Sinepuxent Beach Company

company · founded 1890

Also known as Sinepuxent Beach Company of Baltimore City

The development company that platted the island beyond the original 1875 resort. Incorporated in December 1890 by Robert G. Keene, Dr. J. Pembroke Thom, Samuel C. Rowland and Charles A. Coombs, with capital stock of $60,000 stated to represent the purchase price of the land. It owned eight miles of beach on Sinepuxent Bay adjoining Ocean City at the terminus of the Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad — some 2,000 acres, assembled that August out of the estate of the late Stephen Taber — and had it topographically surveyed and laid out into building lots divided by streets and avenues, with wharves and an electric railway contemplated. Directors for the first year were the incorporators together with Joseph B. Seth (president of the railroad), Edward Austin Jenkins, John F. Waggaman of Washington and Gabriel E. Duvall; Thom was elected president, Theophilus Tunis (the railroad's secretary) vice-president and J. Frank Turner secretary and treasurer. The street grid north of the original town descends from this survey. The company later acquired the Atlantic Hotel Company's holdings; the dates given for that in retrospectives (1891, 1892) are unsettled.

In the record (66)

1890
December 1890: the Sinepuxent Beach Company is incorporated to lay 2,000 acres of beach out into building lots — the plat that made modern Ocean City.
'The Sinepuxent Beach Company has been incorporated by Robert G. Keene, Dr. J. Pembroke Thom, Samuel C. Rowland and Charles A. Coombs,' the Democratic Advocate of Westminster reported on December 6, 1890. 'The company owns eight miles of beach at Sinepuxent Bay, the terminus of the Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad, adjacent to Ocean City. The land, which contains 2,000 acres, has been topographically surveyed and laid out into [6],000 building lots, divided by streets and avenues. The plan of development contemplates the building of wharves and an electric railway... The capital stock of the company is $60,000, which represents the purchase price of the land.' Its directors for the first year were the four incorporators together with Joseph B. Seth — president of the Baltimore & Eastern Shore — Edward Austin Jenkins, John F. Waggaman of Washington, and Gabriel E. Duvall. Dr. Thom was elected president, Theophilus Tunis (the railroad's secretary) vice-president, and J. Frank Turner secretary and treasurer. The men who had just consolidated the railway into Ocean City in July had, by December, bought the beach it ran to and cut it into lots. The street grid north of the original town descends from this survey.
The town below 4th Street was built by hoteliers; everything north of it was drawn by a railroad syndicate with a plat book.
The Beach Atlantic Hotel Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad John F. Waggaman
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1890 · 1890-08-28
August 1890: a syndicate of railroad stockholders buys the whole Taber estate around Ocean City, intending 'to build a city on this site.'
'A gigantic land scheme is projected near Ocean City by a syndicate of capitalists, consisting of the stockholders of the Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad Company and Baltimore and Washington monied men,' the Wilmington Evening Journal reported on August 28, 1890. 'Robert Goldsborough Keene, of Baltimore, has arranged for the syndicate to purchase the entire estate of the late Stephen Taber, which joins Ocean City on the north and south, and lies in addition to its fine ocean front about fifteen miles of the bay shore of the Isle of Wight and the Synepuxent bay, and is one of the most beautiful spots on the coast. The intention is to build a city on this site. The scheme for the expansion and development of the new city is on the most elaborate and comprehensive scale, and the prospect is that on its completion Maryland will have as fine a beach as there is in the United States. It will be a winter as well as a summer resort.' Stephen Taber was the Long Island investor who had patented 'The Lady's Resort to the Ocean' in 1869 and sold the founders their beach in 1876; twenty-one years after the patent, his heirs' land was bought whole by the men who owned the railroad, and the modern island north of the original town was on the drawing board.
The Beach Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad Stephen Taber
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1892 · 1892-03-14
A Washington real-estate broker takes control of the Sinepuxent Beach Company, and the whole Atlantic Hotel with it.
The Democratic Messenger of March 19, 1892: "The Synepuxent Beach Company Monday elected the following officers: President, R. G. Keene; vice president, Harvey L. Page; secretary and treasurer, Thomas E. Waggaman; assistant secretary W. J. Warrington. Mr. Waggaman, who is a Washington real estate broker, has bought a controlling interest. The Atlantic Hotel has been purchased by a Washington syndicate that will remodel and improve the building. The treasurer reported a balance of $23,000 after paying [dividends] last October. A party of twenty-five interested in the beach will visit Ocean City Sunday, leaving Baltimore Saturday and returning Monday." Robert Goldsborough Keene, one of the four incorporators of December 1890, replaced Dr. J. Pembroke Thom as president. A week later the paper watched the new money arrive: "A special train passed through Berlin Saturday night en route for Ocean City with a large party of capitalists and mechanics from Washington who propose to develop this favorite summer resort. A material change may be expected in its appearance ere the season opens." — 1892 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: THE CONFLICT IS RESOLVED AND THE FLAG SHOULD COME OFF. The Washington real-estate man who took control of the Sinepuxent Beach Company in March 1892 was JOHN FLOYD WAGGAMAN of 700 14th St. N.W., not his brother Thomas E. Waggaman of 917 F St. N.W. The evidence, in order of weight: (1) The Snow Hill paper corrects itself twice within four months. Its own Ocean City column of 25 June 1892 has “John F. Waggaman, of Washington” arriving by special train with the B&O officers; its own Real Estate Transfers column of 9 July 1892 records “John F. Waggaman from Atlantic Hotel Company of Ocean City, Md.… Consideration $15,000” and “The Sinepuxent Beach Company, from John F. Waggaman and wife… Consideration $15,000”, and in the same column “John F. Waggaman from Wm. S. Johnson and wife a tract of land… called the ‘Isle of Wight,’ containing 400 acres.” (2) The Washington Evening Star of 22 December 1892 lists the company’s directors for the coming year and the Waggaman on the board is “J. F. Waggaman”; the Star of 8 February 1895 gives the full board with “John F. Waggaman”. (3) The Star of 21 August 1895, reporting John S. Larcombe’s stockholder suit, narrates the founding: “Some time in 1891… a majority of the stock was to be put into a pool… to be voted by Page and John F. Waggaman, as trustees… In the spring of 1892, Mr. Larcombe says, he received a paper…” That places John F. as the controlling Washington principal at the exact moment the Messenger wrote Thomas E. (4) Across the entire Evening Star run, ‘Sinepuxent’ and ‘Waggaman’ co-occur on only seven pages, the earliest in 1895, and every one names John F. There is no source anywhere putting Thomas E. Waggaman with the company other than that single Messenger paragraph. (5) The two men were different people and were brothers, both sons of John Henry Waggaman: Boyd’s Directory of the District of Columbia for 1893 (compiled late 1892), printed p. 933, lists “WAGGAMAN JOHN F, real estate, 700 14th nw, h Woodley pk” and “WAGGAMAN THOMAS E, real estate broker, loans and auctioneer, 917 F nw, h 3300 O nw” — separate offices and separate firms in every year checked (1875, 1893, 1894, 1898). The brotherhood is stated in the Star of 7 July 1910, p. 1, on Thomas E.’s estate settlement: “John F. Waggaman, brother of the deceased.” AND THE ERROR IS EXPLICABLE, which is worth printing rather than hiding: the Messenger’s descriptor — ‘a Washington real estate broker’ — is verbatim THOMAS E.’s directory line (‘real estate broker, loans and auctioneer’), while John F. is listed simply as ‘real estate’. A Snow Hill compositor working from a Baltimore wire item, with two Waggaman brothers both in Washington real estate, reached for the better-known name. SEPARATELY, the illegible dividend figure is legible in the portal’s scan of the same page: “The treasurer reported a balance of $23,000 after paying 10 per cent dividends last October.” And the company styles itself ‘of Baltimore City’ in every 1892 Worcester County deed abstract and in the Evening Star’s December report, against the ‘Washington syndicate’ framing.
Atlantic Hotel Company Robert Goldsborough Keene Thomas E. Waggaman Dr. J. Pembroke Thom
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1892 · 1892-04-08
Three Western senators and a New York congressman are shown the beach in April as guests of the Sinepuxent Beach Company; the congressman buys a lot.
Four months before the Gridiron Club summer, the beach company was already running its buyers down by special train. The Democratic Messenger's Berlin column of April 16, 1892: "Quite a number of prominent men, from all sections of the country visited Ocean City on Friday and Saturday of last week. Among the number were U. S. Senators Charles F. Manderson, of Nebraska, George L. Shoup of Idaho and Francis E. Warren of Wyoming. These gentlemen expressed themselves much pleased with Ocean City and predict for it a great future. Carpenters are at work on the Atlantic Hotel and wonderful changes will be made in that establishment." A separate dispatch in the same issue, datelined Annapolis, April 11: "Col. Fellows at Ocean City. Col. John R. Fellows, member of Congress from New York, was one of the party that went to Ocean City Friday as the guest of the Sinepuxent Beach Company. Colonel Fellows said he was delighted with the trip. He had purchased a lot, and, if his wife said so, he intended to build a cottage on the beach."
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1892 · 1892-04-09
The Sinepuxent Beach Company sends a Washington civil engineer down to survey its beach property, and he reports Ocean City lots selling briskly in Washington.
The Democratic Messenger's Berlin column, April 9, 1892: "Mr. Josiah Pierce, Jr., of Washington passed through Berlin Tuesday evening en route for Ocean City. He is a civil engineer and is employed by the Sinepuxent Beach Company to survey some portions of their beach property. We understand that he reports a large sale of Ocean City lots in Washington recently." It is the first named surveyor the campaign has for the beach company's subdivision, and it dates the survey work to the same spring in which the company's block-and-lot deeds begin appearing weekly in the Real Estate Transfers column — lots in "block No. 61" and "block No. 5, South" and "block 10 North."
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1892 · 1892-05-10
"Hon. W. Sydney Wilson has been elected mayor of Ocean City" — the first Ocean City officeholder this research campaign has found by name.
Wilmington's Evening Journal carried the line in its peninsula-news column on May 10, 1892, a week after the first Monday in May election required by the new charter [fact:1892-charter-amended-two-year-commissioners]. The Snow Hill Democratic Messenger corroborated it independently in August, in a long Ocean City letter: "The police arrangements are excellent and one seldom hears of a disturbance or disorder of any kind. The Mayor, Sidney Wilson, personally supervises affairs, and his management is thorough and systematic." The same column names a town policeman, George Truitt. In October the Messenger added that "Mr. William S. Wilson and family arrived home from Ocean City, where they spent the summer in their magnificent cottage. Mr. Wilson, who is the mayor of Ocean City, takes a great deal of interest in the welfare of Maryland's city by the sea, and predicts a more successful season next summer than this, which was the best in the history of the place." Wilson was a Snow Hill lawyer, a summer cottager, and — the June 11 Messenger notes — "a director in the Sinepuxent Beach Company."
Ten researched years, 1878 through 1891, produced no Ocean City officeholder at all. 1892 produces one in three separate papers — and he is a Snow Hill man with a beach cottage and a seat on the land company's board.
The Commissioners of Ocean City William Sydney Wilson
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1892 · 1892-05-21
The Sinepuxent Beach Company contracts for an artesian well at Ocean City — and for plumbing to go with it.
"The Sinepuxent Beach Co. has contracted for an artesian well at Ocean City and also for plumbing," the Democratic Messenger's Berlin column reported on May 21, 1892. The Smyrna Times named the contractor a fortnight later: "The Sinepuxent Beach Co. has contracted with Mr. John K. Shannahan of Easton, for an artesian well at Ocean City." It is the earliest documented attempt to put fresh water into the sand under Ocean City on an engineered scale, and it belongs to the same spring's programme as the hotel's electric light and elevator. — 1892 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Confirmed twice over. The Smyrna Times of 1 June 1892 carries the contractor exactly as the campaign has him: “The Sinepuxent Beach Co., has contracted with Mr. John K. Shannahan of Easton, for an artesian well at Ocean City,” and the Democratic Messenger's Berlin column of 21 May has the company's side: “The Sinepuxent Beach Co. has contracted for an artesian well at Ocean City and also for plumbing.” Two papers, one in Maryland and one in Delaware, agreeing on the contract in the same fortnight. Whether it was ever drilled is still unanswered by any 1892 paper — but the year supplies one suggestive negative from a town seventy miles down the peninsula: “The Crisfield Artesian Well is down over 900 feet, but as yet no water has been struck sufficient for the use of the plant. They are still going down and say they are determined to get water if they have to go to China” (Democratic Messenger, 29 October 1892, quoting the Crisfield Times). Boring for fresh water on the lower Eastern Shore in 1892 was not a solved problem. — 1893 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The 1892 pass left the question 'was the artesian well ever drilled?' open, because 1892 records only the contract. The Messenger's Berlin column of 4 February 1893 answers it sideways: "Only one air-hole in Sinepuxent bay and that at Ocean City— Some attribute this to the artesian well, others say hell is a little nearer there than elsewhere." In a winter when the bay froze hard enough for the life-saving crews to haul corn across it on wagons, something at Ocean City kept a hole open in the ice, and the local explanation was the well. This is a correspondent's aside carrying its own alternative explanation, so it should not be written up as a completion date — but it is contemporary evidence that a well existed and was believed to be discharging.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1892 · 1892-07-09
The Sinepuxent Beach Company buys the Atlantic Hotel for $15,000 — the deed chain runs Holland to the hotel company to Waggaman to the beach company inside four months.
Worcester County land records, printed week by week in the Democratic Messenger, settle a question campaign 1 and the 1890 pass both left open. In the week ending March 31, 1892: "Atlantic Hotel Company from Charles F. Holland all those tracts, lots and parcels of land with the buildings and improvements situate at Ocean City." In the transfers printed July 9, 1892, two deeds in sequence: "John F. Waggaman from Atlantic Hotel Company of Ocean City, Md., all those tracts, parts of tracts, lots and parcels of land together with the buildings and improvements... Consideration $15,000" and "The Sinepuxent Beach Company, from John F. Waggaman and wife, all those tracts, parts of tracts, lots and parcels of land together with the buildings and improvements situate in Ocean City, Md. Consideration $15,000." The company said so itself in a Messenger advertisement of May 21: "The Sinepuxent Beach Company, having recently purchased the Atlantic Hotel, Ocean City, Md., and intending to re-furnish the same throughout with new and modern furniture, will sell by public auction all the contents" — a sale held in the hotel on Tuesday, May 24, 1892 at 10 o'clock.
Atlantic Hotel Company John F. Waggaman Judge Charles F. Holland
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1892 · 1892-07-09
John F. Waggaman takes 400 acres called "the Isle of Wight" for a dollar, and sells it on within four months.
In the same Real Estate Transfers column that recorded the Atlantic Hotel passing through his hands, the Democratic Messenger of July 9, 1892 recorded another Waggaman purchase: "John F. Waggaman from Wm. S. Johnson and wife a tract of land situate in Worcester county, Md., called the 'Isle of Wight,' containing 400 acres. Consideration $1.00." On November 19 it went out again: "Edward T. Kellar from John Waggaman and wife certain land situate in Worcester county called 'Isle of Wight.' $10.00." The nominal considerations mark these as conveyances within a syndicate rather than arm's-length sales. The Isle of Wight is the marsh island and neck at the head of Isle of Wight Bay, north of Ocean City — the same water the Isle of Wight Inlet and Oyster Planting Company had just been rechartered to cut into, and the same water a correspondent that May said was the right place for an inlet: "He says before Ocean City, I say above Ocean City, for there is located the largest body of water — the Isle of Wight Bay."
Isle of Wight Inlet and Oyster Planting Company of Worcester County John F. Waggaman
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1892 · 1892-07-13
Baltimore to the beach, hour by hour: the steamer B. S. Ford leaves Pier 8 Light Street at 7 a.m., 44 miles to Claiborne in three hours, then two hours by rail to Ocean City.
Baltimore's German-language daily, Der Deutsche Correspondent, opened the season's excursion service on July 15, 1892 with the only full Baltimore-to-Ocean-City itinerary the campaign has for the year: "Die jeden Mittwoch stattfindenden Exkursionen nach Ocean City mittelst des Dampfers 'B. S. Ford' wurden diese Woche eröffnet. Der Dampfer fährt um 7 Uhr vom Pier Nr. 8, Lightstraße, ab, legt die 44 Meilen lange Strecke zwischen hier und Claiborne in drei Stunden zurück, während von letzterem Orte aus die 'Baltimore-Eastern-Shore-Bahn' die Reisenden in 2 Stunden nach Ocean-City befördert." — Wednesday excursions to Ocean City by the steamer B. S. Ford opened this week; she leaves Pier No. 8, Light Street, at 7 o'clock, covers the 44 miles to Claiborne in three hours, and from there the Baltimore & Eastern Shore railroad carries passengers to Ocean City in two. Five hours, city pier to surf. The same column describes the destination: "Ocean-City selbst ist trotz seines verhältnismäßigen geringen Alters ein reizvoller Sommer-Vergnügungsplatz, und die 'Sinepuxent Beach-Comp.' hat Alles in ihren Kräften Stehende gethan, um ihren Gästen Angenehmes zu bieten. Große Hotels sind in Ocean-City vorhanden." — Ocean City, despite its comparatively slight age, is a delightful summer pleasure-place, and the Sinepuxent Beach Company has done everything in its power to offer its guests comfort; there are large hotels at Ocean City.
Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1892 · 1892-07-20
The Atlantic Hotel's dancing pavilion is the town's public hall: a congressional convention in July, the Gridiron Club's hop in August.
The Democratic Messenger's account of the First District Democratic convention of July 20, 1892 locates it precisely: "The convention was held in the dancing pavilion of the Atlantic Hotel, the same room where Mr. Page was first nominated two years ago. The same chairman also presided, Dr. Robert M. Price, of Queen Anne's county, whose fair rulings then commended him to the present convention." A month later the same room did what it was built for: "A musicale and hop were given in the Atlantic Hotel pavilion Saturday night by the Gridiron Club of Washington, D. C., and dancing was indulged in to a late hour." The hotel had brought its own band down for the season — "The Atlantic Hotel Orchestra arrived at Ocean City on Friday" (July 2). The pavilion is also what the year's most persistent hotel rumour was to be attached to: "a fine new hotel will be erected at Ocean City on the ground adjacent to the Atlantic and in front of the Seaside. It is proposed to join this to the Atlantic with an immense open-air sea pavilion."
Atlantic Hotel Company Henry Page
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1892 · 1892-07-23
A Kentucky senator, a general's widow, a Sherman relative and a Washington architect buy Ocean City lots in one paragraph.
The Democratic Messenger, July 23, 1892: "It is stated that Senator Joe Blackburn, Kentucky; Mrs. Belknap, widow of Gen. Grant's Secretary of War; Mrs. Ewing, a relative of Gen. Sherman and Harvey L. Page, of Washington, have purchased lots at Ocean City, and will soon begin the erection of handsome cottages." Harvey L. Page was the Sinepuxent Beach Company's vice-president, elected that March. The county's own men were buying too, in the same weekly deed column: George M. Upshur took a half interest in a house and lot for $700; Nelson B. Switzer of Baltimore took lots 7 to 12 in one block for $1,700; James Bates of Baltimore took two lots in Block 5 South for $1,100 and another parcel for $400; Samuel Maddox of Washington took lot 10 in Block 10 North for $200; Robert G. Keene — the beach company's own president — took lot No. 10 "designated on the plat of Ocean City" for $150.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Harvey L. Page Robert Goldsborough Keene
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1892 · 1892-07-27
The rebuilt Atlantic Hotel advertises electric light and an elevator — the first documented elevator on the beach.
The Washington Evening Star carried the Atlantic Hotel's card through the summer of 1892: "electric light, elevator... splendid fishing and boating, with the finest bathing on the Atlantic ocean. For further information apply to THEO. L. PAGE, Manager, Atlantic Hotel, Ocean City." The Democratic Messenger had trailed the work in March: "The Atlantic, the largest hotel on the beach, has been purchased by a syndicate and will receive a thorough overhauling. It is said that elevators and electric lights will be put in the building and that the walls on the first floor will be frescoed before it is opened for the reception of guests." In May the Wilmington Evening Journal summarised the whole town in eight words: "Ocean City, Md., has a big building boom. Electric lights are in prospect." In August the house was so full that "Col. Theodore Page, the manager, was forced to put up cots in the parlors." — 1892 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Confirmed against its own cited page, and an image is attached — the first image the year 1892 has had. The Evening Star card of 27 July 1892 reads in full that the Atlantic Hotel is “owned by the Sinepuxent Beach Company” and opened for guests 25 June “complete in everything. New furniture, silver ware, linen, as well as perfect drainage and sewerage; also electric light and elevator,” with a new steam launch on Sinepuxent Bay and sail and rowboats, under Theo. L. Page of the U.S. Senate restaurant. Two details worth adding: the company’s OWNERSHIP is stated in the hotel’s own advertising, which is a second and independent confirmation of the deed chain; and the advertised opening of 25 June sits against the county paper’s “The Atlantic will be opened Saturday next” of 25 June, which points at 2 July — record both rather than reconcile them.
Atlantic Hotel Company Theodore L. Page
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1892 · 1892-07-30
"The building fever is still on at Ocean City" — five more cottages before the season closed, and talk of catching Atlantic City.
The Democratic Messenger's Berlin column tracked the boom week by week. February 27: "It is said a new hotel and several cottages are soon to be built at Ocean City." April 9: "The large livery stable and lodging house on Worcester street, at Ocean City, belonging to Granville Stokes, Esq., is nearly completed. The location is central, and those who go to the sea shore in carriages will find this stable very convenient." April 16: "Carpenters are at work on the Atlantic Hotel and wonderful changes will be made in that establishment." April 23: "Another party of capitalists went to Ocean City on Saturday last. It is said that it will not be a long time before many cottages and several hotels will be erected at Maryland's popular summer resort. The sale of lots is increasing, which is an indication that in a few years Ocean City may not be very far behind Atlantic City in size and population." July 30: "The building fever is still on at Ocean City. We are informed that five more cottages will be erected there ere the season closes." The named new work of 1892: Granville Stokes's livery stable and lodging house on Worcester Street; a hotel built by William Massey; T. M. Slemons's new railroad station and platforms; the Atlantic's electric light, elevator and frescoing; and five more cottages.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1892 · 1892-08-18
What a day at the beach cost in 1892: 60 cents from Snow Hill, $1.75 from Annapolis by boat and rail, $4.20 from Washington for the weekend.
1892 is the first Ocean City year with a full fare table in print. The Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore ran a special to Ocean City on Thursday, August 18: leaving Franklin City 8:30 (75c), Girdletree 8:45 (75c), Snow Hill 9:00 (60c), Wesley 9:07 (50c), Queponco 9:15, arriving Ocean City 10:00 and returning at 5:00 p.m., children five to twelve at half rates. Annapolis's Severn Division No. 8, Uniform Rank K. of P., sold its August 19 excursion by boat and rail — Long Wharf at 7:15 a.m., Ocean City at noon, leave at 6, home at 10:45 — for $1.75 adults and 70 cents for children under thirteen; it carried about three hundred. The Sinepuxent Beach Company's standing advertisement in the Washington Evening Star offered "Saturday excursions, commencing April 30, to Ocean City. Round-trip tickets, $4.20, good until Monday, via B. and O. R.R. Train leaving 3:15 p.m. via Baltimore." The Star pushed the same trip in its news columns: "With the new fast [trains] offered by the Baltimore and Ohio railroad you can reach Ocean City every Saturday evening in five hours and a half"; and "Ocean City is 100 miles nearer this city than any other ocean resort." In December the B&ES sold a round trip from anywhere on its line to Baltimore for $1.00. — 1892 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: Three corrections and one addition. (1) The December dollar excursion was not open to Ocean City. The Democratic Messenger's advertisement of 10 December 1892 reads: "The Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad Company will run a 'dollar excursion' from all points (except Ocean City) on its Line to Baltimore December 15th, on the morning express train. Tickets good to return same day or day following at the special low rate of $1.00 for the round trip from all points… A good orchestra will accompany the excursion on the boat, up morning of the 15th and down evening of the 16th." The fact currently says "a round trip from anywhere on its line to Baltimore for $1.00"; "anywhere except Ocean City" is what the notice says. (2) The August 18 PW&B special's full station list, from the advertisement of 13 August: Franklin City 8.30 a.m., Hursley 8.39, Girdletree 8.45, Snow Hill 9.00, Wesley 9.07, Queponco 9.15, arriving Ocean City 10.00, returning 5.00 p.m., children five to twelve at half rates, "good only on special train in each direction." (3) A second, earlier 1892 fare table the campaign does not have, for the Delaware, Maryland & Virginia road to the Atlantic Hotel furniture sale of 24 May: "On the D., M. & V. Road the fare to Ocean City and return is as follows: from Franklin, $1.82; Hersley, $1.20; Girdletree, $1.12; Snow Hill, 94c; Wesley, 85c; Queponco, 73c" — a set of round-trip fares roughly half again the PW&B excursion rate three months later. (4) The furniture-sale advertisement itself gives the hour as "Tuesday, May 24, 1892, At 10.30 o'clock A.M.", not ten o'clock.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1892 · 1892-09-17
A trustees' sale advertisement names the town's founding plat: Stephen Taber's deed of 28 July 1876, Liber I.T.M. No. 4, folio 536, and the fifty acres it laid out.
The plat behind every Ocean City block-and-lot number is cited in full in the Democratic Messenger's own advertising columns. Trustees George W. Purnell, R. Jinkins Henry and L. Stanley Toadvin advertised a sale "OF VALUABLE LOTS AT OCEAN CITY" for Saturday, September 17, 1892 at 2 o'clock at the Atlantic Hotel, selling "by virtue of authority contained in a deed from Stephen Taber and wife dated the 28th day of July A.D. 1876, recorded [in Worcester] county in liber I. T. M., No. 4, folio 536... all those lots which are situated at said Ocean City, being part of the original fifty acres conveyed by said Stephen Taber and wife by the above-named deed, and are numbered on the plat of the said fifty acres as follows: 76, 84, 121, 97, 106, 109, 112, 136, 143, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 152, 154, 155, 156, 157, 160, 161, 162, 166, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205." A second document in the same year points at the same record: the Circuit Court order nisi of May 10, 1892 describes the lot the town's tax collector had sold as "Lot No. 119 on the plat of said Ocean City, which is recorded among the land records of said Worcester county, in Liber I. T. M., No. __ folio __." And an October deed sells "lot No. 56 as it was originally laid out by Stephen Taber." The plat is therefore not a lost document: it is a recorded exhibit to a deed of 28 July 1876 in the Worcester County land records, and 1892's deeds run to at least lot 205 on it, with blocks numbered both North and South of the town.
John Tracy
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1892 · 1892-09-24
Ocean City building lots, $100 to $1,000 — "thousands turned away this season for want of accommodation."
John F. Waggaman's advertisement in the Washington Evening Star of September 24, 1892: "SECURE A SEASIDE HOME WHILE YOU CAN THAT WILL ALSO PROVE A FIRST CLASS INVESTMENT. Lots at Ocean City, Md., on the Atlantic ocean, 5 hours' ride from Washington; $100 to $1,000, or leased for [a term of] years to secure builders. The growth and popularity of Ocean City is assured, offering as it does a grand beach on one side and the most picturesque bay on the other... Thousands turned away this season for want of accommodation. Let us refer you to a number of prominent purchasers who have built cottages." The recorded deeds bear the range out: the Sinepuxent Beach Company sold Charles B. Ziegler a tract on the south side of town for $50 in July, Maria C. Peet a lot for $600 and Mary A. Peet lot No. 5 in block No. 6 for $500, and James Bates of Baltimore lots 13 and 11 in block 5 south for $1,100. Dr. J. Pembroke Thom — the company's own former president — bought lots 10, 11 and 12 in block 111 south from Charles E. Stewart for $1,000 in November. — 1892 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Confirmed against its own cited page and an image attached. The Evening Star advertisement of 24 September 1892 runs from “FOR SALE AND LEASE—” to the signature “SINEPUXENT BEACH CO., 808 17th st. n.w.” and offers lots “on the Atlantic ocean, 5 hours’ ride from Washington; $100 to $1,000, or leased for 99 years to cottage builders,” with “thousands turned away this season for want of accommodation.” Two sharpenings: the company’s Washington address is 808 17th St. N.W., and the ninety-nine-year GROUND LEASE alternative to purchase is not currently in the fact — it matters, because a leasehold rather than a sale is how a land company keeps the reversion.
John F. Waggaman Dr. J. Pembroke Thom
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1892 · 1892-12-21
The Sinepuxent Beach Company re-elects in December with a new president, and Ocean City's mayor on the board.
The Washington Evening Star, December 22, 1892: "The Sinepuxent Beach Company of Baltimore city, at its annual meeting yesterday, elected Charles Goldsborough president; Harvey L. Page of Washington, D. C., vice president; Robert Goldsborough Keene, secretary and treasurer; Wm. J. Warrington, assistant secretary. The following directors were elected for the ensuing year: Charles Goldsborough, Harvey L. Page, R. G. Keene, J. F. Waggaman, W. S. Wilson, [—] Nutt, James Bates, [—] and B. K. Plain." Nine months after the March reorganisation, Keene had moved from the presidency to secretary and treasurer — the seat Thomas E. Waggaman was reported to hold in March — and Charles Goldsborough had the chair. Two names on the board matter for the town. J. F. Waggaman is John Floyd Waggaman, the Washington principal through whose hands the Atlantic Hotel had passed in July. W. S. Wilson is W. Sydney Wilson, the man the newspapers had been calling the mayor of Ocean City all summer: the town's chief magistrate was a director of the company that owned its biggest hotel and sold its building lots, and by December he was formally re-elected to that board. James Bates of Baltimore had been buying the company's lots in Block 5 South earlier that year.
Robert Goldsborough Keene Harvey L. Page John F. Waggaman William Sydney Wilson
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1893
Three hotels open the eighteenth season, and the Atlantic Hotel company rents Congress Hall as well.
"The Atlantic Hotel, at Ocean City, was opened for the reception of guests on the first day of June," the Democratic Messenger reported on June 3. "The hotel company have rented Congress Hotel for the season, and will run it on the European plan." Theodore L. Page managed the Atlantic and a Baltimore Sun correspondent singled him out in July as a man who "has put his house on the same plane as the best houses at any" resort. The Sea Side Hotel "was opened to guests by Proprietor John Tracey" on Tuesday June 13; the Sun's man called Tracy "the veteran Salisbury hotel keeper... who has been doing business every summer at Ocean City with success, for the past fifteen or twenty years." Congress Hall's arrangement changed hands over the summer: on June 24 "Will Rayne has leased Congress Hall, Ocean City, for the season," and on July 8 "Congress Hall, Ocean City, opened on Saturday last with William E. Rayne proprietor and John L. Nock clerk." Billy McKew took the Hotel de Purnell. By July 1 there were "about two hundred people at the various hotels, more than usually found at Ocean City so early in the season," four cottages were building, and "many improvements have been made about the beach." George W. Purnell announced he would build "a handsome cottage at Ocean City between now and next season" on "one of the choicest lots on the beach," and William Warrington, secretary of the Sinepuxent Beach Company, meant to put up a cottage on Atlantic Avenue. — 1893 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: The Congress Hall conflict has a third state that resolves the shape of it: Rayne did not only lease, he bought. A Baltimore Sun correspondent reprinted in the Messenger of 15 July 1893 names "Mr. William R. Rayne, who has just bought of William B. R. Selby's estate the large hotel known as Congress Hall and proposes to put $10,000 worth of improvements on it." So the sequence is: the Atlantic Hotel company rented Congress Hall for the season on 3 June; Will Rayne leased it on 24 June and opened it on 1 July; and within a fortnight of opening he bought the freehold out of the Selby estate. The two claims in the conflict are both true and sequential. Add also that by late October the hotel was in winter care: "Mr John Willet moved his family to Ocean City Wednesday, and will take care of Congress Hall during the winter." And in March 1893 the Baltimore & Ohio had sent an agent to Ocean City "to examine the Congress Hall property with a view to purchasing the same" — a railroad nearly bought the hotel five months before Rayne did.
Congress Hall changed hands between June and July 1893 — the hotel company took it first, Will Rayne ran it
Atlantic Hotel Company Theodore L. Page John Tracy William E. Rayne George W. Purnell William Warrington
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1893 · 1893-02-04
Sinepuxent Bay freezes over except for one hole at Ocean City, and the town credits its artesian well.
The Berlin correspondent, 4 February 1893: "Only one air-hole in Sinepuxent bay and that at Ocean City— Some attribute this to the artesian well, others say hell is a little nearer there than elsewhere." The 1892 pass ended with the artesian well as an open question: the Sinepuxent Beach Company had contracted with John K. Shannahan of Easton in May 1892 for a well and for plumbing, and whether it was ever drilled the 1892 papers did not say. This is the answer, arriving sideways in a joke. Something at Ocean City was discharging water warm enough or fast enough to keep a hole open in a bay that had frozen hard enough elsewhere for the life-saving crews to haul corn across it on wagons. The first engineered fresh water under Ocean City existed, and was running, by the winter of 1892–93.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1893 · 1893-08-18
The Vice President, two United States Senators and the Governor of Maryland came to Ocean City in August 1893 as guests of the Sinepuxent Beach Company.
The Westminster Democratic Advocate, 26 August 1893: 'A large number of prominent persons of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore left on Friday of last week as guests of the Sinepuxent Beach Company at Ocean City. Among them were Vice-President Stevenson, Senators Blackburn and Gibson, Gov. Frank Brown and others well-known in business, political and social circles.' The Richmond Times and the Roanoke Times of 20 August print the wire dispatch that dates and describes it: 'OCEAN CITY, MD., August 19. — The distinguished party, made up of Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson, Governor Frank Brown, United States Senators Blackburn of Kentucky and Gibson of Maryland, and citizens of Washington and Baltimore, arrived here last night. To-day the strangers were shown over the property of the Sinepuxent Beach Company, took a dip in the ocean and witnessed a shooting tournament.' So: arrived the night of Friday 18 August, and spent Saturday the 19th being walked over the company's land. The 1893 pass had the Vice President's visit from the county paper. What these add is the host and therefore the point — the party was not a holiday but a land company's entertainment of the political class, in the year the company was trying to sell the beach — and they put Governor Frank Brown, who would sign Ocean City's charter seven months later, on the sand with them. Senator Blackburn was still at Ocean City a month earlier, in July, when a Delaware yachting party arranged to take him aboard there.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1893 · 1893-08-18
Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson comes to Ocean City as a guest of the Sinepuxent Beach Company, and the train from Claiborne beats every record on the line.
On the afternoon of Friday, August 18, 1893 a chartered steamer, the Governor Thomas, cast off from the foot of South Street, Baltimore at 3:40 with a party of Washingtonians and Baltimoreans "brought to Ocean City as the guests of the Sinepuxent Beach Company." On board were Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson; United States Senators J. S. C. Blackburn of Kentucky and Charles H. Gibson of Maryland; Charles Goldsborough, president of the Sinepuxent Beach Company; Robert Goldsborough Keene; George M. Upshur, ex-Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates; W. Sidney Wilson, mayor of Ocean City; the bankers John Gill and Edwin Warfield; and James Bates, a director of the Beach Company. Governor Frank Brown joined them at the beach. "It was a flying train that came from Claiborne to Ocean City and the time made beat all previous records. The distance is eighty-seven miles, which was covered in a trifle over one hundred minutes," with stops only at Easton and one other point. Stevenson was met by crowds of ladies, escorted to the Atlantic Hotel by R. Goldsborough Keene and into the supper-room by Mayor Wilson, who introduced him to Mrs. Wilson "as the mayoress." On Saturday the 19th the party was shown over the Beach Company's property, took a dip in the ocean and watched a shooting tournament; the special train back to Washington on Sunday night ran the 87 miles in 100 minutes again. Senator Blackburn had spent the whole summer in Worcester County and owned land in Ocean City, "and that gives him the right to vote and hold municipal office. Some of his friends have started a boom for him for mayor of Ocean City in opposition to W. Sidney Wilson."
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway Adlai E. Stevenson Frank Brown William Sydney Wilson Charles Goldsborough Charles Hopper Gibson Robert Goldsborough Keene
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1893 · 1893-11-25
A public school is to be opened at Ocean City, with Miss Virgie Warrington as its teacher.
The Democratic Messenger's beach column of November 25, 1893 carried the whole announcement in two sentences: "A public school is to be opened at Ocean City. Miss Virgie Warrington is to be the teacher." Virgilyn Warrington appears in the same paper in April as the local young woman hosting a visitor from Wilmington; her family ran the town's real-estate office — "W. Warrington, Real Estate Agent, Ocean City, Md." advertised weekly — and William Warrington was secretary of the Sinepuxent Beach Company. A town whose year-round population had been eighty-five at the 1890 census was, in the eighteenth year after its founding, getting its first public schoolroom, and the developer's family supplied the teacher. — 1893 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The prospective notice can be moved forward. The Messenger of 30 December 1893 reports "Much credit is due Mr. and Mrs. Warrington and Miss Virgie for their great interest in the Ocean City school" — so an Ocean City school existed and had a constituency by Christmas 1893, five weeks after the announcement. It does not establish an opening date and it does not establish 'first'; the Christmas cantata in the same paragraph is the Presbyterian Sunday School's, which is a different body and must not be merged with the public school.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Virgie Warrington William Warrington
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1894
The Atlantic Hotel advertises an artesian well and sanitary sewerage in the season of 1894 — two years before the town claims artesian water as its own.
The Washington Evening Star's seaside column carried the Atlantic Hotel's card through the summer of 1894: "ATLANTIC HOTEL, Ocean City, Md., now open for season of 1894. Terms reasonable. All modern conveniences; artesian well; sanitary sewerage; finest bathing on the coast; splendid hunting and fishing; two daily elegant trains each way." That is the earliest attestation this campaign has of either an artesian well or a sewerage system at Ocean City, and it belongs to a private hotel — the Sinepuxent Beach Company's own house — not to the town. When the county paper wrote in June 1896 that "the introduction of artesian well water has removed the one great objection to the place" [fact:1896-artesian-water-at-three-hundred-feet], and when the City Council was reported that September to have "plans in process for a water supply and sewerage system" [fact:1896-water-supply-and-sewerage-planned], the technology had already been on the beach for at least two seasons in the hands of the company that owned it. The same column runs the Isle of Wight House — "SEPTEMBER, CHARMING MONTH AT Ocean City; Bathing, boating, fishing, hunting. Reduced rates; excellent table. At Mrs. A. B. SHOWELL'S Popular Isle of Wight House, Ocean City, Md." — which puts Mrs. Showell's proprietorship a year earlier than the campaign had it.
Atlantic Hotel Mrs. A. B. Showell
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1894 · 1894-07-05
The 1894 season opens with every hotel on the beach open, a six-piece orchestra at the Atlantic, and a thousand new bathing suits at the Eastern Shore House.
A Wicomico News correspondent's visit, reprinted in the Messenger of 7 July 1894: "The hotels are all open and the proprietors anticipate a big season. Mr. Theodore Page opened the Atlantic Hotel Thursday with a full retinue of clerks, servants, and all employes necessary to conduct the house. The music at the Atlantic this season will be a prominent feature. The orchestra is composed of six pieces... Daily concerts are given in the parlors of the hotel in addition to the music for dancing at night in the pavillion. The Seaside Hotel is also under the management of the Atlantic this season." The Isle of Wight Cottages, "conducted by Mrs. L. B. Showell," had been enlarged by a three-storey extension with an ornamental circular front and an ocean view, "and now have nearly forty bed chambers." "A new roof has been put on a portion of Congress Hall." "The old Excursion House is undergoing a thorough overhauling by W. R. Rayne the proprietor. The house has been raised several feet and another story added, and in front a board two-story veranda has been added, which will make a most pleasant place for excursion parties. Mr. E. Hobbs, proprietor of the Eastern Shore Hotel, has enlarged his facilities and says he can accommodate a thousand excursionists at a time this season. Mr. Hobbs has added a photograph gallery to his hotel... He has also added nearly one thousand new bathing suits to the bath house." The excursion season opened the same Thursday with about 300 people from Baltimore, by the steamer Cambridge to Claiborne and thence by rail.
This is the hotel register of Ocean City in the second year of the worst depression of the nineteenth century, and every house on the beach is open. Rehoboth, forty miles north, could not get a hotel open at all that July.
Theodore L. Page
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1894 · 1894-07-28
A northern syndicate led by the American Sugar Refining Company's secretary plans two mammoth hotels and an electric railway along the beach.
Under the headline "Will Boom Ocean City — A Northern Syndicate Now Being Organized," the Democratic Messenger of July 28, 1894 reported that following the deal to reorganise the Baltimore & Eastern Shore Railroad and consolidate it with the Maryland, Eastern Shore and Choptank steamboat companies, "a party of capitalists and real estate men" were working out plans for improvements at Ocean City "which when completed, will cause that place to rival Atlantic City, Cape May and other seaside resorts": two large hotels on Sinepuxent Beach some two miles apart, north and south of "the present collection of hotels and cottages constituting Ocean City proper," connected by an electric railway along the beach, with the whole territory between them lit by electricity. Options had been quietly secured "upon considerable slices of choice territory along the beach." The prime mover named is "Mr. John E. Searles, secretary of the American Sugar Refining Company, who organized the syndicate which is to reorganize the Baltimore & Eastern Shore Railroad," with New York and Boston capital behind it; cheap lumber from the Salisbury mills was to make the hotels buildable "at a surprisingly low cost." None of it was built. The electric railway along the beach had been in the Sinepuxent Beach Company's 1890 prospectus too. — 1895 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: The July 1894 scheme — two mammoth hotels two miles apart, an electric railway along the beach between them, the whole territory lit by electricity, John E. Searles behind it — was not built, but it was not fiction either, and 1895 shows what it actually was: an attempt to buy the Sinepuxent Beach Company. In February 1895 a syndicate 'of which Mr. John E. Searles is said to be the head' offered $120 a share for the company's whole $60,000 issue and the stockholders refused it as too low. The company then doubled its own stock, let a FIVE-mile railway on Baltimore Avenue — and chose STEAM over electricity because the directors found steam cheaper. In May the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway, in which Searles and other New York and Philadelphia capitalists were interested, completed negotiations to buy the property outright. So: one railway rather than two hotels, steam rather than electric, and a railroad rather than a syndicate. The 1894 fact should be read as the first public notice of a takeover bid, not as a building programme.
Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1894 · 1894-08-06
The Atlantic Hotel, run by the keeper of the Senate restaurant, holds three or four hundred guests — and the Sinepuxent Beach Company owns it.
A Baltimore Sun letter datelined "Ocean City, Md., Aug. 6" and reprinted in the Democratic Messenger of August 11, 1894: "Ocean City was never more attractive than this summer... This resort, like wine, improves with age." It names the season's houses — the Atlantic Hotel "under the management of Mr. T. P. Page, who conducts the Senate restaurant at Washington... is the pride of its three or four hundred guests"; "Combined with the Atlantic Hotel is the Seaside Hotel, which has been turned into spacious quarters for the accommodation of visitors"; and "The Isle of Wight House, Congress Hall and the Eastern Shore House, the other leading resorts on the beach, report a prosperous season." Crucially it settles the ownership question left open in 1890: "the plans of the Synepuxent Beach Company, which owns the Atlantic Hotel and a considerable portion of the beach." The letter's real subject is a grievance — the New York, Philadelphia & Norfolk and Pennsylvania roads would not time their Salisbury trains to meet the B&ES, and "the management of the Atlantic Hotel has assurance that if the north-bound express from Norfolk... could be so arranged as to make connection... there would be over 500 visitors at the resort from Richmond alone." — 1894 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: The manager's initials are wrong. The Baltimore Sun letter of 6 August 1894 as reprinted in the Messenger gives 'Mr. T. P. Page'; every 1895 source gives T. L. — the Democratic Messenger of 3 August 1895 spells it out as 'Theo. L. Page', and the Washington Evening Star of 22 June 1895 directs enquiries to 'the Hotel Page, this city, or T. L. Page, Ocean City.' Read as Theodore L. Page, who is already in the registry. The 1894 'T. P.' is an OCR or a compositor's error.
Atlantic Hotel Company Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1894 · 1894-10-27
Mrs. R. T. Shreve of Baltimore buys two ocean-front lots with a hundred feet of frontage from the Sinepuxent Beach Company — the ground the Plimhimmon stands on.
Under the heading "Improvement at Ocean City," the Messenger of 27 October 1894: "Among the most notable improvements to be made at Ocean City for the coming season will be the erection of a large house by Mrs. R. T. Shreve, of East Franklin street, Baltimore. She has lately purchased from the Sinepuxent Beach Company two desirable lots facing on the ocean and having a frontage of 100 feet..." The rest of the paragraph is lost where the OCR crosses into the adjacent column. Eight weeks later the same paper's Ocean City correspondent reported that "Mr. D. J. Adkins is going right ahead on the Plimhimmond Hotel which is going to be a great improvement to Ocean City" (22 December 1894), and a week after that the town's building programme was still being described as work for the coming season.
The campaign has carried 'Rosalie Tilghman Shreve built the Plimhimmon in 1894' on the strength of a secondary source. Here is the transaction underneath it, in the county paper, in October — two lots, a hundred feet of ocean front, bought from the Sinepuxent Beach Company for a house to be ready for the COMING season. Which means 1894 is the year the Plimhimmon was bought and begun, and 1895 is the year it opened.
Rosalie Tilghman Shreve David J. Adkins
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1895
The Atlantic Casino Company is incorporated with $12,000 to run an amusement pavilion beside the Atlantic Hotel — bathhouses below, pool, billiards and a bowling alley above.
Under the heading "Amusement for Ocean City," the Democratic Messenger of June 1, 1895: "The Atlantic Casino Company was incorporated last week by Messrs. James Bates, George R. Gaither, Ralph Robinson and William J. Warrington, of Baltimore, and Albert P. Warrington, of Norfolk, with a capital stock of $12,000. The company is formed for the purpose of conducting an amusement pavilion at Ocean City in connection with the Atlantic Hotel. The building which will be used by the company is a two storied affair, on the [ground] floor of which will be dressing rooms for bathers, while the upper floor will be used as a pool and billiard room and bowling alley." James Bates sat on the Sinepuxent Beach Company's board, so this is the beach company's own hotel getting a commercial amusement annexe. It is the earliest incorporated amusement business this campaign has found at Ocean City.
Atlantic Hotel
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1895
The Atlantic Hotel advertises June 15 to September 15, its "fourth season under present progressive management" — and a six-hour boat trip from Baltimore.
The Washington Evening Star ran the Sinepuxent Beach Company's advertisement all summer: "OCEAN CITY, MARYLAND. THE ATLANTIC HOTEL. June 15–September 15. Fourth season under present progressive management. B. and O. R.R. to Baltimore and two daily boats from Pier 4, Light st., for Ocean City, six-hour trip. Apply HOTEL PAGE, or THEO. L. PAGE, Mgr., Ocean City, Md., or the SINEPUXENT BEACH CO. of Baltimore City, 641 Equitable bldg., Baltimore, Md." Two things fall out of it. The count — a fourth season — puts the beginning of the present management in 1892, the year the Sinepuxent Beach Company bought the house [fact:1892-sinepuxent-beach-company-buys-the-atlantic-hotel]. And the Washington visitor was being sold water, not rail: two boats a day from Light Street and a six-hour run, against the five hours and twenty minutes the railroad's new flyer promised out of Baltimore [fact:1895-ocean-city-flyer].
Atlantic Hotel
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1895
The Sinepuxent Beach Company takes bids for a railway the whole length of the beach — five miles down Baltimore Avenue in March, six miles and electric by June. It was never built.
The Democratic Messenger of March 2, 1895: "The Sinepuxent Beach Company, of Baltimore city, is receiving bids for the construction of the railroad which is to traverse the length of Ocean City, north and south, along Baltimore avenue. The road is to be five miles in length." By June the plan had grown and changed motive power. Wilmington's Evening Journal, datelined Snow Hill, June 24: "The Sinepuxent Beach Company will, in the near future, complete its plans for an electric railway along the beach the entire length of its property, about six miles," for the development of lots "which for the now lie too far from the centre of the town. With that will surely come a large increase in both the resident and summer population and in the value of the property, and consequently a greatly increased travel both by rail and carriage across the bay." The Smyrna Times repeated on July 3 that the company "decided to build an electric railway six miles along the beach." A beach electric line had been promised by the syndicate of 1894 as well [fact:1894-syndicate-plans-to-boom-ocean-city] and had been in the company's charter prospectus since 1890 [fact:1890-sinepuxent-beach-company-incorporated]. No such railway was ever built; the length of the island waited for the bus and the automobile.
Planned in 1895 as a five- or six-mile line the length of the beach — the sources disagree on route, length and whether it was steam or electric.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1895
"Still Booming" — the Sinepuxent Beach Company raises fresh capital in the depths of the depression and re-elects a board of Baltimore, Washington and Snow Hill men.
The Sinepuxent Beach Company, incorporated in December 1890 [fact:1890-sinepuxent-beach-company-incorporated] and by now the owner of the Atlantic Hotel and most of the beach [fact:1892-sinepuxent-beach-company-buys-the-atlantic-hotel], spent 1895 trying to build its way out of the slump. The Democratic Messenger of February 16 reported the annual meeting: an electric road on the ocean front was to be begun as soon as the weather permitted and finished for the coming season, improvements were promised to the hotels the company owned, but "no additional hotel accommodations will be provided by the company for the present." The board was re-elected entire — "Chas. Goldsborough, Gen. John Gill, R. Goldsborough Keene, James Bates, John A. Hambleton, Willard Toulson, of Baltimore; John F. Waggaman, Harvey L. Page, of Washington, and W. Sidney Wilson of Snow Hill." The mayor of Ocean City sat on the board of the company that owned it. On April 6 the paper ran the story again under the headline "STILL BOOMING. Steam Railway, Electric Light Plant and Ice Factory": stockholders were "rapidly subscribing the additional [stock] of the capital stock authorized by the meeting of March 20," the proceeds "to be used in improving the property," the company having concluded "that certain improvements were absolutely necessary to insure the success of the resort."
John F. Waggaman Robert Goldsborough Keene
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1895 · 1895-01-19
The Sinepuxent Beach Company's stock is locked up in John F. Waggaman's option, and the stockholders talk of a receiver.
The Democratic Messenger of 19 January 1895 reports that John F. Waggaman had bought an option on a majority of the Sinepuxent Beach Company's stock, paying as much as $110 a share for some of it, and had sold it on to various parties while retaining the voting privilege on every share. The stock called in under a pending offer had been deposited with the Mercantile Trust Company of Baltimore, which was to arrange a transfer to Philadelphia buyers, and there the transaction stuck. Waggaman, the paper says, did not himself own a share. The Philadelphia party had visited the beach and 'come to the conclusion that its possibilities are good'; the bulk of the stockholders, some of whom lived at Ocean City, were 'much worried over Mr. Waggaman's delay,' and several said the matter might be taken to court, a receiver appointed, and the property sold despite him. The same paragraph dates the company's incorporation to 1890.
John F. Waggaman
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1895 · 1895-02-07
Sinepuxent Beach stockholders refuse a syndicate's $72,000 for the whole of Ocean City's beach — $120 a share, and 'the price is too low.'
The directors met on Monday 4 February 1895 at the company's office in the Equitable Building, Baltimore — every director present except W. Sidney Wilson — and considered two propositions: selling the company outright, or increasing the capital stock to fund improvements at Ocean City. They acted on neither and referred both to the stockholders. At the annual meeting on Thursday 7 February, with 450 of the 600 shares represented, W. Sidney Wilson of Snow Hill in the chair and W. J. Warrington secretary, the stockholders considered an offer from a syndicate 'of which Mr. John E. Searles is said to be the head' to buy the entire $60,000 issue at $120 a share — $72,000 for control of the property — and refused it, declaring the price too low. The company's capital at that date was 600 shares of $100 par.
William Sydney Wilson
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1895 · 1895-03-23
Having refused to sell, the beach company doubles its own stock and lets a five-mile railway the length of Ocean City on Baltimore Avenue — by steam, because the directors found steam cheaper than electricity.
The Messenger of 2 March 1895 reported the Sinepuxent Beach Company 'receiving bids for the construction of the railroad which is to traverse the length of Ocean City, north and south, along Baltimore avenue,' five miles long, its northern terminus on the beach opposite Isle of Wight Bay and its southern terminus 'a beautiful high bluff' where a spacious pavilion for picnic parties was intended. On 23 March the paper printed the decisions: the additional stock unsubscribed at the end of the subscription period would go into the company's treasury; the proceeds were to improve the Ocean City property, 'the most important of these improvements' being the five-mile Baltimore Avenue railway; a committee of John F. Waggaman, Robert G. Keene and Charles Goldsborough was appointed to contract for the work; and 'the road will be operated by steam as the directors concluded this to be cheaper than electricity.' It was to be finished by 15 June, when the resort opened. James Bates and W. J. Warrington of Berlin were named a committee to provide a new steam laundry and an ice-making machine, and 'additional dynamos for supplying electricity to light the town' were to be provided. On 6 April the paper ran the story again under the heading 'STILL BOOMING — Steam Railway, Electric Light Plant and Ice Factory,' with the stockholders 'rapidly subscribing the additional $60,000 of the capital stock.'
John F. Waggaman Robert Goldsborough Keene Charles Goldsborough
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1895 · 1895-04-20
Charles Quartly of Baltimore spends a week photographing beach scenes for a book the Sinepuxent Beach Company means to publish — including a picture of the life-saving men drilling.
The Messenger's Berlin column of 20 April 1895: 'Mr. Charles Quartly, of Baltimore, was here last week making photographs of beach scenes for a book to be published by the Sinepuxent Beach Co. Mr. Quartly made a picture of the life saving men in the act of drilling.' This is the first commissioned photographic campaign at Ocean City the project has found, it is tied to a named photographer, a named client and an intended publication, and it names its own most interesting plate. If the company's promotional book survives anywhere — it would have been printed in 1895 or 1896, in Baltimore, to sell the beach and its new railway — it is very likely the earliest body of Ocean City photographs in existence.
United States Life-Saving Service
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1895 · 1895-05-18
In May the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway completes negotiations to buy the Sinepuxent Beach Company outright — the beach and the railroad in one hand.
A special to the Philadelphia Times from Baltimore, reprinted by the Democratic Messenger on 18 May 1895 under 'Railroad Improvements,' reports that 'the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway, in which John E. Searles and other New York and Philadelphia capitalists are interested, has completed negotiations for the purchase of the property of the Sinepuxent Beach Company, at Ocean City, Md.' The property is described as the five-mile stretch of ocean beach separated from the Worcester mainland by Sinepuxent Bay, on which Ocean City stands. Charles Goldsborough is named as the company's president; the account notes that the capital stock of $60,000 'was recently doubled' and that plans had been prepared for a railway from a point opposite the Isle of Wight on the north to a picturesque bluff five miles south, with pavilions and amusement grounds, which it was expected would connect with the B.C.&A.'s tracks — and that it was overtures to the railway about building that road which began the negotiations. Three months after refusing a syndicate's $72,000, the company sold to the railroad the syndicate was reorganising. — 1896 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: The May 1895 report that the B.C.&A. 'has completed negotiations for the purchase of the property of the Sinepuxent Beach Company' did not describe a completed sale, and the campaign should stop reading it as one. Twelve months later the Ocean City election dispatch of 4 May 1896 states the opposite in terms: 'It has been known for some time past that the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway Company have wanted to get control of Ocean City, but were unable to complete the deal, as certain influences which had charge of the property were not in accord with the proposed sale, and it was largely for this purpose that the fight to-day was so hot.' Mr. Searles, now named as president of the B.C.&A., 'is eager to get control of the beach.' Seven months after that, in December 1896, the Beach Company was still the owner when it admitted insolvency, and the paper could still only report that 'the B. C. & A. Ry. Co. will buy the property.' The 1895 item should be re-cast as a reported agreement that failed to close, not a change of ownership — which also means the 1895 pass's premise that 'the railroad bought the beach' is unsupported, and everything downstream of it needs re-reading.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway Charles Goldsborough
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1895 · 1895-06-22
The Atlantic Hotel advertised as far west as Wheeling in 1895, and its advertisement gives the journey, the manager and the owner: six hours from Baltimore, Theo. L. Page, and the Sinepuxent Beach Company at 641 Equitable Building.
A display advertisement running through June and July 1895 in the Wheeling Register, four hundred miles inland: 'THE ATLANTIC HOTEL... [for the] season of 1895. All modern conveniences and improvements. Take B. & O. or Penna. R. R. to Baltimore, thence from Pier 4, Light St. by boat and train 6 hours to Ocean City. Apply to Theo. L. Page, Mgr., Ocean City, Md., or the Sinepuxent Beach Co. of Baltimore City, 641 Equitable Bldg., Baltimore, Md.' Three useful things fall out of it. The house was six hours from Baltimore by the steamer-and-train route in 1895. Its manager and its owner are given as alternative addresses, which states in the plainest possible form what the 1894 Baltimore Sun letter only implied — the Sinepuxent Beach Company owned the Atlantic Hotel. And the company's own office is 641 Equitable Building, Baltimore, which is where its directors met in February to consider selling the beach.
Atlantic Hotel Company Theodore L. Page
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1895 · 1895-07-13
Ocean City's three policemen are named in print for the first time — Albert Carey, Lemuel Mumford and William Purnell — wearing badges inscribed "Ocean City, Md."
The Democratic Messenger of July 13, 1895 carries the item in its Ocean City notes: "[The policemen] are in the employ of Ocean City and not of the company. They are this year supplied with badges inscribed Ocean City, Md. The members of the police are Albert Carey, Lemuel Mumford and William Purnell." Three men is exactly the establishment the 1894 charter allowed: new section 156 A let the mayor, with the council's advice, appoint up to three regular policemen and as many specials as he thought necessary [fact:1894-charter-empowers-board-walks-and-police]. The distinction the paper draws — town men, not company men — is the point of the paragraph: the Sinepuxent Beach Company owned the beach, the Atlantic Hotel and most of the lots, and 1895 is the year the town put its own name on the badge. It also very likely identifies the "Policeman Carey" who arrested the two boys who robbed the bridge keeper's till in July 1894 [fact:1894-bridge-store-robbery-first-policeman].
The Commissioners of Ocean City Albert Carey Francis Henry Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1896
$15 a week and upwards at the Atlantic Hotel in the summer of 1896 — advertised all season in Washington by the Sinepuxent Beach Company itself, five months before it told a court it was insolvent.
A standing advertisement in the Washington Evening Star's resort column from mid-June 1896: "THE ATLANTIC HOTEL, OCEAN CITY, MD. Now open; renovated and with all modern improvements; rates $15 per week and upwards. Address SINEPUXENT BEACH CO., Owner, 641 Equitable building, Baltimore; or THEO. L. PAGE, Ocean City, Md., after July 1." From mid-July the copy is expanded and adds the steamer connection — "no malaria; no mosquitoes; yachting and fishing superb; ocean bathing unsurpassed. Leave pier, 11 Light street, Baltimore, daily, 7 a.m., 4:10 p.m., except Saturday, 6:30 a.m., 2 p.m. Sunday, 7 a.m., five and a half hour trip" — and identifies the manager: "THEO. L. PAGE (manager of U. S. Senate cafe), Ocean City, Md."
Atlantic Hotel
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1896 · 1896-05-04
A year after the sale was reported "completed," the B.C.&A. still cannot buy the Sinepuxent Beach Company — and John E. Searles, its president, is the reason the town election was fought.
The 4 May 1896 election dispatch explains why the Beach Company's directors cared so much about a municipal ballot: "It has been known for some time past that the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway Company have wanted to get control of Ocean City, but were unable to complete the deal, as certain influences which had charge of the property were not in accord with the proposed sale, and it was largely for this purpose that the fight to-day was so hot. There is now a good prospect that the people controlling the Beach Company and the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Company will soon come to terms whereby there will be a consolidation of the two interests. The popularity of Ocean City and the successful seasons have, it is said, greatly impressed Mr. Searles, president of the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Company, who is eager to get control of the beach." A near adviser of Searles is quoted promising that if the sale went through he "will expend large sums of money to make this resort the leading one of all seaside places," and noting that Searles, "in charge of Rehoboth Beach when the new railroad is completed, will be making bids for Maryland support." John Waggaman answered for the company that "Ocean City will be able to compete with any of the seaside resorts." This is the same John E. Searles, secretary of the American Sugar Refining Company, whose syndicate was reported in July 1894 as about to "boom Ocean City" [fact:1894-syndicate-plans-to-boom-ocean-city]: by 1894 he was behind the consolidation that formed the B.C.&A. [fact:1894-bca-formed-by-consolidation-under-searles], and by 1896 he was its president and still had not got the beach.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway John F. Waggaman
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1896 · 1896-05-04
Ocean City's first contested election is "a fight between the people of the south end against the members of the Sinepuxent Beach Company" — and the losing ticket is led by Edward Hobbs and Daniel Trimper.
The dispatch of 4 May 1896 printed in the Democratic Messenger of 9 May gives what the election result alone does not. "There were two tickets in the field and the contest was hot throughout. The opposition ticket was led by Messrs. Edward Hobbs, Daniel Trimper and others, while Messrs. John Waggaman and others looked after the interest of the candidates on the successful ticket. The polls were opened at 11 o'clock and closed at 2." And plainly: "The campaign started some weeks ago and was a fight between what is known as the people of the south end of Ocean City against the members of the Sinepuxent Beach Company." Non-residents who owned property could vote, which "brought a large influx of visitors from all parts of the State as well as from Washington, D. C. These interested parties stood around the polls all day and canvassed for votes for their ticket" — including "Mr. A. Marcus, secretary of the Northern Pacific Railroad," who "came to vote and after casting his ballot left on a special train for New York." The dispatch adds that the majority of the Beach Company's stock was held in Washington, and that its Washington stockholders and lot owners, "disbarred from voting at elections" in the District, "were here in full force today and seemed to enjoy the privilege of casting ballots in a free country." This is the earliest documented factional politics in Ocean City, and it names two men the campaign had placed in the town's government only much later: Edward Hobbs, of the Eastern Shore House, and Daniel Trimper.
Daniel Trimper, Sr.John F. Waggaman George M. Upshur
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1896 · 1896-05-04
Ocean City elects George M. Upshur of Baltimore mayor, with the first full council slate on record.
A dispatch datelined "Ocean City, Md., May 4" and carried by the Snow Hill Democratic Messenger of May 9 under the head "OCEAN CITY ELECTION — Lot Owners from Far and Near Vote" reports that at "the biennial election for municipal offices for Ocean City today the following ticket was elected: Mayor — George M. Upshur, of Baltimore; City Council — Charles Goldsborough, of Baltimore, David J. Adkins, of Berlin, Worcester county, and Albert C. Carey, of Ocean City." Two tickets were in the field "and the contest was hot throughout": the opposition was "led by Messrs. Edward Hobbs, Daniel Trimper and others, while Messrs. John Waggaman and others looked after the interest of the candidates on the successful ticket." The polls opened at 11 and closed at 2, and "during this time every voter that could be reached was secured for one side or the other." The paper describes the fight as "between what is known as the people of the south e[nd]" and the other interest, and gives the reason it mattered: "the members of the Sinepuxent Beach Company were particularly active. It has been known for some time past that the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway Company have wanted to get control of Ocean City, but were unable to complete the deal, as certain influences which had charge of the property were not in accord with the proposed sale." The item predicts "a consolidation of the two interests." This is the first Ocean City election in which this campaign has recovered the mayor AND all three councilmen — the standing gap named at the top of the 1894 pass's still-open list. Three of the four winners were non-residents voting under the charter's real-estate franchise; only Albert C. Carey lived in the town. — 1896 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Confirmed, and the reason for the contest is now in the record. The same dispatch continues past the result: the campaign 'was a fight between what is known as the people of the south end of Ocean City against the members of the Sinepuxent Beach Company'; the opposition ticket 'was led by Messrs. Edward Hobbs, Daniel Trimper and others,' the winners' interest by 'Messrs. John Waggaman and others'; the polls opened at eleven and closed at two; the Beach Company's directors were 'particularly active' because the B.C.&A. was trying to buy the beach and could not close the deal. The Washington stockholders who held the majority of the company's stock came down in force and 'seemed to enjoy the privilege of casting ballots in a free country,' being disfranchised at home; A. Marcus, secretary of the Northern Pacific Railroad, voted and left on a special train for New York.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway David J. Adkins Charles Goldsborough William Sydney Wilson
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1896 · 1896-05-18
Seventy miles an hour on the beach: the May 1896 gale is measured by three Delaware papers, and their account puts pedestrians on Ocean City's "board walks" five months before the ocean took them.
The dispatch, datelined Ocean City, Md. and carried by the Wilmington Evening Journal of 20 May 1896 under the head "CYCLONE AT OCEAN CITY — Terrific Wind Storm on the Coast of Worcester County", by the Delaware Gazette and State Journal of 21 May and by the Milford Chronicle of 22 May: "Monday evening a terrific storm prevailed on the coast of Worcester county. The wind at Ocean City, Md., was blowing at the rate of seventy miles an hour. The rain fell in torrents, but before the downpour came the sand was driven in perfect clouds before the gale, and it was so cutting that it was impossible for pedestrians to face it ON THE BOARD WALKS. With nearly every very strong wind there is more or less drifting of the fine sand on this beautiful beach, but it is very rare that such a sandstorm is experienced as that which preceded the rain at Ocean City last evening." It then gives the damage the Messenger also carried three days later: Contractor Adkins's cottage for Dr. Baggett of Washington blown off its foundation, the brick smokestack of the Sinepuxent Beach Company's electric light plant prostrated, the west end of the Seabright Hotel stove in, pleasure boats in Sinepuxent bay battered to pieces, and every telegraph wire down, Western Union's and the government life-saving station's both. Small houses were moved off their foundations at Berlin, six miles inland. The drought broke that night.
The sentence the campaign has been hunting for four years is in a weather dispatch nobody thought to read: in May 1896 Ocean City had board walks, plural, that people walked on in ordinary weather, and a wind that made walking on them impossible.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1896 · 1896-05-18
A seventy-mile gale drives sand so hard that no one can face it on the board walks, stoves in the Seabright Hotel and topples the Beach Company's electric-light smokestack.
The Ocean City letter of 23 May 1896 describes the May gale from inside the town: "Monday evening a terrific storm played havoc here for about a half hour. The wind blew at the rate of seventy miles an hour. The rain fell in torrents, but before the downpour came, the sand was driven in perfect clouds before the gale, and was so cutting that it was impossible for pedestrians to face it on the board walks. With nearly every very strong wind there is more or less drifting of the fine sand on this beautiful beach, but it is very rare that such a sand storm is experienced as that which preceded the rain of last Monday. The violence of the wind demolished the cottage which Contractor Adkins is building for Dr. Baggett, of Washington, D. C. The cottage was blown down from its foundation. The brick smokestack of the electric-light plant belonging to the Sinepuxent Beach Company was prostrated. The west end of the Seabright Hotel was stove in by the terrific force of the gale, while a number of pleasure boats moored in Sinepuxent bay were battered to pieces. All the telegraph wires are down, both those of the Western Union Line and of the government life-saving station. The fury of the gale was felt far inland. Some small houses at Berlin, six miles from the coast, were moved on their foundations, but no serious damage was done." Two things this adds to the record: the Sinepuxent Beach Company was running an electric-light plant with a brick smokestack at Ocean City by May 1896, and the government life-saving station had its own telegraph line, separate from Western Union.
United States Life-Saving Service David J. Adkins
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1896 · 1896-05-19
A May gale blows down a cottage under construction, topples the Sinepuxent Beach Company's electric-light smokestack and stoves in the Seabright Hotel.
"The violence of the wind demolished the cottage which Contractor Adkins is building for Dr. Baggett, of Washington, D. C. The cottage was blown down from its foundation. The brick smokestack of the electric-light plant belonging to the Sinepuxent Beach Company was prostrated. The west end of the Seabright Hotel was stove in by the terrific force of the gale, while a number of pleasure boats moored in Sinepuxent bay were battered to pieces. All the telegraph wires are down, both those of the Western Union Line and of the government life-saving station. The fury of the gale was felt far inland. Some small houses at Berlin, six miles from the coast, were moved on their foundations, but no serious damage was done." The item establishes that the Sinepuxent Beach Company was running its own electric-light plant on the beach in 1896, four years after the Atlantic Hotel was first lit by electricity.
United States Life-Saving Service David J. Adkins
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1896 · 1896-06-06
Ocean City draws pure water from three hundred feet down — "the one great objection to the place" removed.
The Democratic Messenger's Ocean City column of 6 June 1896, surveying the town at the opening of the season, sets out what nature had given the place and what engineering had just added: "The intervention of Sinepuxent bay, cutting the town off from the marshes, which are so great a disadvantage to other resorts, the comparative freedom from mosquitoes and exemption from malaria are of incalculable benefit. The introduction of artesian well water, has removed the one great objection to the place. Pure water now is drawn from a depth of three hundred feet." This is the earliest statement this campaign has of where Ocean City's drinking water came from and how deep the wells were. The technique was not new to the beach — the Atlantic Hotel was already advertising an artesian well and sanitary sewerage in the Washington Evening Star in the season of 1894 [fact:1894-atlantic-hotel-artesian-well-and-sewerage] — but by 1896 the county paper describes it as the town's condition rather than one hotel's amenity.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1896 · 1896-09-12
"The City Council has plans in process for a water supply and sewerage system" — Ocean City's first municipal utilities scheme, promised for the next season.
In the same 12 September 1896 column that records the new Board of Health, the Messenger reports: "The City Council ha[s] plan[s] in process for a water supply and sewerage system which will likely be put in operation by next season." Twelve weeks later the same scheme reappears from the other side of the transaction: when the Sinepuxent Beach Company admitted insolvency in December, the paper listed among the "proposed enterprises" a purchaser would be expected to continue "the steel bridge, to be projected 600 feet into the ocean, a water supply and sewerage system" [fact:1896-sinepuxent-beach-company-insolvent]. So it is not clear from the record whether the works were the town's project, the company's, or a project the town had inherited in plan from a company that was about to fail. Nothing read for 1896 shows either being built.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1896 · 1896-11-28
The Sinepuxent Beach Company admits it is insolvent and its Ocean City property goes into receivers' hands.
The Democratic Messenger of December 5, 1896, under "Sinepuxent Beach Co. — Their Property at Ocean City in the Hands of Receivers": "The Sinepuxent Beach Company, which was formed for the purpose of developing and improving Ocean City, admits that it is insolvent in an answer, filed Saturday in the Circuit Court in Baltimore, to a suit brought by William H. Buckler for the appointment of receivers for the company. It has accomplished much that it started out to do. Thousands of dollars have been spent, and Ocean City has grown to be a place of much importance under this company. It has been known for a year or two however that the company was going behind, and the past season..." The failure closes the arc that began with the company's incorporation in December 1890 and its purchase of the Atlantic Hotel: six years of platting, lot-selling, an electric-light plant and a hotel, ending in a Baltimore equity court. It also explains the May election: the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway had been trying to buy control of Ocean City from a company that was already going behind. — 1896 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Confirmed and completed. The 1896 pass recorded this column as running off mid-sentence in the Chronicling America ALTO; the Worcester County Library portal's scan of the same 5 December 1896 issue carries it whole. The full particulars: William H. Buckler held the company's demand note for $750 dated 9 November 1896, which the company said it could not pay; there was a mortgage of $7,500 on the hotel and a second mortgage of $50,000 on the other property; the floating debt was $20,000, most of it due and all payable within ten days; suits were threatened by creditors. The company answered admitting the bill and asked that John M. Littig and Samuel Maddux be appointed receivers, under a resolution passed by the directors on Friday 4 December at a meeting attended by Charles C. Goldsborough (president), Waggaman, Keene, Reinhart, Bates, Maddox and Thomson. The court appointed Fielder C. Slingluff and Samuel Maddox. The capital stock is given as $100,000. The paper's own verdict is worth keeping: 'It has been known for a year or two however that the company was going behind, and the past season, as was predicted, wound it up.' — 1896 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: THE RECEIVERSHIP HAS A DATE. The Saint Mary's Beacon of 10 December 1896: "The Sinepuxent Beach Company, which was formed to develop and improve Ocean City, Md., went into the hands of receivers MONDAY" — Monday 7 December 1896. The existing fact records only the company's admission of insolvency in its answer filed on a Saturday in late November; the receivers were actually appointed nine or ten days later. The Delaware Gazette and State Journal of 3 December carried the insolvency answer independently of the Messenger, so that half of the story is now two-source.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1896 · 1896-12-05
With the Beach Company in receivership, the county paper reports the B.C.&A. will buy the property — and lists what the buyer is expected to finish: a 600-foot pier, a water supply and a sewerage system.
The Democratic Messenger of 5 December 1896, reporting the Sinepuxent Beach Company's admission of insolvency, closes with the transfer everyone had been waiting two years for: "It is reported that the B[.] C. & A. Ry. Co. will buy the property and if it should the travelling facilities, as a matter of course, will be very much improved, as well as the proposed enterprises continued, including the steel bridge, to be projected 600 feet into the ocean, a water supply and sewerage system." The paper's own view of the failure is that it was a good thing: the property "will now pass into the hands of people who are able to continue the improvements and enterprises proposed by this enterprising company." (The "steel bridge" is the paper's slip for the steel pier of the Steel Pier and Railway Company [fact:1896-steel-pier-and-railway-company-incorporated].) Note that this is still reported, not done: seven months after the town election was fought over the same sale, the railway was still only expected to buy.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1896 · 1896-12-12
A life-saving surfman buys the Synepuxent House and its livery stable for $2,470, and thirty-six Taber estate lots are sold off the bay side.
Two sales bracket the year's property record. In August the Ocean City column reported: "A sale of Ocean City lots took place. Thirty-six lots, lying on the bay side of the beach and belonging to the estate of Stephen Taber, deceased — George W. Purnell and George M. Upshur, trustees — were all readily disposed of at satisfactory prices. John Walter Smith, of Snow Hill, bought ten of the lots and James W. Owens bought several. The rest were purchased by residents of Ocean City or vicinity." The newly elected mayor was one of the trustees selling; the state senator was the largest buyer. In December, out of the estate of Isaac S. Jones, "Mr. William Taylor, of Ocean City Life Saving Station, purchased the Sinepuxent House and lot, also the livery stable and lot, each 40x80 feet, at Ocean City of Calvin B. Taylor at public sale last Saturday. He paid $2470 for the two lots, which was considered a good price." A surfman buying a hotel is the clearest single measure of what beach property was worth, and to whom, in 1896. Smaller transfers that year run from $28 for a tax-sale lot to $900 for lot No. 17 with improvements; Sarah Ann Lynch paid $330 in August for lot No. 6 in Block 15 that William W. Bigger had bought from the Sinepuxent Beach Company for $100 in February. — 1896 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Confirmed, with the December buyer identified by occupation. The Messenger of 19 December 1896: 'Mr. William Taylor, of Ocean City Life Saving Station, purchased the Sinepuxent House and lot, also the livery stable and lot, each 40x80 feet, at Ocean City of Calvin B. Taylor at public sale last Saturday. He paid $2470 for the two lots, which was considered a good price.' The purchaser was a serving surfman of the Ocean City station buying a hotel and a livery stable — which is a fact about what federal surfmen's pay and standing could buy on this beach, and it belongs to the life-saving thread as much as to the property record. He or his namesake would offer the same Sinepuxent House at auction in 1908.
Stephen Taber George W. Purnell John Walter Smith
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1897 · 1897-05-01
John F. Waggaman buys the Sinepuxent Beach Company's entire Ocean City estate for $65,000 — hotel, bath houses, electric light plant, artesian well, nine miles of ocean front.
The single transaction the campaign has hunted since 1896, with a buyer, a seller, a date and a price. The Sinepuxent Beach Company told a Baltimore court it was insolvent in November 1896; in February 1897 "the receivers of the Sinepuxent Beach Company visited Ocean City to make an inspection of the property"; in March the state-news columns reported it "thought that Mr. John F. Waggaman, of Washington, D. C., and a syndicate will buy the Ocean City property of the Sinepuxent Beach Company"; and on 1 May 1897 the Cecil Whig printed the result: "A Washington capitalist has purchased for $65,000 all the property of the Sinepuxent Beach Company, at Ocean City, Worcester county, Maryland, including the Atlantic Hotel, with its furniture and equipments, the ladies' bath houses, electric light plant, artesian well, nine miles of ocean front, embracing several thousand building lots and two farms of 700 acres each on the mainland. … John F. Waggaman, the purchaser, indicates that a new stock company will be formed for the purpose of carrying on the business and reviving the fortunes of this old-time interesting resort." By 5 June the Washington Evening Star was running "Improvements at Ocean City": Waggaman "has recently purchased Ocean City, on the eastern shore of Maryland", H. P. Burney of the Arlington Hotel would run the Atlantic that summer and "the general management of the property is in the hands of Mr. A. F. Childs." The 1898 pass had the sale second-hand, from a March 1898 sentence naming no price; this is the contemporary report, and the $65,000 is the number nobody had. The promised new stock company is not attested anywhere afterwards — Waggaman held the plat in his own name.
Ocean City did not change hands at a courthouse door. It changed hands for sixty-five thousand dollars, and the inventory reads like a deed to a whole town: a hotel, the bath houses, the electric plant, the well, the beach and two farms.
Atlantic Hotel John F. Waggaman
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1897 · 1897-07-30
"Ocean City Improvements": six new cottages, and the Plimhimmon adds a casino with a ballroom, a stage, a billiard room and a bowling alley.
A letter datelined Ocean City, Md., July 30, printed in the Wilmington Evening Journal under the head OCEAN CITY IMPROVEMENTS: "There are some changes in Ocean City this season: Six new cottages have been built, and the Plimhimmon has added its neat little casino, which contains a ballroom and stage, with billiard room and bowling alley. Otherwise, the town is the same as last year. The sale of the beach company's property has had no effect so far one way or another. The season, as at all seaside resorts, has been dull, but is now improving. The Atlantic Hotel is well filled and the Plimhimmon has nearly all its rooms taken. The temperature here since the storm has [been moderated by a] long sea breeze, so that we have not known such a thing as a hot, sultry day. What the place needs more than anything else is quicker access."
The Plimhimmon was two and a half years old and already had a ballroom, a stage, billiards and a bowling alley bolted onto it. Also, buried in the middle of a booster's letter: the beach company's property had been sold — and nobody could tell the difference.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1897 · 1897-09-08
William Warrington, Sr., manager of the Atlantic Hotel, dies suddenly in his room — weeks after a sunstroke taken while laying out street and lot lines.
"SUDDEN DEATH AT OCEAN CITY. Ocean City, Md., Sept. 9. — All Ocean City was startled about 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon by the announcement of the sudden death of William Warrington, Sr., manager of the Atlantic Hotel, who had been sick for nearly two [weeks] from the effects of a slight sunstroke [taken] while out with an engineer locating some street and lot lines. Mr. Warrington seemingly enjoyed dinner with his family about 2 o'clock. Then he went to his room, saying that he would lie down for a while. About 4 o'clock his son, William, had occasion to go to the room and found it locked... The room was opened, however, by the son, who was startled by seeing his father stretched upon the bed lifeless. Dr. Paul Jones examined the remains, pronouncing death from paralysis of the heart... Every one here seemed to sadly feel the shock, for Mr. Warrington was a man beloved."
He caught the sun surveying streets that had not been built yet, for a beach company that owned the hotel he ran. Ocean City in 1897 was still small enough that the man who managed the Atlantic also walked the lot lines.
William Warrington
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1897 · 1897-10-26
"The worst in the memory of the oldest inhabitant" — an October gale runs four feet of surf across the beach and washes away the board walk south of Trimper's.
Under the headline "THE TERRIFIC GALE — Havoc Wrought at Ocean City and Other Places on the Coast," the Wilmington Evening Journal printed a dispatch datelined "OCEAN CITY, Md., Oct. 26": "The storm of the last two days was the worst in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. The wind attained the proportions of a hurricane, and the surf ran four feet deep across the beach into Sinepuxent bay. The board walk south from Trimper's hotel is entirely washed away for some distance, and north from the same point it is broken in places. The large porches of Congress hall, Trimper's, the Eastern Shore hotel, Cropper's pavilion, Atlantic hotel and Meyer cottage are completely wrecked. The immense fishpound of the Ocean City Fishing company was carried out to sea. The Cambridge hotel was nearly wrecked. A large two-masted schooner was sunk in the bay after being driven against the drawbridge. The damage will reach thousands of dollars." The Delaware Gazette of Oct 28 adds detail from an Oct 25 dispatch: "Considerable damage has been done to property along the ocean front, the boardwalk south of the life-saving station [is in] such condition that it will have to be torn up. A cottage at the south end of the town, known as Mordecai Cottage and owned by George L. Harrison of Baltimore, [is a total] wreck. The building and furniture were valued [at] $2,000. Cropper's large pavilion [blown] down. The porch in front of Payne's Hotel is damaged. One end of the Atlantic Casino porch is carried [away]; Trimper's porch is torn away, and Hobbs' pavilion is slightly damaged. Schaeffer's bakery is damaged about $200. The pound of the Ocean City Fishing Co. is torn up. The north end of the town sustained little damage." The Wilmington Sun of Oct 26 reported the storm in the same terms but carried a wilder second-hand version out of Berlin — see conflicts. — 1897 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [reviewed]: Adds the two fullest accounts of the 25–26 October gale, neither of them in the record before. (1) A separate staff dispatch in the New York Journal and Advertiser of 27 October, datelined Ocean City, Md., Oct. 26, which is the only source that gives the walk's full extent: "It was severest on the southern point below Congress Hall, where the ocean and bay nearly meet. Below the hall are three cottages, Mr. Mordecai's, of Baltimore; William Taber's and Granville B. Stokes's. Mordecai's was torn to pieces … Going northward from here the board walk is completely torn away until the Atlantic Hotel is reached. The only damage to Congress Hall and the Atlantic Hotel was that their front porches were wrecked." The same dispatch names the wreck — "The schooner Ethel Dukes, owned by William Rayne, is wrecked near the bridge, her masts hanging over it" — and records that "the electric light poles and wires from the Atlantic Hotel southward are all torn away and washed out by the heavy seas", which is the earliest evidence this campaign holds of an electric distribution network in the streets of Ocean City. (2) The Baltimore American's dispatch of 25 October, reprinted in at least ten papers from Richmond to St. Paul, carries a damage inventory the Wilmington version omits: "The large porches of Congress Hall, Trimper's, the Eastern Shore Hotel, Cropper's pavilion, Atlantic Hotel and Meyer cottage are completely wrecked. The immense fish pound of the Ocean City Fishing Company was carried out to sea. The Cambridge Hotel was nearly wrecked. A large two-masted schooner was sunk in the bay after being driven against the draw bridge." A third witness, the Wilmington Evening Journal of 25 October, reports the first night: "The surf was running across the beach at Ocean City into Sinepuxent bay last night. No damage has been done excepting to railroad tracks and boardwalks." Plural, the night before the walk went.
Eight years after the 1889 hurricane and four after the 1893 storms, the sea came over the island again — and this time the thing it broke was the board walk. Three papers name it, one of them calls it new, and one of them fixes it on the map: south from Trimper's, gone; north from Trimper's, broken.
Gilbert Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1898
The Sinepuxent Beach Company's collapse is settled: the Atlantic Hotel and the unsold building lots are John F. Waggaman's, sold to him out of the wreck in 1897.
The Wilmington Evening Journal's Ocean City dispatch of 4 March 1898: 'Word comes to us here to-day that the Atlantic Hotel will be managed this year by Theodore L. Page, who was in charge of the hotel for several seasons prior to the sale by the Sinepuxent Beach Company last year to John F. Waggaman, of Washington.' Waggaman's own advertising through the 1898 season confirms it and shows the scope of what he took: the Washington Evening Star carried, from late May, 'OCEAN CITY, MD. ATLANTIC HOTEL, directly on the beach. Open all the year. Modern improvements. 300 rooms. Finest bathing, boating and fishing, both bay and deep sea... THEO. L. PAGE, Mgr. BUILDING LOTS for sale, low. Easy terms. Own your own seaside cottage. Apply to JOHN F. WAGGAMAN, 700 14th St., Washington, D. C.' Waggaman's Washington office also sold the excursion tickets, and on Saturday 25 June 1898 he held 'a grand and unreserved sale of LOTS at auction' at Ocean City; a March auction of Ocean City building lots had already been held at Sloan's, 1407 G Street, Washington. So the hotel, the resort's promotion and the unsold plat all passed from a Baltimore development company that went into receivership in November 1896 to one Washington real-estate man, who ran them as a single business.
The receivership question that has hung over this decade has a plain answer: the town was bought by a Washington realtor, and for the next several years Ocean City was, commercially, an annex of an office at 700 14th Street NW.
Atlantic Hotel Company John F. Waggaman Theodore L. Page
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1899
The answer to the Sinepuxent Beach Company's collapse: by 1899 Col. John Floyd Waggaman of Washington owns the Atlantic Hotel, the Colonial, Convention Hall and much of Ocean City — and he sells its lots from an office on 14th Street.
The 1896 receivership of the Sinepuxent Beach Company left open who ended up with the Atlantic Hotel and the unsold plat. The 1899 record answers it, and the answer is not the railway. The Wilmington Evening Journal of 27 July 1899 wrote that "Ocean City has improved very much within the past few years, since so much of the property passed into the hands of Colonel John Floyd Waggaman, of Washington, who owns the Atlantic Hotel, and is an enterprising business man, experienced in handling large enterprises" — adding that Washington people now made up a large share of both cottagers and transient guests. The Evening Star's standing summer advertisement for "The Atlantic Hotel, Ocean City, Maryland" gave the address for lots, cottages and terms as "JOHN F. WAGGAMAN, 700 14th st., Washington, D. C." The Salisbury Courier called him "proprietor of the Atlantic Hotel" and owner of "the new Convention Hall … seating about one thousand." He also owned the Colonial, run for him by W. J. Warrington. The Worcester County land records printed monthly in the Democratic Messenger show Ocean City lots being conveyed out of his hands, not the company's: lot 447 in block 12 north for $385, lots 7 and 8 in block 67 south for $110, lot 9 in block 7 for $105. And on 12 April 1899 "choice Ocean City lots" were sold at auction at Sloan's, 1407 G Street, Washington — the town's building lots being retailed four hours away by rail. — 1899 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: A fifth register, and a name variant worth logging. The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer carried the Atlantic Hotel's display advertisement over Waggaman's Washington address through the summer of 1899, and the Richmond Dispatch carried it from June to mid-July — so his advertising reach in 1899 runs from Norfolk to the Ohio river. Two Maryland papers name him differently on the same occasion: the Prince George's Enquirer of 23 June calls him "Mr. John F. Waggaman, of Washington, who has large interests at this attractive watering place", while the Saint Mary's Beacon of 6 July, describing the same editors' excursion, calls him "Col. John LLOYD Waggaman, of Washington." Given that the campaign has already had to correct Thomas E. to John Floyd, the Lloyd variant should be recorded and not followed.
Ocean City spent the 1890s owned by a Baltimore company that went broke. It began the twentieth century owned, in large part, by one man from Washington — who would be its mayor by 1902.
Atlantic Hotel John F. Waggaman
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1899 · 1899-02-04
The Sinepuxent Beach Company is still alive on the land records in February 1899, leasing Hammock Point to William Warrington — while the Ocean City lots pass out of John F. Waggaman's own hands.
The county paper's monthly abstract of the Worcester County land records, printed 4 February 1899, carries in one column both halves of the ownership question. On one side: "Lease, William Warrington from the Sinepuxent Beach Company of Baltimore City, all that certain piece or parcel of land, situate in Worcester county west of Ocean City, commonly known as 'Hammock Point,' yearly rent." On the other, three conveyances out of Waggaman personally — lot No. 447 in Block 12 north to Frederick W. Pilling; lots 7 and 8 in a south block to Andrew Hemmerle for $110; lots in Block 68 south to Charles G. Sloan. Two years and two months after the company told a Baltimore court it was insolvent, it was still a landlord on the mainland shore, and the beach lots were being sold by a man.
The campaign has been looking for the moment the Sinepuxent Beach Company handed Ocean City to John Floyd Waggaman. This is the first document that shows the two of them existing side by side — which means the handover was a transfer of some of the property, not the winding-up of the company.
John F. Waggaman
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1902 · 1902-05-17
Ocean City building lots in the spring 1902 land records: $300 for two from the mayor-to-be, $200 for one, and $5 for another.
From the Worcester County land records printed in the Messenger of 17 May 1902: "James E. Thomas from John F. Waggaman and wife, two lots, No. 3 and 11, at Ocean City; consideration $300." "Rosser & Castoe from Isaac Ulman and wife, a lot situated in Ocean City, known as Lot No. 83; consideration $200." "Beverdy S. Dennis from Robert G. Keene, lot situated at Ocean City and known as lot No. 40; consideration $5." On 19 April a trustee sold five parcels of the late Robert G. Keene's Ocean City property on the premises — lots on Dorchester Street a hundred feet off Atlantic Avenue, two on Wicomico Street west of Philadelphia Avenue, one at Atlantic Avenue and South First Street running back a hundred and twenty-five feet to Congress Street, and lot 7 block 1 South "on the plat of Synepuxent Beach Company of Baltimore City."
John F. Waggaman Robert Goldsborough Keene
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1904 · 1904-09-24
The old Sinepuxent Beach Company plat comes apart at the courthouse door: Ocean City lots sold for 1902 taxes, one of them to the county itself.
Through the summer of 1904 the county sheriff advertised, and in the autumn reported, a tax sale of Ocean City property for state and county taxes in arrear for 1902. The lots are described by their positions on 'the plat of the property formerly owned by the Sinepuxent Beach Co., of Baltimore City' and by the deeds out of that company: the west half of Block 3 South, 140 feet on Baltimore Avenue by 150 deep, assessed to John D. Cook's heirs, sold to Sarah H. Taber; two lots at South 7th Street, one on Baltimore Avenue and one on Atlantic Avenue, 50 by 142 feet each, assessed to Curtis W. Holcomb, sold to William David Knox; about nine acres in Sinepuxent Neck assessed to Caroline Hickman's heirs, sold to Zadok P. Henry; lot 1 in Block 6 South, 50 by 142 on Baltimore Avenue, assessed to Hennie Levi, bought in by the County Commissioners of Worcester County for want of a bidder; and lot 183 on the plat of the original town, on the bay shore, assessed to William T. Taber. A second sale advertised for 4 October 1904 covered part of lot 45 assessed to William T. Taber for 1902 and 1903. Separately, James H. Mumford, Collector of taxes for the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City, had sold town lots for municipal taxes, and the ratifications were still working through the Circuit Court in June 1904.
Eight years after the Sinepuxent Beach Company told a Baltimore court it was insolvent, its plat is still the map everybody uses and its deeds are still the chain of title — and the lots it sold are being knocked down for unpaid taxes, one of them to the county because nobody bid.
William T. Taber James H. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1914
Ocean City's tax collector advertises through the whole spring of 1914 to sell lots for unpaid board-walk assessments dating back to 1910 — $1.12 on fifty feet of walk.
A notice that ran in the Democratic Messenger from March into May 1914: "By virtue of the power vested in me as Collector of Municipal taxes for Ocean City, Worcester County, Maryland, for the years 1910, 1911 and 1912, I have levied upon, seized and taken in execution for special assessments for costs of sidewalk improvements due and in arrears as follows: 1. For special assessment for **board walk fifty feet in length by twelve feet in width** abutting on lot number six in block number twelve, north, at Ocean City, Worcester County, Maryland, amounting to **$1.12** with interest to be added from November 1, 1912, at six per centum per annum, assessed to **Kate Upshur Moorehead**" — with a second parcel on lot eight in block nine, north, and a sale at the Court House door in Snow Hill on 21 April 1914. Ordinance No. 302 of 1909 built that walk and charged the abutting owners; the Court of Appeals upheld the charge in 1912; two years on the town was still auctioning lots over sums of a dollar and change. The advertised parcels include "the Colonial Hotel property" on the plat of the Sinepuxent Beach Company.
Ocean City Boardwalk
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1915
The Mayor and City Council of Ocean City took a judgment against a Baltimore lot-holder in 1915 and had the sheriff sell her boardwalk-block lot on the court house steps at Snow Hill.
A sheriff's advertisement runs through the Messenger of December 1915: "Sheriff's Sale of Ocean City Lot. By virtue of a writ of fieri facias issued out of the Circuit Court for Worcester County, Maryland, and to me directed, in the case of the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City, a municipal corporation, vs. Kate Upshur Moorehead, I have seized and taken in execution all the right, title and interest of the said Kate Upshur Moorehead in and to all that lot of land designated and distinguished as lot number six in block number twelve, north, at Ocean City, Worcester County, Maryland, which was conveyed to the said Kate Upshur Moorehead by the Sinepuxent Beach Company of Baltimore City by deed bearing date December [1899] ... and I hereby give notice that I will sell the same at public auction to the highest bidder in front of the Court House door in the town of Snow Hill." This is what the 1912 Court of Appeals ruling looked like on the ground three years on: the town, having won the right to assess absentee lot-owners for its boardwalk and its improvements, was executing on them. The chain of title also puts the Sinepuxent Beach Company — the 1880s Baltimore syndicate that laid the town out — still visible in the record forty years later. A separate equity suit the same autumn shows the same pattern from the other side: Lavinia Anne Evans of Philadelphia died in September 1915 seized of Ocean City real estate, and her heirs went to the Circuit Court for a decree of sale.
Ocean City Boardwalk
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1927
Chapter 304 pushes Ocean City's northern boundary out to North Twenty-sixth Street — the town's first limits change since 1904.
Chapter 304 of the Acts of 1927, approved 1 April 1927 and effective 1 June 1927, repealed and re-enacted Section 2 of Chapter 457 of the Acts of 1904 to redraw the corporate limits: "Beginning at mean low water mark in the Atlantic Ocean, where the north line of South Seventh street, extended, would strike said ocean; thence by and with such line extended, and the north line of South Seventh street, and said north line extended, in a westerly direction to the middle of Synepuxent Bay; thence along the middle of Synepuxent and Isle of Wight bays, in a northerly direction, to a point where the south line of North Twenty-sixth street, as laid out on the plat of the Synepuxent Beach Company, recorded among the Land Records of Worcester County, would, if extended, intersect said middle line of Isle of Wight Bay; thence by and with such line extended and the said south line of North Twenty-sixth street, and said line extended to a point in said ocean, at mean low water mark, thence by and with said ocean, at mean low water mark, to the beginning."
The town of 1925 had about 2,545 hotel beds crowded into a few ocean-front blocks. The town of 1 June 1927 runs from South Seventh Street to North Twenty-sixth, ocean to the middle of two bays — and its northern boundary is drawn on the Sinepuxent Beach Company's own plat. The company that had been selling the sandbar since the 1890s wrote the line the legislature adopted.
County Commissioners of Worcester County
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1946 · 1946-03-13
Ocean City called in a registered surveyor from Berlin in March 1946 to check its own surveyor's work, and was told its iron monuments stood about 2.2 feet south of where the town's founding plat put them.
Geo. Bert Cropper came before the council on 12 March stating that the survey was not correct from North Division Street north; a call went out to W. D. Pitts of Berlin, who came down at eleven the next morning and reported. His letter, typed and filed with the minutes, says he went over Cropper's field notes and calculations and found them mathematically correct; that he then went into the field and checked the angles and measurements as they pertain to 'the iron pipe monuments set up by the town of Ocean City, Md. some years prior to this date' - those at the south-east and south-west corners of Baltimore Avenue and North First Street - and found them 2.26 feet too far south of the true corners shown on the plat of the Synepuxent Beach Company of Baltimore City recorded in Liber F.H.P. No. 1, Folio 550; and that a check measurement from the stone on the east side of Baltimore Avenue at South Division Street to the same corner made the error 2.17 feet. He signs himself William D. Pitts, Registered Surveyor #165. The clerk's own minute of the same morning calls the discrepancy 'approximately 25 1/2 inch', and records that the town's answer was to get the city attorney to draw legal papers 'and lessen the width of North Div. Street enough to correct' it.
G. Bertrand Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-04
Ocean City's whole boundary fight came down to two feet between a deed and a plat - and the lawyer drafting the fix put 977 feet in his own resolution because, as he wrote, he had inadvertently added fifty.
Two letters of 4 May 1946 from John S. Whaley of Staton, Whaley & Price, both under the firm's file number 16,724, are filed with the minutes. To George B. Cropper - 'Dear Bert' - he reports that Robert C. Walker has called his attention to a typographical error on the ninth line of page 4 of the tentative resolution circulated about 10 April: the distance of 977 feet should have been 927 feet, and 'I did not check the resolution carefully before it left my office as to distances, etc., as I was confident that there would be some changes to be made before the resolution was finally drawn'. To Walker at Bronxville he sets out the arithmetic: 'An attempt is, of course, being made to show that there is a difference of two feet in the distance along Atlantic Avenue, as shown on said Plat, and as shown in the description of the deed prior to the Plat... Apparently I inadvertently added fifty feet. I have checked the deed, and the distance given in the deed is 925 feet. Unless I have made another error in addition, what is supposed to be the corresponding distance as shown on the Plat is 927 feet.' The two-foot gap between the deed and the Sinepuxent Beach Company plat is the same error Pitts measured in the field on 13 March, and it is what the 28 May resolution was drawn to settle.
The deed says 925 feet and the plat says 927 - the two-foot difference Ocean City spent the spring of 1946 arguing about.
Staton, Whaley & Price John S. Whaley G. Bertrand Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-28
Ocean City wrote its own boundaries into the minute book on 28 May 1946, back to a deed of 1876, declared North Division Street to be 75 feet and not the 77 its founding plat showed, and gave away everything north of the corrected line.
Seven pages of the minute book are one unanimously passed resolution. It recites the deed of 29 July 1876 from Stephen Taber and wife to Hillary R. Pitts, B. Jones Taylor and George W. Purnell, Trustees, in Liber I.T.M. No. 4, Folio 536, and with it the plat of the original town of Ocean City at Folio 538; the bronze point set in a block of concrete, for more than twenty years, at the intersection of the westerly line of Atlantic Avenue with the southerly line of North Division Street; the deed of 11 June 1891 in Liber F.H.P. No. 1, Folio 550 by which Stephen Taber's executors, Robert Goldsborough Keene and Theophilus Tunis conveyed to The Sinepuxent Beach Company of Baltimore City, with which the company's plat was recorded; a deed of 1 February 1881 to R. Jenkins Henry measured 525 feet north of a stone monument on a bearing of North 27 3/8 degrees East; a deed of 11 March 1880 to Lemuel Malone measured 925 feet from the same monument; and the corporate limits themselves, from mean low water in the Atlantic where the north line of South Seventh Street extended would strike the ocean, west to the middle of Sinepuxent Bay, north along the middle of Sinepuxent and Isle of Wight Bays to where the south line of North Twenty-Sixth Street extended would meet it, and back to the ocean - 'as is more specifically shown in Article 24, Section 134, of Flack's Code of Public Local Laws of Maryland, 1930 Edition'. It then finds, on deeds, plats, markers and testimony the council 'deems to be conclusive', that the width of North Division Street is seventy-five feet and not the seventy-seven the Sinepuxent Beach Company plat indicates; resolves the correct northerly line of North Division Street to be a line drawn 75 feet up Atlantic Avenue from the bronze point and parallel with the southerly line to Sinepuxent Bay; resolves that North First Street meets Atlantic Avenue 425 feet from the same point; and, in the clerk's block capitals, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the town 'hereby waives all right, title, interest and estate in, and any jurisdiction or control over' any part of North Division Street north of that line.
Dr. Hilary R. Pitts George W. Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-15

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Sinepuxent Beach Company

In the record (66)

December 1890: the Sinepuxent Beach Company is incorporated to lay 2,000 acres of beach out into building lots — the plat that made modern Ocean City.

August 1890: a syndicate of railroad stockholders buys the whole Taber estate around Ocean City, intending 'to build a city on this site.'

A Washington real-estate broker takes control of the Sinepuxent Beach Company, and the whole Atlantic Hotel with it.

Three Western senators and a New York congressman are shown the beach in April as guests of the Sinepuxent Beach Company; the congressman buys a lot.

The Sinepuxent Beach Company sends a Washington civil engineer down to survey its beach property, and he reports Ocean City lots selling briskly in Washington.

"Hon. W. Sydney Wilson has been elected mayor of Ocean City" — the first Ocean City officeholder this research campaign has found by name.

The Sinepuxent Beach Company contracts for an artesian well at Ocean City — and for plumbing to go with it.

The Sinepuxent Beach Company buys the Atlantic Hotel for $15,000 — the deed chain runs Holland to the hotel company to Waggaman to the beach company inside four months.

John F. Waggaman takes 400 acres called "the Isle of Wight" for a dollar, and sells it on within four months.

Baltimore to the beach, hour by hour: the steamer B. S. Ford leaves Pier 8 Light Street at 7 a.m., 44 miles to Claiborne in three hours, then two hours by rail to Ocean City.

The Atlantic Hotel's dancing pavilion is the town's public hall: a congressional convention in July, the Gridiron Club's hop in August.

A Kentucky senator, a general's widow, a Sherman relative and a Washington architect buy Ocean City lots in one paragraph.

The rebuilt Atlantic Hotel advertises electric light and an elevator — the first documented elevator on the beach.

"The building fever is still on at Ocean City" — five more cottages before the season closed, and talk of catching Atlantic City.

What a day at the beach cost in 1892: 60 cents from Snow Hill, $1.75 from Annapolis by boat and rail, $4.20 from Washington for the weekend.

A trustees' sale advertisement names the town's founding plat: Stephen Taber's deed of 28 July 1876, Liber I.T.M. No. 4, folio 536, and the fifty acres it laid out.

Ocean City building lots, $100 to $1,000 — "thousands turned away this season for want of accommodation."

The Sinepuxent Beach Company re-elects in December with a new president, and Ocean City's mayor on the board.

Three hotels open the eighteenth season, and the Atlantic Hotel company rents Congress Hall as well.

Sinepuxent Bay freezes over except for one hole at Ocean City, and the town credits its artesian well.

The Vice President, two United States Senators and the Governor of Maryland came to Ocean City in August 1893 as guests of the Sinepuxent Beach Company.

Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson comes to Ocean City as a guest of the Sinepuxent Beach Company, and the train from Claiborne beats every record on the line.

A public school is to be opened at Ocean City, with Miss Virgie Warrington as its teacher.

The Atlantic Hotel advertises an artesian well and sanitary sewerage in the season of 1894 — two years before the town claims artesian water as its own.

The 1894 season opens with every hotel on the beach open, a six-piece orchestra at the Atlantic, and a thousand new bathing suits at the Eastern Shore House.

A northern syndicate led by the American Sugar Refining Company's secretary plans two mammoth hotels and an electric railway along the beach.

The Atlantic Hotel, run by the keeper of the Senate restaurant, holds three or four hundred guests — and the Sinepuxent Beach Company owns it.

Mrs. R. T. Shreve of Baltimore buys two ocean-front lots with a hundred feet of frontage from the Sinepuxent Beach Company — the ground the Plimhimmon stands on.

The Atlantic Casino Company is incorporated with $12,000 to run an amusement pavilion beside the Atlantic Hotel — bathhouses below, pool, billiards and a bowling alley above.

The Atlantic Hotel advertises June 15 to September 15, its "fourth season under present progressive management" — and a six-hour boat trip from Baltimore.

The Sinepuxent Beach Company takes bids for a railway the whole length of the beach — five miles down Baltimore Avenue in March, six miles and electric by June. It was never built.

"Still Booming" — the Sinepuxent Beach Company raises fresh capital in the depths of the depression and re-elects a board of Baltimore, Washington and Snow Hill men.

The Sinepuxent Beach Company's stock is locked up in John F. Waggaman's option, and the stockholders talk of a receiver.

Sinepuxent Beach stockholders refuse a syndicate's $72,000 for the whole of Ocean City's beach — $120 a share, and 'the price is too low.'

Having refused to sell, the beach company doubles its own stock and lets a five-mile railway the length of Ocean City on Baltimore Avenue — by steam, because the directors found steam cheaper than electricity.

Charles Quartly of Baltimore spends a week photographing beach scenes for a book the Sinepuxent Beach Company means to publish — including a picture of the life-saving men drilling.

In May the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway completes negotiations to buy the Sinepuxent Beach Company outright — the beach and the railroad in one hand.

The Atlantic Hotel advertised as far west as Wheeling in 1895, and its advertisement gives the journey, the manager and the owner: six hours from Baltimore, Theo. L. Page, and the Sinepuxent Beach Company at 641 Equitable Building.

Ocean City's three policemen are named in print for the first time — Albert Carey, Lemuel Mumford and William Purnell — wearing badges inscribed "Ocean City, Md."

$15 a week and upwards at the Atlantic Hotel in the summer of 1896 — advertised all season in Washington by the Sinepuxent Beach Company itself, five months before it told a court it was insolvent.

A year after the sale was reported "completed," the B.C.&A. still cannot buy the Sinepuxent Beach Company — and John E. Searles, its president, is the reason the town election was fought.

Ocean City's first contested election is "a fight between the people of the south end against the members of the Sinepuxent Beach Company" — and the losing ticket is led by Edward Hobbs and Daniel Trimper.

Ocean City elects George M. Upshur of Baltimore mayor, with the first full council slate on record.

Seventy miles an hour on the beach: the May 1896 gale is measured by three Delaware papers, and their account puts pedestrians on Ocean City's "board walks" five months before the ocean took them.

A seventy-mile gale drives sand so hard that no one can face it on the board walks, stoves in the Seabright Hotel and topples the Beach Company's electric-light smokestack.

A May gale blows down a cottage under construction, topples the Sinepuxent Beach Company's electric-light smokestack and stoves in the Seabright Hotel.

Ocean City draws pure water from three hundred feet down — "the one great objection to the place" removed.

"The City Council has plans in process for a water supply and sewerage system" — Ocean City's first municipal utilities scheme, promised for the next season.

The Sinepuxent Beach Company admits it is insolvent and its Ocean City property goes into receivers' hands.

With the Beach Company in receivership, the county paper reports the B.C.&A. will buy the property — and lists what the buyer is expected to finish: a 600-foot pier, a water supply and a sewerage system.

A life-saving surfman buys the Synepuxent House and its livery stable for $2,470, and thirty-six Taber estate lots are sold off the bay side.

John F. Waggaman buys the Sinepuxent Beach Company's entire Ocean City estate for $65,000 — hotel, bath houses, electric light plant, artesian well, nine miles of ocean front.

"Ocean City Improvements": six new cottages, and the Plimhimmon adds a casino with a ballroom, a stage, a billiard room and a bowling alley.

William Warrington, Sr., manager of the Atlantic Hotel, dies suddenly in his room — weeks after a sunstroke taken while laying out street and lot lines.

"The worst in the memory of the oldest inhabitant" — an October gale runs four feet of surf across the beach and washes away the board walk south of Trimper's.

The Sinepuxent Beach Company's collapse is settled: the Atlantic Hotel and the unsold building lots are John F. Waggaman's, sold to him out of the wreck in 1897.

The answer to the Sinepuxent Beach Company's collapse: by 1899 Col. John Floyd Waggaman of Washington owns the Atlantic Hotel, the Colonial, Convention Hall and much of Ocean City — and he sells its lots from an office on 14th Street.

The Sinepuxent Beach Company is still alive on the land records in February 1899, leasing Hammock Point to William Warrington — while the Ocean City lots pass out of John F. Waggaman's own hands.

Ocean City building lots in the spring 1902 land records: $300 for two from the mayor-to-be, $200 for one, and $5 for another.

The old Sinepuxent Beach Company plat comes apart at the courthouse door: Ocean City lots sold for 1902 taxes, one of them to the county itself.

Ocean City's tax collector advertises through the whole spring of 1914 to sell lots for unpaid board-walk assessments dating back to 1910 — $1.12 on fifty feet of walk.

The Mayor and City Council of Ocean City took a judgment against a Baltimore lot-holder in 1915 and had the sheriff sell her boardwalk-block lot on the court house steps at Snow Hill.

Chapter 304 pushes Ocean City's northern boundary out to North Twenty-sixth Street — the town's first limits change since 1904.

Ocean City called in a registered surveyor from Berlin in March 1946 to check its own surveyor's work, and was told its iron monuments stood about 2.2 feet south of where the town's founding plat put them.

Ocean City's whole boundary fight came down to two feet between a deed and a plat - and the lawyer drafting the fix put 977 feet in his own resolution because, as he wrote, he had inadvertently added fifty.

Ocean City wrote its own boundaries into the minute book on 28 May 1946, back to a deed of 1876, declared North Division Street to be 75 feet and not the 77 its founding plat showed, and gave away everything north of the corrected line.