USA > Maryland > Cecil County > History of Cecil County, Maryland, and the early settlements around the head of Chesapeake Bay and on the Delaware River, with sketches of some of the old families of Cecil County > Part 35
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placed on his horns, containing the following verse, said to have been composed by George Rickett's of Elkton :
" My horns, my hide, I freely give, My tallow and my lights, And all that is within me too, For free trade and sailors' rights."
CHAPTER XXV.
First steamboats on the Elk River-Lines of transportation-French- town and New Castle Railroad Company-Construction of Frenchtown and New Castle Railroad-First locomotives and cars-Telegraphing- The Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad-Riot at Charles- town-Sale of Frenchtown and New Castle Railroad.
INASMUCH as the introduction of steamboats upon the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries effected a great revolu- tion in the method of transportation of passengers and freight, and a corresponding change in the prosperity of the people in that part of this county through which passed the lines of transit between the cities of the North and South, the history of the county would be incomplete without some reference to that subject. On the 21st of June, 1813, less than two months after the British had burned Frenchtown, the first steamboat that had ever floated on the Chesapeake Bay, or its tributaries made her first trip from Baltimore to that place. This boat was called the Chesapeake. She was built in Baltimore, by William Flanigan, under the supervision of Edward Trippe, for the Union Line which has been mentioned in a previous chapter. She is thus described in a paper in possession of the Maryland Historical Society. When completed her length was one hundred and thirty feet, width twenty feet, and depth of hold seven feet. Her wheels ten feet in diameter, and five in depth. Her engine was a cross-head, which revolved a cogwheel that worked in teeth upon the shaft, which was of cast-iron. To the engine a flywheel was connected to enable it to pass its centre. The smoke-stack was amidships, be- hind the engine. Extending about twenty feet, and raised two feet above the deck, was the boiler. She had a mast
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forward, with a spar and sail, which was spread whenever the wind was fair. She made her first trip from Baltimore to Frenchtown and back, one hundred and forty miles, in twenty-four hours. The appliances for her navigation were simple and crude. A pilot stood at the bow who called out the course to a man amidships, and he to the helmsman. There were no bells to signal the engine, but the captain conveyed his commands by word of mouth or by stamping his heels on the woodwork over the engine. The boat had been running six months when the engineer accidentally found out he could reverse the engine and back her.
In July, 1815, the steamboat Eagle, came to Baltimore from the Delaware, and was secured by a rival line owned by Messrs. Briscoe and Partridge, for the run to Elk Landing. This line from Baltimore to Philadelphia being via Elkton and Wilmington.
In 1816, two new steamboats, the George Washington and Charles Carroll were built by the Union Line.
These lines continued in operation for some years, except when navigation was closed by the ice. Then the passen- gers and mail were carried in stages via Perryville and Elkton. During this time Elkton and Frenchtown were places of much more importance, in a business point of view, than they are now, and the farmers in their vicinity derived much benefit from the sale of their surplus horses and grain to the proprietors of the stage lines and the sale of marketing to the hotel keepers for the use of passengers.
The increase of travel on these lines and the want of better facilities for transportation across the peninsula, led to the or- ganization of the Frenchtown and New Castle Railroad Com- pany. This railroad was about seventeen miles long, and as its name indicates, was located between Frenchtown, on Elk River, and New Castle, on the Delaware. It was among the first railroads built in this country, and was the very first upon which steam power was applied to the transportation of pas- sengers, though it was built and used for horse-power for
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two years after it was finished. The company was chartered by the Legislature of Maryland at the session of 1827-8, with a capital stock of $200,000. There seems to have been some doubts of the success of the new enterprise, for the charter of the railroad company contained a provision in- tended to compel the company to keep open a turnpike, twenty feet wide, alongside of the railroad. Notwithstanding this, the railroad was built a considerable distance south of the turnpike, on a more practicable route. The tolls on the railroad were not to exceed three cents per ton per mile on freight, and the fare for the transportation of passengers was not to exceed twenty-five cents per passenger for the whole distance, and twelve and a half cents for baggage not ex- ceeding one hundred pounds.
The railroad was not finished until 1831. It was of very peculiar construction, and were it now extant, would be a great curiosity. The rails were placed about the same dis- tance apart as in modern roads, but instead of being laid upon wooden sleepers, as the rails of modern roads are, they were placed upon blocks of stone ten or twelve inches square. These stones had holes drilled in them, in which a wooden plug was inserted, and upon them were laid wooden rails about six inches square and ten or twelve feet long, which were fastened to the stones by means of a piece of flat iron shaped like the letter L, which was fastened to the stone by means of a spike driven into the wooden plug through a hole in one extremity of the iron, and another spike driven into a wooden rail through another hole at the other ex- tremity. The stones were placed about three feet apart, and each stone had two of these iron attachments, one on each side of the rail. Bars of flat iron, like tire, were spiked on top of the wooden rails, and this, such as it was, completed the structure. The great defect in the road was the want of something to keep the rails from spreading apart, and it was soon discovered that the only way to remedy this was to re- sort to the use of ties extending from one rail to the other, and to which both rails were fastened, as in modern roads.
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After the introduction of steam-power upon the road in 1833, it had to be rebuilt, the iron rails then used were hollow and shaped like two capital L's, with the horizontal part of one of them reversed and the upper parts of the two letters joined together ( J-L). These rails were fastened to the wooden sleepers by spikes driven through holes in the flange of the rail. Horse-power was used on this road for about two years after it was completed. One horse was at- tached to each car and the horses were changed at Glasgow and the Bear, which were the names of the two stations on the road. The first locomotive steam-engine used on the road was made in England. It was called the " Delaware," and was put on the road about 1833. After running about a year it was rebuilt and called the "Phoenix."
The person employed to put this engine together, after it arrived at New Castle, had a building erected for the pur- pose, and after spending some weeks in it, the agents of the company learned that he was making a model of each part of the locomotive. Whether they let him complete the work of making an exact model of each separate piece, has not been ascertained ; but in the fullness of time he got it put together and started for Frenchtown. How anxious those interested in the success of the experiment must have been. They had procured this locomotive at great expense, and had been at much trouble in getting it put together; but their trouble was only just begun-they had made no pro- vision to supply the screeching and panting monster with water, and had to serve it with this indispensable fluid, much after the manner of watering a horse, from the springs and wells along the road. It was several days making the first trip.
Some of the locomotives afterwards used on this road were built in New Castle. They were poorly constructed and would be considered of but little use at the present time ; but poor as they were, they were an improvement upon horse-power. There were no heavy grades on the road, and
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they made the trip from river to river in about an hour, and could have made it much quicker, but were limited to that time for fear of accidents if they went faster. The cars first used on this road were quite as different from those in use at present as the locomotives. The doors were at the sides of the cars, and each car had several of them. They would hold ten or twelve persons, and were not in the early days of the road accompanied by a conductor, the captains and clerks of the steamboats at either end taking the tickets and attending to this part of the business of the road.
The business of the road began to decline rapidly after the construction of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Bal- timore Railroad, and the two companies, by mutual consent, were united, the business on both lines being transacted under the name of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Bal- timore Railroad Company. This company continued a line of steamboats from Baltimore to Frenchtown, and also ran the cars from the latter place to New Castle, as late as 1853.
The railroad from Wilmington to New Castle was com- pleted in 1854, and during that season the company con- tinued to operate the old road and carried passengers to Wilmington. But only a few passengers going to Cape May patronized the road, and the company discontinued its use after that time. Much of the bed of the Frenchtown and New Castle Railroad is now under cultivation. When the company discontinued its use and took up the rails, the farmers resumed the use of their land, and grass and the waving grain took the place of the iron track of the iron- horse, and the quiet of agricultural pursuits and occupations succeeded the noisy activity and bustle incident to the operation of this great national thoroughfare. Strange and crude as this first attempt at locomotion by the use of steam- power was, as compared with the roads and locomotives now in use, the efforts of this company to transmit intelligence by means of signals along the line of the roa.1, were stranger still.
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The first rude attempts at telegraphing were by means of black and white flags, which the operators raised upon poles twenty-five or thirty feet high. There were six of these poles or stations along the road, and when the train started from either end of it the operator or flagman at the station next to and in sight of the moving train hoisted a white flag, and so did all the others along the road. The white flags indicated that the train had started, and might be expected to arrive in due time. If the locomotive failed to move, which it sometimes did, the operator hoisted a black flag. Other positions and combinations of the flags indieated other things, and as it was only the work of a moment to raise the flags, intelligence could be transmitted from one end of the road to the other in the space of two minutes. At New Castle, instead of flags, frames about the size of peach baskets, covered with white and black muslin, were hoisted on the court-house steeple, and could be seen for a long distance. It was the duty of the telegraphic operators to pass along the track after each train and fasten down the tire that was used on the top of the wooden-sills that were at first used in the construction of the road. The spikes nearest the ends of these bars would get loose some- times, and the iron bars had an ugly fashion of elevating themselves and causing trouble to the train. These erec- tions of the ends of the bars were called snake's heads, which, at a distance, they very strongly resembled.
The company, in its palmy and prosperous days, ran two trains each way daily. Pine wood was used exclusively on the steamboats and locomotives. This wood was obtained from the lower counties of the Eastern Shore, and many small vessels were employed in transporting it to French- town. As many as twenty-five or thirty of these vessels were often there at the same time; this, with the arrival and departure of two steamboats daily, made the town a place of business and importance.
The Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company is the outgrowth of several local companies. The
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HISTORY OF CECIL COUNTY.
Baltimore and Port Deposit Railroad Company was char- tered by the Legislature of Maryland, March 5th, 1832, and organized the next year, for the purpose of building a rail- road from Baltimore to Port Deposit. The Delaware and Maryland Railroad Company was chartered by the same body, on the 14th of March of the same year, for the purpose of building a railroad from some point on the Dela- ware and Maryland State line to Port Deposit, or some other point on the Susquehanna River. The latter company was not organized until April 18th, 1835, soon after which work was commenced upon this road and continued until April, 1836, at which time this company united with the Wil- mington and Susquehanna Railroad Company, which had been chartered by the Legislature of Delaware, in 1832, for the purpose of making a railroad from the Pennsylvania State line, through Wilmington towards the Susquehanna River to the Maryland line. It was the original intention of the Wilmington and Susquehanna Company to terminate their road at Charlestown, but the Baltimore and Port Deposit Company having changed the eastern terminus of their road to Havre de Grace, the other company continued their road to Perryville. The Legislature of Pennsylvania having chartered the Philadelphia and Delaware County Railroad Company in 1831, that company organized in 1835, and surveyed a route for a road from Philadelphia to the State line. In January, 1836, this company having occasion to apply to the Legislature of Pennsylvania for power to in- crease their capital, the title of the corporation was changed to the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company. This company soon afterwards obtained the right of way from the State line to Wilmington from the Delaware and Maryland Company, and the road from Phil- adelphia to Wilmington was opened on the 15th of January, 1838. In the meantime, the road from Wilmington to Perryville had been opened on the 4th of July, 1837, and the road from Baltimore to Havre de Grace two days after- wards.
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Although there was now but one line of road, it was the property of three companies : The Philadelphia, Wilming- ton and Baltimore Railroad, from Philadelphia to Wilming- ton; the Wilmington and Susquehanna Railroad, from Wilmington to Susquehanna River ; and the Baltimore and Port Deposit Railroad, from that river to Baltimore. These companies were consolidated in February, 1838, under the name of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Rail- road Company.
Although the road was now in a condition for use, it was, as compared with modern roads, very incomplete. The track was constructed of iron bars nailed upon wooden string pieces called mud sills* which rested on the ground, and consequently were continually getting out of position. It was not until after the lapse of some years that this defect was remedied by the introduction of wooden ties.
In May, 1836, a large number of Irish laborers who were employed in grading the roadbed near Charlestown, at- tended the fair at that place, and having imbibed freely of whisky, engaged in an old-fashioned Irish riot, which from the accounts given of it was the most bloody that ever oc- curred in this county. During the progress of the riot, the infuriated and drunken Irishmen made an attack upon a dwelling-house, in which some of the citizens had taken refuge, whereupon, the inmates baracaded the doors and having some firearms, made a brave defense. It is said that after their shot was exhausted, the women eut their pewter spoons into slugs which were used with terrible effect .. The rioters were finally driven away from the town, and the next day the sheriff summoned a military company called the Cecil Guards, composed of the citizens of Elkton, to his aid, and arrested some twenty-five or thirty of the rioters. Seven of them were indicted for riot, and tried at the Octo- ber term of court, in 1836. Two of them were convicted
* This name was afterwards used by certain southern politicians to designate the lowest stratum of northern society.
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and sentenced to pay a fine of one dollar cach, and be im- prisoned in the county jail for two years. Being unable to pay the fine, and having no friends, they were detained in jail until the sheriff's charges for boarding them became so large that the county commissioners, in order to get rid of them, paid the fine from their private purses, and the pris- oners were discharged.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Clergy of the Established Church-Their powers and duties-They in- cur the displeasure of the common people-What Rev. William Duke says of them-Presbyterian clergymen-Spiritual condition of the peo- ple-Introduction of Methodism-First Methodlist society-Character of the early Methodist preachers-Rev. Francis Asbury visits Bohemia Manor-He refuses to take the oath of allegiance-Methodists favor the royal cause-Retrospective glance at the history of the Episcopal Church-North Elk parish-Rev. John Thompson-Rev. Joseph Con- don-St. Augustine parish-Progress of Methodism-Cecil circuit- Hart's meeting house-First Methodist meeting-house at North East- First parsonage-Bethel mecting house-Goshen-Revival at Bethel North Sassafras and St. Augustine parishes-Richard Bassett joins the Methodists-Rev. Henry Lyon Davis-Death of Rev. Joseph Coudon- Rev. William Duke-His life and labors-Methodism supplants Episco- pacy-First Methodist society at Elkton-Methodism and Presbyterian- ism at Charlestown-Hopewell and Asbury-Methodist Protestant churches.
THE clergy of the established church with very few excep- tions, adhered to the Royal cause during the long contro- versy between the mother country and the colonies, which preceded the Revolutionary war. This was natural, because their livings depended upon their loyalty. With the excep- tion of a few self-denying and godly missionaries who labored under the auspices of the Society for the Propaga- tion of the Gospel, they had always been the pampered favorites of the executive, who had foisted them, in many cases, upon an unwilling people. For nearly a century be- fore the commencement of the Revolutionary war, an indis- criminate poll-tax had been levied for their support. Nor was this all that tended to make them unpopular and les- sened their influence among their parishioners. By the act of 1763, the vestries, of which the clergymen were ex officio
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members, were enjoined to nominate, annually, four suitable persons, in each of the large parishes, for inspectors of tobacco. Of this number, two were to be selected by the executive, and, when once commissioned, could be retained in office as long as was mutually agreeable to themselves and the vestry.
The reason for vesting this power in the vestries may be found in the fact that the clergy were to be paid by means of promissary notes, issued by the inspectors for the value of the tobacco in their charge, and payable by them upon demand. By this act, the inspectors became, to some ex- tent, the bankers of the province ; and as their continuance in office depended upon the vestries, the lay members of which were generally the intimate friends and companions of the clergymen, it is easy to see that the latter were in- vested with a power and influence in secular affairs which was incompatible with the proper discharge of the duties of the clerical office.
In 1756 when it was thought necessary to levy a per capita tax on the bachelors in the province, in order to defray the expense incurred in prosecuting the French and Indian war, the vestries had been made the agents to effect its as- sessment. This mixing up of spiritual and temporal things was not calculated to increase the godliness of the clergy, or to strengthen their allegiance to the Prince of Peace, under whose banner they were ostensibly enlisted, but whose teaching, there is reason to believe, many of them disre- garded, choosing rather to be votaries of the race-course or to follow a pack of hounds than to perform the irksome duties of the closet and the chancel. The clergy, until after the Revolutionary war, had never been amenable to any epis- copal authority on this side of the Atlantic ocean; and it is more than could have been reasonably expected, under all the circumstances, that they should have developed a high degree of piety or experimental religion. Anderson, in his history of the Church of England, says that the acts of the
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Colonial Legislature had provoked the opposition of all op- posed to a religious establishment in Maryland, as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century, and that one of the crying evils, under which the church labored, was the ap- pointment of unworthy clergymen. Previous to 1720 (when the clergy were laboring under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and were subject to the Bishop of London) the better part of them wished a bishop for the colony, but failed to get one appointed, after many trials.
From a very early period in the history of the colony un- til the beginning of the Revolutionary war, the testamen- tary law of the province was similar, if not identical, with that of the mother country, which gave the ecclesiastical courts the sole authority to settle the estates of deceased per- sons. The chief officers of this court in Maryland, were called commissaries. From the nature of the case, they of necessity were always clergymen ; and being in no way amenable to the people, as most of the other clergy were, they almost invariably incurred their displeasure and opposition by the zeal they manifested in behalf of the church and the aristocracy.
1n 1737, which was the time of the Border war, a petition from the commissary and elergy of the province was pre- sented to the King in council, stating among other things that the Quakers and other sectaries were dissatisfied with the established church, and that they had induced some of the inhabitants of Maryland to transfer the acknowledge- ment of the right of their lands from Maryland to Penn- sylvania. They therefore prayed that a regular clergy might be encouraged to reside on the borders and in the province of Pennsylvania, in order to overawe the sectaries and prevent a recurrence of this trouble. Nothing came of the petition, and the Quakers and Presbyterians of Notting- ham and elsewhere on the borders were not troubled with ministers of the establishment to awe them into subjection.
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Rev. Mr. Henderson was the first signer of the petition. He is believed to have been commissary at this time.
The act of 1763, which fixed the compensation of the civil officers, and the poll-tax for the support of the clergy expired by limitation in 1766, and the feeling between the people and the proprietary government not being good, a controversy arose about how certain of the civil officers and the clergy were to be paid. The clergy in this case, as in every other, took the side of the government; and inas- much as a large majority of the people, composed of that part of them who belonged to other denominations and those who belonged to no religious society at all, were op- posed to the payment of a tax for the maintenance of a hie- archy that many of them despised, the clergy incurred the displeasure of the classes before referred to, and no doubt increased their desire for the severance of the ties that bound them to the mother country. In this case, as in many others, the zeal of the clergy injured the cause they espoused. Another cause of the unpopularity of the clergy of the es- tablished church may be found in the manner of their ap- pointment, which, however nicely it may have been used, savored too much of despotism, to have been satisfactory to the people, thirsting, as they then were, for the full fruition of the liberty they were destined a few years later to enjoy.
The " patronage and advowson," which means the right to appoint the ministers for the various parishes in the state, was vested in the governor, who was generally ap- pointed by the lord proprietary, and being in no wise amenable to the people, too often set their wishes at defiance. The Rev. William Duke, published a pamphlet in 1795, on the state of religion in Maryland. Speaking of the condi- tion of society and the clergy of the Episcopal church at the time of the introduction of Methodism, he says:
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