History

Plimhimmon Hotel Company of Worcester County

company · active by 1922

The corporation holding the Plimhimmon Hotel at Ocean City, revealed by Chapter 475 of the Maryland Acts of 1922, which validated Rosalie Tilghman Shreve's bequest of "stock of the par value of five thousand dollars in the Plimhimmon Hotel Company of Worcester County, Maryland" to the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Easton, towards the maintenance of the vacation clergy house she left it on Baltimore Avenue. The hotel had been built by Shreve in 1894 as one of Ocean City's first three grand houses; that it had been incorporated by the time of her death was not previously in this registry. In 1922 the Plimhimmon advertised in Washington with a ballroom, the Morris Orchestra and a grill room.

In the record (3)

  1. 1922 · 1922-04-13

    Rosalie Tilghman Shreve, who built the Plimhimmon, is dead by 1922 — and Chapter 475 of that session validates her gift of Honey Moon Cottage on Baltimore Avenue to the Episcopal Diocese of Easton as a vacation house for clergy.

    Chapter 475 of the Acts of 1922, a long omnibus act validating devises and bequests to religious corporations, includes at item (51) the will of "Rosalie Tilghma[n] Shreve, late of Baltimore City, State of Maryland, deceased," recorded in Baltimore Wills Liber H. W. J. No. 136, folio 161: "(a) To the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Easton, Maryland, a house and lot of land known as Honey Moon Cottage, located on Baltimore Avenue, in Ocean City, Worcester County, Md., to be used as a vacation clergy house, as a memorial to a deceased sister, Mrs. Henrietta Kerr Burroughs. (b) To the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Easton, Maryland, towards the maintenance of said vacation clergy house, stock of the par value of five thousand dollars in the Plimhimmon Hotel Company of Worcester County, Maryland." Shreve — a Civil War widow who built the Plimhimmon in 1894 as one of Ocean City's first three grand hotels and was still opening it for the season in 1898 and advertising it in 1919 — turns out to have left the town both a clergy house and the endowment to run it, in the form of shares in her own hotel. The act also reveals that the Plimhimmon was held by a company: the Plimhimmon Hotel Company of Worcester County.

    Plimhimmon Hotel / Plim PlazaRosalie Tilghman Shreve

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

  2. 1923 · 1923-07-07

    Rosalie Shreve's bequest works: a clergyman and his wife are living in the Clergy Rest House at Ocean City by July 1923.

    Worcester Democrat, 7 July 1923: "Rev. and Mrs. Borden Smith are occupying the Clergy Rest House during the present week." Chapter 475 of the Acts of 1922 had validated Rosalie Tilghman Shreve's devise to the Diocese of Easton of "a house and lot of land known as Honey Moon Cottage, located on Baltimore Avenue, in Ocean City… to be used as a vacation clergy house," endowed with $5,000 par value of stock in the Plimhimmon Hotel Company. The 1922 pass left it open whether the house ever housed a clergyman. It did, within fifteen months.

    St. Paul's by-the-Sea Episcopal ChurchRosalie Tilghman Shreve

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

  3. 1931 · 1931-06-09

    Eleven Ocean City, Md. houses advertise in the Evening Star's June 1931 resort column — and the George Washington Hotel is not one of them.

    The "OCEAN CITY, MD." block in the Evening Star of 9 and 12 June 1931 lists: the PLIMHIMMON ("A Famous Maryland Hostelry... The T. Worth Plimhimmon Orchestra in ball room. Garage. Golf."); the COLONIAL HOTEL ("Boardwalk; modern. Special rates to July 15. Golf. Booklet. 18th season. Charges reversed on phone reservations. Ph. No. 2. C. O. and N. C. D. CARTER"); the ATLANTIC ("Largest and most modern Resort Hotel on the Delmarva peninsula. Phone 128"); the HASTINGS HOTEL (Mrs. Chas. Ludlam, parking space, special rates to July 15); the MAYFLOWER ("New; directly on Boardwalk; rooms single or en suite... Mrs. K. C. Hastings, Owner-Manager"); THE LANKFORD ("On Boardwalk; garage. M. B. Quillin, Prop."); the BREAKERS ("On Boardwalk. Rooms with hot and cold running water and private bath. Phone 76. C. H. Timmons, Prop."); THE DENNIS; THE BELMONT ("Terms Reasonable. L. R. Hearne"); THE KAYE ("New and modern. On boardwalk. Excellent table. Bathing free. Mrs. M. Kaye, Prop. Ph. 117"); and THE DEL-MAR ("Private baths. Mrs. S. I. Carey"). The MAJESTIC joins the block later in June.

    Twelve houses across the season, two of them advertising themselves as NEW. And no George Washington Hotel — in a column that its 1932 successor advertised in, on the same page of the same paper. Whatever the George Washington was doing in 1931, it was not buying space in Washington.

    Atlantic HotelPlimhimmon Hotel / Plim PlazaOcean City BoardwalkAtlantic Hotel CompanyDr. Charles Washington PurnellMrs. K. C. Hastings

    Source · checked 2026-08-10