Factories in Crisfield, Maryland

  That old saying about how the more things change, the more they stay the same popped into my head when I went looking for a little background info to go with a cool photo of an old B.V.D. underwear plant, one of several old garment factories in Crisfield, Md. We’ve all heard about modern-day clothing and shoe companies that find their way to far-flung…
July 23, 2018
Panoramic Skipjacks
QUOTE OF THE DAY, 1907: Those Newfangled Skipjacks “Are as Cheap as Anything in the Form of a Boat Could Be.” Quote of the DayWay Back Machine

QUOTE OF THE DAY, 1907: Those Newfangled Skipjacks “Are as Cheap as Anything in the Form of a Boat Could Be.”

    Back in 1907, the Baltimore Sun published an essay lamenting the disappearance of an old sailing vessel called the pungy from the Chesapeake Bay sailing fleet. The business of oystering was in transition in those years, and the pungy was a bad fit for the new way of doing things. With the infamous Oyster Wars well under way, watermen were looking for vessels…
July 12, 2018
Fenwick Island Dunes
Quote of the Day: A Shocking Discovery on the Dunes of Fenwick Island, c. 1900 Quote of the DayWay Back Machine

Quote of the Day: A Shocking Discovery on the Dunes of Fenwick Island, c. 1900

Ruth Watson Lewis grew up in a family that made a special trip every year to a religious "camp meeting" on the Delaware Beach. The reminiscence that follows about going to the Fenwick Island camp meeting as a young girl comes from the book, Barefoot in Fenwick Island: Life on the Isle in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Be sure to stay tuned to the…
July 7, 2018
Mosquitoes on the Eastern Shore of Maryland
QUOTE OF THE DAY: ‘The mosquito,’ Dr. Tawes would say, ‘is one of the noblest creatures known to nature.’ Quote of the DayWay Back Machine

QUOTE OF THE DAY: ‘The mosquito,’ Dr. Tawes would say, ‘is one of the noblest creatures known to nature.’

The late P.J. Wingate was, appropriately enough, from the little town of Wingate, which stands deep in the mosquito-ridden marshland of south Dorchester County, Maryland. (FYI: The local pronunciation is win-GIT, not win-GATE.) A chemist by trade, Wingate dabbled quite a bit in writing as well. This is from his 1979 book, Bandages of Soft Illusion. It’s full of little essays about his childhood days…
May 28, 2018
George Fox Voice in the Wilderness
QUOTE OF THE DAY: A “weird, wild mystic of the 17th century” visits Somerset County Quote of the DayWay Back Machine

QUOTE OF THE DAY: A “weird, wild mystic of the 17th century” visits Somerset County

This is the way it usually works at Secrets of the Eastern Shore. I went looking for a tidbit about the time Presbyterian preacher Frances Makemie spent in Onancock, Va. I found my way to an 1885 book, The Days of Makemie: Or The Vine Planted. But I never did find what I was looking for. Instead, I got distracted by author Littleton Purnell Bowen’s…
May 3, 2018
Foggy Spring Valley in Cambridge, Maryland
“The most beautiful place on the Peninsula,” 1872 Quote of the DayWay Back Machine

“The most beautiful place on the Peninsula,” 1872

In an article for Scribner’s Monthly magazine, the 19th-century writer George Alfred Townsend shared his impressions after a bit of wandering around Maryland's Eastern Shore. The article included the description below of what it was like to come up the Choptank River into Cambridge, Md. in 1872, just a few short years after the Civil War. When you come to the part about the shady…
April 5, 2018
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “You slide your feet around in the mud like you’re dancing a Bojangles sand-dance” Quote of the DayWay Back Machine

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “You slide your feet around in the mud like you’re dancing a Bojangles sand-dance”

    “I am, like my daddy was, and his daddy was, a waterman.” So begins Chincoteague Summer of 1948: A Waterman’s Childhood Stories, a little wisp of a book that is both odd duck and fun read. It presents itself in quite authentic fashion as the recorded childhood memories of waterman Thurston Watson. But then the author, Ed Waterhouse, a Chincoteague native who had…
March 22, 2018
Elisha Lee on the Water near Cape Charles, Virginia
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Sailing the Elisha Lee from Cape Charles to Norfolk Quote of the DayWay Back Machine

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Sailing the Elisha Lee from Cape Charles to Norfolk

Elisha Lee didn’t make her way to the Eastern Shore until rather late in her life. Built in 1892, she arrived in Cape Charles (Va.) Harbor on St. Patrick’s Day of 1944. World War II was going strong at the time. With so many military bases housed in Hampton Roads, there was a slew of traffic running to and fro across the Chesapeake Bay into…
March 15, 2018
Williamsburg, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Weaned on Whiskey–the Story Behind Little Williamsburg, Md. Quote of the Day

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Weaned on Whiskey–the Story Behind Little Williamsburg, Md.

    I have passed through Williamsburg, Md. a bunch of times while making my way between Hurlock and Federalsburg along Route 307, but I am embarrassed to say that I have never really paused to take note of the place. That is going to change the next time I go through, however, because I will be looking around and trying to imagine some of…
January 24, 2018
Growing Up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the 1850s
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “How dear to our hearts are the scenes of our childhood” on the Eastern Shore Quote of the DayWay Back Machine

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “How dear to our hearts are the scenes of our childhood” on the Eastern Shore

J.B. Seth was 71 years old when he finally got around to publishing his memoirs in 1926. The Talbot County native was an Eastern Shore railroad man in his work-life, but the part of his days that is the focus here is a boyhood spent in the Talbot County countryside during the 1850s. To enjoy golden days a child should be brought up from infancy…
January 7, 2018