Atlantic Casino Company

In the record (10)

1. 1903 · 1903-06-10

   Three hundred and fifty surfmen convene at the Atlantic Casino in June 1903 and stage a wreck off the beach — and their notice records that Ocean City, Md., is a SIXTH District station, not a Fifth.

   The Surfmen's Mutual Benefit Association held its annual meeting at Ocean City on 10–11 June 1903, in the theatre of the Atlantic Casino. The Messenger's advance notice of 30 May: "As this is the first time the Association has met in the Sixth District the members of the Life-Saving Service in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia are desirous that this year's convention shall be the most interesting in the history of the Association. There will be addresses by the General or Assistant General Superintendent of the Life Saving Service, members of Congress and other noted men. There will be exhibition drills of the Service on the afternoon of June 10th." The report of 13 June counted "about 350 members of the life[-saving] service of the Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina [districts]," brought in part by a government steamer, and described the drill: "Three long poles, representing masts, were settled in the ocean about 200 yards from shore and rigged to represent a stranded vessel, and from this men were brought ashore in the breeches buoy." Berlin's column adds that the town "was well represented at Ocean City on Wednesday" for it. **The district number matters.** This campaign has carried a standing warning that Ocean City, Md., is Station No. 4 of the FIFTH District; by 1903 that is wrong. The U.S. Life-Saving Service annual reports for FY1903 and FY1904 both place Ocean City, Md., in the "SIXTH DISTRICT — COAST BETWEEN DELAWARE AND CHESAPEAKE BAYS," and put the FIFTH District wholly on the coast of New Jersey — where a different Ocean City station sits. A Maryland newspaper and two federal volumes agree.

   The best free show on the beach in 1903 was the government drowning a pretend ship twice a day.

   United States Life-Saving ServiceSurfmen's Mutual Benefit AssociationCapt. Joshua J. Dunton

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

2. 1903 · 1903-06-28

   The Maryland State Teachers' Association brings its 36th session to Ocean City for five days in 1903 — and prints the tariff: $2.50 a day single at the Atlantic, $3.00 round trip from Baltimore.

   From the Association's notice, printed 13 June 1903: "The Thirty-Sixth Annual Session of the Maryland State Teachers' Association will be held at Ocean City, Maryland, June 28th to July 2nd... The headquarters will be at the Atlantic Hotel and the Association's meetings will be held at the Atlantic Casino. The Atlantic will give a rate of $2.00 a day double, and $2.50 single; Plimhimmon, $2.00 two or more, $2.50 single." The railroads matched it: the Pennsylvania "announced a rate of one and one third fare for the round-trip, tickets to be sold from June 25 to July 3d," and "the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway makes a rate of $3.00 for the round-trip from Baltimore to Ocean City." The Colonial Hotel, opening 27 June, advertised "special rates to teachers attending the State Association," as did the Hotel Mount Vernon. Governor John Walter Smith addressed the convention on the Tuesday — his fourth year in office and, he said, his first chance to meet the Association — and Prof. John Coulbourn, principal of Snow Hill High School, gave the address of welcome: "On behalf of the teachers of Worcester county, I welcome you, teachers of Maryland, to Ocean City. For the honor you have done us in electing so soon again to assemble here, we are deeply grateful. The city is yours to enjoy. We don't have to throw open our doors to you — they are never closed." H. Crawford Rounds of Wicomico was elected president. The teachers had met here in 1899 [fact:1899-convention-city] and again in 1902 [fact:1902-teachers-and-lawyers-take-the-atlantic].

   State Teachers' Association of MarylandBaltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic RailwayPennsylvania Railroad CompanyJohn Walter Smith

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

3. 1904 · 1904-08-10

   In one week of August 1904 both parties held their First District congressional conventions at Ocean City — and nominated two brothers named Jackson.

   The Republicans of the First Congressional District met at Ocean City on Thursday afternoon, 4 August 1904, and renominated Congressman William H. Jackson by acclamation; A. P. Barnes of Snow Hill called the meeting to order, State Senator Henry M. McCullough of Cecil County was chairman and a Mr. Reese of Crisfield secretary. Six days later, on Wednesday 10 August, the Democrats of the same district assembled 'in the hall of the Atlantic Casino' at noon, with Henry R. Lewis of Caroline as chairman and George R. Wilson of Talbot as secretary. Leaders from every county had tendered the nomination to ex-Governor John Walter Smith the night before; he declined, was asked again to name a candidate, and named Elihu E. Jackson of Wicomico, whom he then put in nomination himself after taking the proxy of a Worcester delegate. 'It was ten minutes before he could commence his speech as he was given the greatest ovation ever witnessed in the state.' Jackson was chosen by acclamation. The Messenger of 13 August ran a portrait of Smith under the headline 'Brother Against Brother.'

   Ocean City had been Convention City for the teachers and the bankers since 1898. In 1904 it became the room where the Eastern Shore chose its congressman — twice in seven days, for opposite parties — and the hall it happened in was the Atlantic Casino.

   John Walter SmithElihu Emory JacksonHon. William H. JacksonHon. Thomas A. Smith

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

4. 1905

   Ocean City hosts two summer schools in 1905: the sixth Maryland Catholic Summer School (16 July–6 August) and the first Tri-County Summer School for teachers (28 August–8 September) in the Atlantic Casino.

   The sixth annual session of the Maryland Catholic Summer School ran at Ocean City from 16 July to 6 August, with lecturers including Maurice Francis Egan, Rev. Dr. William A. Fletcher, Hon. J. C. Monaghan of Washington and John H. Harden, assistant commissioner of education of New York City; the school's Ladies' Chapter ran the social side. Then the Tri-County Summer School, arranged by county superintendents McMaster (Worcester), Dashiell (Somerset) and Bounds (Wicomico) and led by State Superintendent of Education M. Bates Stephens, opened 28 August and closed 8 September: "The general sessions will be held in the Atlantic Casino; the sectional meetings in the public school and other suitable buildings in Ocean City. Special rates of $1 a day at hotels and cottages have been secured for those who attend." Subjects were school management, pedagogy, history, physical culture, primary methods, arithmetic and music.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

5. 1905 · 1905-09-16

   John F. Waggaman sells his entire Ocean City estate to a Baltimore syndicate, which incorporates in Delaware as the Ocean City Development Company with $300,000 of stock.

   "JOHN F. WAGGAMAN SELLS OCEAN CITY HOLDINGS — Purchased By A Syndicate Of Prominent Baltimore Business Men Who Will Spend Thousands On Improvements." The purchasers, who had "paid over to Mr. Waggaman the purchase money," organised with John W. Woodland president, E. S. Johnson vice-president, W. D. Allen secretary and W. S. McKean general manager, a full board of fifteen directors to follow. The new body was incorporated at Dover under Delaware law as the Ocean City Development Company, capital stock $300,000 — $100,000 preferred and $200,000 common. What it bought from Waggaman: the Atlantic Hotel and Casino; the Seaside Hotel; the electric light plant; a steam laundry plant; and 4,400 building lots platted 50 by 150 feet, of which 1,000 were on the ocean front, the whole extending eight miles along the ocean and nine miles along the Synepuxent Bay shore. The Pennsylvania Railroad "is said to be prominently identified with the new interests." The paper added that 1905 "has been the most successful in the history of Ocean City" — every cottage occupied and the boarding cottages up the beach turning away four times as many guests as they could take — and listed the syndicate's plans: a trolley from Ocean City to Fenwick Island and on to Rehoboth, another to Berlin and Pocomoke City, a fast vestibuled express from Claiborne, a second B.C.&A. station two squares north of the Plimhimmon, and a modern hotel near the Catholic Home at the north end of the beach.

   The 1904 pass found Waggaman's name on a Washington bankruptcy creditor list for $80,000. Eleven months later he is out of Ocean City altogether — and the town he had owned since 1897 belongs to a Delaware corporation floated in Baltimore.

   Ocean City Development CompanyPennsylvania Railroad CompanyBaltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic RailwayJohn F. Waggaman

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

6. 1906

   Teachers, lawyers, horticulturists and a congressional convention: Ocean City hosts four state bodies in eleven weeks.

   The Maryland State Teachers' Association held its thirty-ninth annual session at Ocean City on 26-29 June, its fourth consecutive year in the town, with morning sessions at 9.30 and evening sessions at 8 in the Casino and committee meetings at the Ocean City public school; the executive committee had settled the dates at the State Normal School in March, and the invited speakers included Governor Warfield and State Superintendent M. Bates Stephens. The Maryland State Bar Association opened its eleventh annual meeting on Wednesday 11 July, meeting "in the parlors of the Atlantic" with Judge James Alfred Pearce of the Court of Appeals presiding and closing with a banquet at the Atlantic Hotel on Friday evening. On Thursday 12 July the Democrats of the First Congressional District met at Ocean City and renominated Congressman Thomas A. Smith by acclamation, every county seconding; Smith was in the town, was fetched to the hall by a notification committee, and spoke. In August the State Horticultural Society met at Ocean City, and from 27 August to 7 September the Tri-County Teachers' Institute for Worcester, Wicomico and Somerset held its sectional sessions in the five-room public school building and its general sessions in the Atlantic Casino.

   The convention business the town started chasing in 1898 is now a schedule, not a coup.

   Atlantic HotelState Teachers' Association of MarylandMaryland State Bar AssociationHon. Thomas A. SmithEdwin Warfield

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

7. 1906 · 1906-06-16

   Eugene Adkins of Berlin takes over the pool room and bowling alley at the Atlantic Casino for the season.

   "Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Adkins left Thursday for Ocean City. He will take charge of the pool room and bowling alley at the Casino" (Democratic Messenger, 16 June 1906). The Casino was also the town's convention hall that summer, housing the general sessions of both the State Teachers' Association in June and the Tri-County Teachers' Institute in late August. It is the clearest 1906 statement of what the building actually contained between conventions.

   One building, two lives: a lecture hall for the teachers in the morning and a pool room the rest of the year.

   Eugene Adkins

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

8. 1907 · 1907-08-15

   A Peninsula-wide temperance rally is called at the Atlantic Casino - because Worcester, Ocean City's county, is the only wet county left on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

   Wilmington's Evening Journal of 9 August 1907, under the head "Stereopticon Views on Excursion Train": "Considerable interest is being manifested in the Peninsula temperance rally, which is to be held at Ocean City, Md., on Thursday next. There is but one county on the Eastern Shore of Maryland which is 'wet.' Worcester, of which Ocean City is a part. This meeting has been planned by the leaders of Maryland and Delaware in the interest of a campaign to make the entire Peninsula a unit on the liquor question." The principal speaker was to be the Rev. C. H. Mead, D.D., of New York; also billed were a Mr. Daly, chairman, and R. W. Raymond, field secretary of the Delaware State Anti-License Committee. "The meeting is to be held at the Atlantic Casino." The choice of venue is the joke of the year: the dry campaign for the whole Delmarva Peninsula convened in the casino of the wettest town in it.

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

9. 1908 · 1908-08-03

   W. Lee Carey is elected mayor of Ocean City — nominated in the Atlantic Casino a week earlier, and elected without a contest.

   The Democratic Messenger of 1 August 1908 reported that "at a meeting Monday night in the Atlantic Casino, Ocean City, W. Lee Carey was nominated for Mayor, and T. J. Cropper, James Z. Powell, Samuel J. Massey, William Taylor, of Ocean City, and John L. Johnson, of Frederick, Md., for Councilmen, to serve a term of two years each." The meeting was Monday 27 July; the election followed on the first Monday in August, 3 August 1908, as the charter required. The paper's Berlin column a week later: "The election at Ocean City passed quietly resulting in Mr. Lee Carey becoming Mayor. No one is more interested in the progress of the 'City by the Sea' than he, and we predict good government and a boom under his administration." No opposing ticket is mentioned — unlike 1904, when two tickets fought a "warm but good natured" contest. Carey was a Berlin man: he sat as an East Berlin District delegate in the county convention that June, and in July he was laid up at his parents' home in Berlin with inflammatory rheumatism, recovering only days before his nomination. Three weeks after the election the real-estate transfers column recorded "W. Lee Carey from Cornelius F. Coffin, parcel of land in Ocean City. Consideration, $10 etc." — the charter required the mayor and every councilman to be a real-estate owner in the town. This is the first contemporary confirmation of the Maryland Manual's 1908-1912 term for Carey, and the first time in this campaign the Manual has been corroborated rather than corrected.

   W. Lee CareyThomas J. CropperJames Z. PowellJohn L. JohnsonCornelius F. Coffin

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

10. 1912

    The Atlantic Casino changes hands and the Pier gets a new management that visitors actually like.

    Two amusement properties turn over in 1912. In April: "R. L. Purnell, real estate agent, completed a deal Thursday by which the Atlantic Casino at Ocean City was sold to Joseph Tibbett" — the Casino being the hall where Ocean City nominated its mayor in 1908 and the Democrats picked a congressman in 1904. In August, of the pier leased to an unnamed New York man for the 1911 season: "The Pier at Ocean City this season seems to be especially attractive to visitors. Under the new management conditions have been much improved over former years and the Pier seems to be the first place sought by newcomers, especially those who enjoy moonlight dancing, excellent fishing and a delightful ocean breeze. The bowling alleys are of the best and are constantly [in use]." Elsewhere in the year the Ocean City Hotel — John J. Rayne's property opposite the railroad station and opposite the Seaside Hotel, "25 ROOMS: 12 bed-rooms, barber shop, running water, bath, toilets and electric and acetylene-gas lights" — was offered at private sale through Upshur & Upshur, and in October Dr. Frank Townsend of Ocean City bought the drugstore formerly run as Townsend & Jones.

    Ocean City Pier and Improvement CompanyRobert Lee Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06