State Teachers' Association of Maryland
association
Also known as Maryland State Teachers' Association
Statewide professional body of Maryland schoolteachers and school officers. Held its annual session at Ocean City July 6–8, 1880 — several hundred attending — on negotiated terms: a fifty-cent membership ticket bought from a county school examiner, half fare on the railroads and the Baltimore steamboats, and board at the Atlantic Hotel cut to a dollar a day for the duration. One of the earliest conventions to bring a statewide organisation to the beach, a trade the town has run on ever since.
In the record (22)
1880 · 1880-07-06
Ocean City's convention trade starts in 1880: several hundred Maryland schoolteachers in July, the Peninsula's newspaper editors in August.
The State Teachers' Association of Maryland took its annual session to the beach for three days, July 6, 7 and 8, 1880, and the terms were published statewide from Garrett County to Harford. A membership ticket cost fifty cents and had to be bought from a county school examiner in advance, because it was what unlocked the travel and board rates: half fare on the Western Maryland Railroad and the steamboat, or full fare good for the round trip, tickets valid July 2 to 13; steamboat fare Baltimore to Ocean City and return, four dollars, leaving the foot of South Street at six every evening but Saturday; rail round trip from Baltimore, six dollars, "good during the season"; and board at the Atlantic Hotel "to members, One Dollar a day for the three days the Association is in session. Afterwards $12.50 a week." A. F. Wilkerson was secretary. The Bel Air correspondent who travelled by steamer to Crisfield and then by rail over the Eastern Shore and Wicomico & Pocomoke roads counted "several hundred teachers and educa[tors]" on the beach and called Ocean City "the Cape May of Maryland, and the most popular watering place in the State." Six weeks later the editors came: "The Peninsular Press Association at its session at Ocean City this week elected the following officers: President — George W. Cruikshank, of Elkton. First Vice President — B. Everett Smith. Second Vice President — D. Taylor Bradford, of this city [Wilmington]. Secretary — W. Scott Way, of Middletown. Treasurer — O. P. Johnson." They would be back the following August, waltzing with the girls and passing resolutions of thanks to the railroad officials and to Congress Hall's Mr. Selby.
A statewide professional convention in July and a regional press association in August, in a town with forty-nine residents. The convention trade is as old as the town charter.
Atlantic HotelPeninsular Press AssociationWicomico and Pocomoke RailroadEastern Shore Steamboat Company
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1883
Hotel board at Ocean City: $1.50 a day for convention members, two to a room — $2.00 a day once the convention was over.
Board was secured at Ocean City for members of the Maryland State Teachers' Association, two in a room, from July 7 to July 14, 1883 at $1.50 per day, "with the privilege of staying as long as they desire, after the 14th, at $2.00 per day." Three years earlier the same Association's members had paid $1.00 a day at the Atlantic Hotel for the three days of session and $12.50 a week afterward. The 1883 figure is a straight double-occupancy day rate at the town's hotels, and the fifty-cent jump on July 15 is the earliest documented off-peak/peak split at Ocean City this campaign has found.
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1883
Baltimore to Ocean City and back by boat, $4.70; by the railroads' special train, $5.00 good for ten days.
The Teachers' Association circular of May 1883 prints the whole rate card. A round-trip ticket to Ocean City by boat from Baltimore cost $4.70. The Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad would sell round trips at $5.00, good ten days, on a special train from Baltimore "leaving Baltimore at such hour in the morning as may be desired by the teachers and arriving at Ocean City early in the afternoon" — but only if two hundred people signed up; otherwise the $5.00 rate applied on the regular train. To reach Baltimore, teachers holding ticket orders could buy excursion tickets at any station on the connecting roads at two cents a mile each way, good July 7–11. From Bel Air, the Aegis quoted the reduced fare to Ocean City and return at $4.50; Garrett County's teachers went by the B. & O.
Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad
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1883 · 1883-07-10
The Maryland State Teachers' Association holds its annual convention at Ocean City, July 10–12, and Worcester County's State's Attorney welcomes it in the Governor's place.
Circulars went out in May: the Association would meet at Ocean City on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, July 10, 11 and 12, 1883, with reduced rates arranged on every railroad and steamboat line and at the hotels. County school boards balloted for delegates — Charles County sent Thomas T. Hancock of Port Tobacco, John T. Barber of Cox's Station and L. M. Monroe of Waldorf, all expenses paid; Allegany County's teachers chose four at their Frostburg institute; Harford County's went through the school commissioners' office at Bel Air. Between 175 and 200 teachers came, "representing nearly every county in the State." The officers present were Prof. Geo. S. Grape of Grammar School No. 15, Baltimore (president), Prof. A. F. Wilkerson of No. 17 (secretary), Prof. Charles G. Edwards, assistant superintendent of Baltimore's public schools (treasurer), and executive committeemen G. L. Smith of the State Normal School and J. S. Whittington of Waverly High School. After prayer by Rev. W. C. Butler of Prince George's County, the visitors were welcomed by **Colonel L. L. Dirickson, State's Attorney of Worcester County**, standing in for Governor Hamilton, who could not attend; Edwards replied for the Association. The Port Tobacco Times, sending its teachers off, called Ocean City "one of the most pleasant watering places on the Atlantic coast and the 'Long Branch of Maryland.'"
Ocean City has been a convention town since it had fifty residents. In 1880 it hosted the teachers; by 1883 it was the default. The state's schoolteachers were its most reliable July crowd for a generation.
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1884
Convention rate at Ocean City in 1884: $1.50 a day, two to a room — $2.00 a day if you stayed on after the 14th.
"Board has been secured for members (two in a room) at $1.50 per day, with the privilege of remaining as long as they desire after the 14th at $2.00 per day. To those teachers who desire to spend a few days at the seashore this is a rare opportunity." Membership in the Association cost fifty cents, and the certificate was what unlocked the deal: it "entitle[d] the holder to all special rates on railroads and at hotels." Two years earlier the Atlantic had advertised no rates at all; in 1877 and 1880 it had asked $2.50 a day.
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1884 · 1884-07-09
The Maryland State Teachers' Association holds its annual meeting at the Atlantic Hotel, Ocean City, July 9-11 — the resort's first statewide convention of the decade.
Announced from February: "The Maryland State Teachers' Association will hold its annual meeting July 9th, 10th and 11th, at the Atlantic Hotel, Ocean City." County school boards paid delegations to attend from as far as Garrett County; Charles County's board sent three teachers plus its examiner and paid all four men's expenses for the three days. Frederick County alone sent seventeen ladies and gentlemen. Sessions were substantive — the Baltimore American's special from Ocean City on the Thursday reported Mr. Diffenbaugh reading "a paper on teachers and teaching" for the committee on teachers' institutes — and the officers elected at the beach were J. W. Thompson of Queen Anne's County, president; Francis A. Soper of Baltimore, first vice-president; P. A. Witmer of Washington County, second vice-president; A. P. Wilson of Baltimore, recording secretary; Lizzie Whaley of Worcester County, corresponding secretary; and Charles G. Edwards of Baltimore, treasurer. The Port Tobacco Times was sceptical about the agenda: "At the Teachers' Convention at Ocean City this week it is likely that Neptune and Cupid were more wooed than Minerva."
Ocean City discovered the convention business in 1884 and has never let go of it.
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1899
"Convention City": in a single July, Ocean City hosts more than 300 Maryland schoolteachers and the Governor, the state's bankers, the druggists and the Democratic editors — in a hall seating a thousand.
The 32nd annual assembly of the Maryland State Teachers' Association convened at eight o'clock on the evening of 11 July 1899 at the Atlantic Hotel, its business sessions in Convention Hall, and ran through the 13th. "Gov. Lloyd Lowndes and the entire state board of education occupied the platform. President J. T. White of Cumberland presided … James E. Ellegood of Salisbury cordially welcomed the association to the eastern shore, and Prof. E. B. Prettyman of the State Normal School responded." Der Deutsche Correspondent of 12 July counted "more than 300 teachers." The Maryland Bankers' Association held its fourth annual convention there on 20 July, William F. Johnson of Snow Hill giving the address of welcome "Representing the Mayor of Ocean City" and noting it was their second year running. The druggists met the same week; the Maryland Democratic Editors' Association had come down on 18 June on the Pennsylvania Railroad superintendent's private train and been entertained by Waggaman at the Colonial. The county paper's verdict: "That the name of Worcester's favorite summer resort, Ocean City, might appropriately be changed to Convention City becomes more apparent each succeeding season." The hall that made it possible was new, owned by John F. Waggaman, and seated about a thousand. — 1899 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: SHARPENED, and a fourth convention added. The Ocean City column of 22 July names the season's run in one sentence: "last week the Teachers Association and Druggists convention both met here, this week the Bankers of Maryland are now in session and next week the MARYLAND BAR ASSOCIATION will meet here, and so it goes on throughout the season." That is four state bodies in three consecutive weeks, not three. The same column names the county's bankers who attended — I. T. Matthews, Geo. S. Payne, Levi A. Purnell, L. L. Dirickson, Calvin B. Taylor, Wm. Dale, Wm. F. King and E. G. Polk, 'every bank in the county.' The teachers' choice of Ocean City is now documented as a lobbying campaign rather than an invitation accepted: see fact:1899-worcester-lobbies-the-teachers-away-from-the-mountains. The meeting-number conflict is NOT resolved and should stand. — 1899 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: THE MEETING-NUMBER CONFLICT CAN NOW BE RESOLVED IN FAVOUR OF 'THIRTY-SECOND', and the DataConflict should be closed. The Prince George's Enquirer of 30 June 1899 prints the association's own official announcement over the name of its executive chairman: "John D. Worthington, chairman of the executive board of the State Teachers' Association of Maryland, has officially announced the 32nd annual meeting of that body, which will assemble at Ocean City, Md., July 11, 12 and 13. The headquarters of the association will be at the Atlantic Hotel, and the business sessions will be held in Convention Hall." That is the same officer whose committee chose Ocean City in May, announcing the meeting number himself, and it agrees with the Evening Star's dispatch. The Messenger's 'twenty-third' should be recorded as an error of its own or of its compositor. Provenance confidence can move from conflicting to verified.
Before it was a boardwalk town, Ocean City was a conference town — and it got there by owning the only room on the lower Eastern Shore that could hold a thousand people.
Atlantic HotelMaryland Bankers AssociationPeninsular Press AssociationJohn F. Waggaman
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1899 · 1899-05-12
Ocean City became Convention City by lobbying: the county school board invited the state teachers in January, the association's executive committee reversed a decision to meet at the Blue Mountain House in May, and the beach beat the mountains "in deference to the wishes of a large majority of the school people of the State."
The sequence, recovered from three issues of the county paper. 4 February 1899: "At the meeting of the County School Board last Tuesday a resolution was unanimously adopted inviting the State Teachers Association to meet at Ocean City next summer. The Association has never met in Worcester, and probably many of the teachers have never known the advantages of its great summer resort as a place of holding meetings." 6 May: "The School Board of Worcester county is making an effort to have the State Teachers' Association hold their annual meeting at Ocean City this year instead of the Blue Mountain House. Mr. Laban T. Quillen has been especially active in the movement." 13 May, reprinting the Baltimore report: the association's executive committee — John D. Worthington of Bel Air, Edwin Hebden of Baltimore, William E. Smith of Annapolis, Louis Beatty of Centreville and George A. Steele of Elkton — "met yesterday at the State Normal School and reconsidered a former action to meet at Blue Mountain House. The committee decided instead to meet at Ocean City on July 11, 12 and 13. This action was taken in deference to the wishes of a large majority of the school people of the State." Lecturers announced were Professor Clark of the Johns Hopkins University, with an illustrated lecture, Professor Silvester of the Maryland Agricultural College, and Dr. Lewis, president of Western Maryland College.
The town did not simply receive its conventions. A county school board passed a resolution in January, one man worked it all spring, and in May a state committee changed its mind about the mountains.
Atlantic HotelBoard of Education of Worcester County
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1902 · 1902-06-30
Ocean City's 1902 season opened with two state conventions back to back at the Atlantic Hotel — the largest teachers' meeting the association had ever held, then the Maryland State Bar Association.
"The early birds at Ocean City this season will be the members of the State Teachers' Association and the Maryland Bar Association. These two organizations will lap each other in their stay and cover the period from June 30 to July 3, leaving the 4th to be celebrated by excursionists from all parts of the peninsula and from Baltimore, Washington and other cities ... The headquarters of the Teachers' and Bar Associations will be the Atlantic Hotel." The teachers' meeting "was the largest ever held since the formation of the association"; Joseph Blair of Sparrow's Point was elected president, and both State Superintendent M. Bates Stephens and the outgoing president F. Eugene Wathen argued at the opening for better pay for county teachers. The State Board of Education met at Ocean City on 1 July with Governor John Walter Smith presiding and elected the vice-principal of State Normal School No. 2 at Frostburg. The lawyers followed: "Most of the Worcester lawyers are attending the meeting of the State Bar Association now in session at Ocean City ... among the most distinguished visitors are Judges McSherry, Page, Pearce, and other members of the Court of Appeals." Judge James Alfred Pearce used his address there to recount the Civil War arrest of Judge Richard Carmichael, dragged bleeding from his own bench by a federal provost marshal. In May the paper had already run the headline "OCEAN CITY CONVENTIONS — School Teachers And Lawyers Will Assemble This Year," arguing that the pharmaceutical, lawyers', bankers' and Republican delegates who had come before "have almost unanimously so declared" the resort the right place for the state's professional bodies.
Maryland State Bar AssociationMaryland Bankers AssociationMaryland Pharmaceutical AssociationJohn Walter Smith
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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].
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic RailwayPennsylvania Railroad CompanyAtlantic Casino CompanyJohn Walter Smith
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1904 · 1904-07-13
The Maryland State Teachers' Association meets at Ocean City for the third year running, and the Governor comes down to speak.
'The thirty-seventh annual session of the Maryland State Teachers' Association convened at Ocean City Wednesday afternoon' — 13 July 1904 — 'with a good attendance for the opening session. The Association has a membership of about 500, and it is estimated that four fifths of this number attended the Convention at the seashore this week … Ocean City has welcomed the State Teachers' Association for three consecutive years, and it is probable that next year will bring them again to the shores of the Atlantic and the Sinepuxent.' The address of welcome was by Prof. J. Walter Huffington, principal of the Salisbury High School, the response by Prof. Irving L. Twilley. The Association was addressed by Hon. Edwin Warfield, Governor of Maryland, by Dr. James W. Cain, president of Washington College, Dr. Thomas Fell, president of St. John's College, and Rev. Dr. T. H. Lewis, president of Western Maryland College. The Governor was accompanied as far as Easton by Secretary of State Oswald Tilghman; members of the State Board of Education who came down with him were John C. Rogers, E. Stanley Gary and Glenn H. Worthington, joined at Ocean City by Z. P. Wharton of Stockton, the Worcester member. The session adjourned Friday evening, 15 July, after electing Arthur F. Smith of Lonaconing president.
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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 HotelMaryland State Bar AssociationAtlantic Casino CompanyHon. Thomas A. SmithEdwin Warfield
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1907
The Maryland State Teachers' Association takes its convention to the Jamestown Exposition instead of Ocean City, breaking a five-year habit.
The Cecil Whig of 16 February 1907, under the head "Teachers To Meet At Jamestown": "The Maryland State Teachers' Association has decided to hold its annual convention at Jamestown, this year instead of Ocean City, as has been the custom. Governor Warfield will deliver the address and it is the purpose of the Association to have many other reputable speakers" - among them Governor Swanson of Virginia, President Alderman of the University of Virginia, and Superintendent J. H. Van Sickle of Baltimore. The association had met at Ocean City every summer since 1902; 1907 is the year the Convention City lost its biggest annual booking, and it lost it to a world's fair three hundred miles down the coast.
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1908
Convention town: 500 teachers in June, the Democrats nominating a congressman in the Atlantic Hotel parlor in July, and the Republicans doing the same at Ocean City in August.
The Maryland State Teachers' Association held its forty-first annual meeting at Ocean City on 24-26 June 1908 — the executive committee had fixed the dates the previous January — "with an attendance of about 500." The association sang "America," Rev. J. R. North of Snow Hill prayed, Judge Robley D. Jones of Snow Hill welcomed them to Worcester County, Prof. E. H. Norman of the Baltimore Business College replied, and President Albert S. Cook, superintendent of schools for Baltimore County, gave his inaugural address; "the officers … are congregated chiefly at the Atlantic Hotel, where they welcome new arrivals and discuss educational problems with one another." The meeting elected Miss Sarah E. Richmond of the State Normal School president. One teacher, Miss Hilda Howard, "slipped away from the Teachers' Convention" and got married. The Maryland Pharmaceutical Association met at the resort the same week — "nearly all the druggists of our county spent a part of the week there." On Thursday 23 July the Democratic Congressional Convention of the First District was called to order "in the large parlor of the Atlantic Hotel, Ocean City" at noon; Edward Goslin of Caroline chaired, Samuel K. Dennis of Worcester was secretary, and J. Harry Covington was nominated. Two weeks later, on Thursday 6 August, "Congressman William H. Jackson was renominated by the Republicans of the First Congressional District in convention at Ocean City." Both parties chose their candidate in the same town, in the same fortnight, for the third time this decade. In August the resort also hosted a series of evangelistic meetings, opening Tuesday 18 August, which the Berlin correspondent thought "will be a pleasant and valuable feature of the sea side city in coming years."
Atlantic HotelMaryland Pharmaceutical AssociationHon. William H. Jackson
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1914 · 1914-04-01
Chapter 227 of 1914 puts $25,000 of state money and $2,000 of county money into a public school building at Ocean City — and makes the town condemn the ground for it.
The Maryland General Assembly sat in 1914 and passed exactly two acts touching Ocean City. The larger is Chapter 227, approved 1 April 1914, which recites that "the State of Maryland has not any available building on the Eastern Shore suitable for the accommodation of such assemblages" of public school teachers and that "Ocean City, Maryland's only seaside town, is an ideal place for such meetings." It creates an **Ocean City School Building Commission** — the President of the State Board of Education, the State Superintendent of Public Education, the president and county superintendent of the Worcester County school commissioners, and a fifth man of their choosing — appropriates $25,000 from the State Treasury and directs the Worcester County Commissioners to levy $2,000, and requires the **Mayor and City Council of Ocean City** to furnish and donate the site, arming them with the power to condemn it if they cannot agree a price. The finished building becomes the property of the State of Maryland, and from 1 September to 1 June each year is the Worcester County public school at Ocean City, rent-free. This is the first state money the campaign has found being spent on a building inside Ocean City. No charter legislation passed for the town in 1914, as none had in 1910 or 1912.
Ocean City School Building CommissionE. W. McMasterPhillips Lee Goldsborough
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1914 · 1914-06-29
The Maryland State Teachers' Association holds its forty-seventh annual meeting at Ocean City, and is welcomed with a speech crediting one man with the school-building act.
The Association convened at Ocean City on Monday 29 June 1914 for four days — its first return "after a lapse of four years." E. Clarke Fontaine's printed address of welcome, on behalf of the Worcester County superintendent, school officials and teachers, makes the political point plainly: "I beg leave to recall to your minds in this connection the passage of a certain act by our recent legislature, known as the 'Ocean City Educational Building' Act. To the school superintendent of Worcester County was delegated the sponsorship of this bill, and I know whereof I speak when I assert the claim, that **E. W. McMaster**, by his tactful, persuasive, persevering, never-say-die efforts in its behalf, as it pursued its dubious way through devious and dark byways of legislative [procedure], is largely responsible to-night for its triumphant and final passage. 'Welcome?' Well, I should say so. Through the efforts of our County Superintendent, it has been brought to pass that henceforth this Association has no earthly excuse for holding its annual convention anywhere" else. The Messenger's own headline of 27 June called it the forty-sixth meeting; its text, the Evening Star of 14 May and Fontaine's address all say forty-seventh.
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1915
Maryland built Ocean City a State educational building costing about $27,000 and dedicated it at the end of June 1915 — the largest public building the town had ever had, and the reason the State's teachers came to the beach every summer for the next generation.
The Democratic Messenger of 26 June 1915: "STATE BUILDING AT OCEAN CITY — Will Be Dedicated Next Tuesday With Appropriate Ceremonies. Welcome by Judge Jones. The handsome new Educational Building erected for the State of Maryland at Ocean City by the Corddry Company of this town will be dedicated next Tuesday with appropriate ceremonies; at the same time the State Teachers Association will hold their annual convention. They will all be there to see their new building dedicated." A week later the paper gave the front page to it, with a halftone photograph of the finished building: "OCEAN CITY STATE SCHOOL DEDICATED THIS WEEK. A Handsome Building Built by The Corddry Company, Contractors and Builders, of Snow Hill. Cost About $27,000." The photograph shows a two-storey brick building with a canted corner entrance under a round-arched doorway and a raised parapet — civic architecture of a kind Ocean City had never carried before. The building did double duty: the town's public school in winter and the State's summer school and convention hall in July and August, which is why the Washington papers spent that summer reporting Washington and Montgomery County teachers "at the summer school at Ocean City".
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1915
Offered Baltimore as a meeting place, Maryland's teachers voted it down and stayed at Ocean City — "Of Course They Do!" — and by August the resort was running the State summer school, the Tri-County Institute and the State Teachers' Association convention in the same building.
Three Messenger headlines carry the year's institutional coup. 26 June: the State Teachers' Association will hold its annual convention at Ocean City at the dedication of its new building. 10 July: "TEACHERS FAVOR OCEAN CITY — Of Course They Do! Promptly Turn Down Proposition to Meet in Baltimore." 14 August: "TEACHERS TO GO TO OCEAN CITY — Tri-County Institute Will Be At That Place August 25 To September 2nd." A Pocomoke City department store took advertising space in the same issue addressed to them: "Teachers attending the Institute at Ocean City will find our stock large and complete." From Washington, the Evening Star reported a District superintendent and assistant superintendent of public schools spending the week at Ocean City for the Association's annual meeting, and the Washington Times placed named Maryland women "at the summer school at Ocean City". Ocean City had been a convention town since the 1890s, but 1915 is the year the trade acquired a purpose-built State hall of its own and the profession chose the beach over the city on a recorded vote.
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1916
The Maryland State Teachers' Association holds its forty-ninth annual meeting at Ocean City, 27-30 June 1916, with U.S. Senator John Walter Smith giving the address of welcome.
Cambridge *Daily Banner*, 8 May 1916: the programme of the forty-ninth annual meeting, to be held at Ocean City 27-30 June, "has just been completed. The meeting will open with an invocation to be delivered by the Rev. S. A. Potter, of Ocean City. The address of welcome will be delivered by United States Senator John Walter Smith." The association's executive committee voted to award a certificate at the Ocean City meeting to every county superintendent who enrolled all his teachers as members. The *Banner* of 30 June carried the working sessions from the town — "O[c]ean City, Md., June 28. The primary section of the Maryland State Teachers' Association began its session this afternoon with Miss M. Annie Grace, of Baltimore, as chairman, and Miss Mary Weagley, of Westminster, as secretary." A Teachers' Training School ran at Ocean City through that summer (Prof. A. R. Spaid, late superintendent of Dorchester County schools, among the instructors), and the twelfth Tri-County Institute followed from 30 August to 7 September, opening in "the new Public School building."
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1920
The Maryland State Teachers' Association met at Ocean City on 29-30 June and 1 July 1920 — its fifteenth convention in the town.
"The executive committee of the State Teachers' Association has selected June 29 and 30 and July 1 as the dates for its annual convention at Ocean City, Md. This meeting will be the fiftieth to be held by the association and will be the fifteenth at Ocean City." Officers for 1920: president G. Lloyd Palmer of Frederick; first vice-president Dr. David E. Weglein, principal of Western High School, Baltimore; second vice-president Miss Lena C. Van Bibber of the State Normal School, Towson; secretary Hugh W. Caldwell of Elkton; treasurer Dr. R. Berryman of Baltimore. Sessions ran at the State School Building, four general meetings and departmental sections; county superintendents met beforehand at the Denton home of Dr. M. Bates Stephens, the former State Superintendent, and came on to Ocean City together. County board clerks organised for the first time. Delegates came from Anne Arundel, Cecil, Garrett and Dorchester; George Fox of Anne Arundel was made chairman of the committee on auditors; "many of them, however, decided to remain at the seaside resort for a few days longer, making a vacation of their trip." This is the same building and the same institutional habit as `org:ocean-city-summer-school`, and fifteen conventions back from 1920 puts the association's first Ocean City meeting around 1906.
The association's fiftieth or fifty-third annual meeting — the same paper printed both, five months apart. Its fifteenth at Ocean City is given twice and is not in dispute.
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1920 · 1920-06-29
At Ocean City in 1920 a visiting New York professor told Maryland's teachers what they were worth: $630 a year on average, under $500 in the country schools, on a 137-day term.
Miss Mabel Carney of Teachers' College, New York, addressing the Maryland State Teachers' Association in convention at Ocean City: rural education "is one of the country's biggest problems, which can only be solved with a nation-wide program based on national needs." Though she commended Maryland for its rural school supervision and organisation, "like other States, its greatest rural needs are teachers, higher salaries and better equipped instructors. Only 2.7 per cent of rural teachers are normal school graduates, while 50 per cent have not completed high school work and 10 per cent are only grammar school graduates. With the average salary of all teachers $630.00, the average for rural teachers is less than $500.00. Even when the schools are open, the term is but 137 days." The convention's business was a direct response to the Russell Sage Foundation's state survey, which had placed Maryland thirty-seventh among the states; the new State Superintendent, Albert S. Cook, used the Ocean City meeting to propose rating every county school system against it.
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1930 · 1930-07-15
"The convention resort": seven state and regional bodies meet at Ocean City in 1930, and Mayor McCabe welcomes the Maryland druggists with Governor Ritchie closing the session.
Documented in the 1930 corpus: the 95th annual session of the Improved Order of Red Men, 23–24 April, at which Mrs. Florence Abernathy of Cherry Hill was elected Great Pocahontas of the Ladies' Branch (Midland Journal, 2 May); the Maryland Pharmaceutical Association in convention with the Delaware Pharmaceutical Society in late June, where "Mayor William W. McCabe of Ocean City gave an address of welcome to the state druggists at the opening session" and Governor Ritchie addressed the members at the close (Smyrna Times, 2 July); the Maryland State Teachers' Association, whose sessions drew the Garrett County superintendent (The Republican, Oakland, 3 July); the Automobile Trade Association of Maryland, 14–15 July, headquarters the Hotel Atlantic, "more than 350 visitors… among them Gov. Ritchie" (Washington Daily News, 8 July); the fifth annual convention of the Eastern Shore of Maryland Association of Optometrists, 21 August, with delegates from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and the District (Washington Times, 21 August); the Del-Mar-Va Eastern Shore Association, whose Worcester County governors for the year were named on 1 July as including W. W. McCabe, Dr. C. W. Purnell and Frank W. Pruitt, all of Ocean City (Peninsula Enterprise, 5 July); and the Maryland State Council of the Izaak Walton League, meeting 19 September to elect officers and adopt a constitution (Evening Star, 7 September). In December the Community Fire Company of Rising Sun elected five delegates and five alternates to the Maryland State Firemen's convention, "which meets at Ocean City" — booked for 8–10 July 1931, "one month later than usual."
1928's draft called the convention trade 'the year's quiet economy'. In 1930 it is not quiet: it is the thing the town's own advertising leads with, and the mayor's job in July is standing up to welcome druggists.
Atlantic HotelDel-Mar-Va Eastern Shore AssociationMaryland Pharmaceutical AssociationOcean City Volunteer Fire DepartmentWilliam W. McCabeDr. Charles Washington Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-06