County Commissioners of Worcester County

In the record (22)

1. 1892 · 1892-04-07

   The same day it voted the Green Run canal money, the legislature put $100 behind a survey of the Pocomoke channel — waterway improvement at both ends of the county in one session.

   Chapter 562 of the Acts of 1892, approved April 7: "AN ACT authorizing the County Commissioners of Worcester and Wicomico Counties to have the Pocomoke River surveyed," empowering them "to employ a competent surveyor to survey and report on the condition of the channel of the upper part of the Pocomoke River above the town of Snow Hill to the Delaware line, as to the feasibility and expense of cleaning out the channel thereof," and "to levy the sum of one hundred dollars." It was approved the same day as Chapter 541, which let the Worcester Commissioners spend their oyster-tonging licence money on a canal at Green Run, and three days after Chapter 265 rechartered the Isle of Wight Inlet and Oyster Planting Company. Four months later a correspondent of the Democratic Messenger was arguing that a canal from the Pocomoke to Sinepuxent Bay, joined to the inlet then being dug at Winter Quarter, "would make navigable water from the Chesapeake bay to the Atlantic ocean," and a federal engineer came down to survey the line. 1892 is the year the whole of Worcester County was trying to cut its way to open water in every direction at once.

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

2. 1892 · 1892-07-02

   The county advertises for a fence along the whole public road to Ocean City: white oak posts twelve feet apart and three strands of ribbon wire, done by August 1.

   A County Commissioners' notice in the Democratic Messenger of July 2, 1892: "The County Commissioners of Worcester County will let out the public road running from James Mumford's to Ocean City to the lowest bidder from this date 2nd day of July, and will close the bids on the same July 15th. The said fence must be built with white oak posts 6 feet long and 12 feet apart, one white oak board at the top 6 inches wide. Three strands of ribbon wire. All first class material and to be completed by the 1st day of August 1892. By order of the Board, A. B. Nairne, Clerk." In the same season the Commissioners advertised a wholly new county road, "the 'St. Martins River Road'... to be let out to the lowest bidder" with sealed proposals received to September 1. The land road to the beach — in the year the railroad brought five thousand people down in a day — was still a fenced country lane through open range, and the paper's standing complaint all summer was "the miserable and wretched condition of our county roads."

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

3. 1892 · 1892-08-08

   Worcester County digs its own inlet with shovels and wheelbarrows at Winter Quarter — and by New Year's Eve it has closed again.

   The largest public work attempted on the Worcester coast in the nineteenth century was not a government project. It began with a letter to the Democratic Messenger from Stockton on February 17: "The citizens of this section of Worcester county greatly feel the need of having an inlet cut from the Atlantic Ocean to Synepuxent bay, at or near Winter Quarter Beach, by which the now fresh and stagnant water of the bay may become salted and fitted for the growing of oysters... We remember a few years ago when Green Run Inlet was open that the bay was supplied with fish, oysters and game in abundance." The paper campaigned all spring — "THE INLET, LET'S HAVE IT" (April 23), "It is proposed to commence cutting the inlet on June the 6th, next" (April 16) — and a mass meeting was called in Berlin town hall for April 9 "for the purpose of devising 'ways and means' for cutting the Inlet between Synepuxent Bay and the Atlantic Ocean." A June meeting in the Snow Hill court house of "citizens from all sections of Worcester County" appointed an executive committee and a subscription drive: "In Stockton alone we have raised in money and work between three and four hundred dollars with Girdletree, Greenbackville and Franklin City yet to report, to say nothing of Chincoteague." On July 30 the Messenger announced the date: "the work of cutting the inlet through the beach from a point known as Winter Quarter on the Sinepuxent Bay to the Atlantic Ocean, a distance only of about one-half mile, will be commenced positively on the 8th of next month. To a large extent the work will be done by the oystermen themselves, with the aid of shovels and wheelbarrows, this being the time of the year when they are at leisure." The August 20 paper described the cut in section: "the first cutting is made through about two feet of ordinary beach sand then comes about two feet of stiff marsh soil, underneath of which is live sand. This is looked upon by those in command, and in fact by all the workmen, each of whom is an experienced beacher, as a most favorable condition, because the marshy soil will not wash in." On August 27 the Messenger ran the headline THE INLET IS CUT, though the body was more careful: "On Friday, the tide in the bay being full, a small ditch was cut from the inlet to the surf on ebb tide in the surf, and this ditch showed very satisfactory results. The sand was cut out by the force of the water well into the ocean... It is thought that the desired winds and tide will occur to-day (Friday), and if so, the inlet will be cut. How long it will remain open none can say." It did not remain open. On December 31 a correspondent wrote: "The failure of cutting the inlet at Winter Quarter ought not to be a reason for giving it up entirely. Many well-thinking people, who had exercised their judgment about it, knew that as a natural consequence, from the place selected and method of cutting, it would be a failure." The dig was reported nationally. The New-York Tribune of 11 August 1892, datelined Snow Hill, Md., Aug. 10, ran it under a headline of its own: “AN INLET-CUTTING BEE: THE PEOPLE AROUND SINEPUXENT BAY, MD., JOIN TOGETHER TO DO THE WORK. Snow Hill, Md., Aug. 10.—Yesterday was the day set for beginning the work of cutting the inlet from Sinepuxent Bay to the ocean, near Scott's Beach, and at every landing on this side of the bay boats were in readiness to take those who wished to participate in cutting the long-talked-of and much-needed inlet… The distance to be cut is about five eighths of a mile. The place has been surveyed, and good judges have declared that if a small inlet be cut across, the ebbing and flowing tides will cut it wider and deeper… The result of this will be good oyster, fishing and clamming industries, which are being well nigh [destroyed] by the closing of the old inlets by the action of the ocean, and the freshening of the waters of the bay.” The Tribune and the Messenger agree on the enterprise, the method and the reason, and disagree on two measurable things — where the cut was and how long it was — which are recorded in this fact's conflicts rather than reconciled. — 1893 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The outcome is now sourced, from the county paper itself, six months after the digging. The Democratic Messenger's North Beach column of 25 February 1893 calls it "a complete failure" and derides the labour as "hiring men to move sand from one place to another." The cut never opened. No item anywhere in the 180 pages of the 1893 run describes water running through it, a channel being kept, or the bay being salted. THE LOCATION CONFLICT IS NOT RESOLVED AND MUST STAY OPEN. The 1893 evidence names Winter Quarter twice, but it is the same newspaper naming the same site again — corroboration from the same source family, not an independent second witness against the New-York Tribune's "near Scott's Beach." Scott's Beach appears repeatedly in the 1893 file (an estate sale, a pony sickness, residents visiting Snow Hill, and the sale of the property itself for $1,500 in August) and is never once connected to a cut. One genuinely independent datum did arrive: the federal Life-Saving Service's casualty table for the season of 1892–'93 places the stranding of the bark Copsefield on 11 November 1892 at "Winter Quarter Beach," worked by the Green Run Inlet station. That fixes Winter Quarter Beach as a real, federally-recognised place on this coast, distinct from Green Run — which is what the conflict needs to stay a conflict rather than collapse. — 1895 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: 1895 supplies the first independent evidence about the two places themselves, and it does not resolve the conflict so much as sharpen it. Winter Quarter is used three times this year as an OCEAN-SIDE landmark with a lightship off it: a disabled vessel anchors 'under the beach at Winter Quarter' and is watched 'from the main' (Messenger, 7 September); a nine-foot shark is taken 'off Winter Quarter light ship' (Messenger, 5 October); a Norwegian steamship reports a seaquake thirty miles south of the Winter Quarter Lightship (Democratic Advocate, 7 September). Scott's Beach in the same year is a picnic destination reached in a day by a party from Klej Grange and Girdletree, both in the far south of Worcester County (Messenger, 31 August). Both are therefore real, distinct, and well south of Ocean City — which is consistent with the Life-Saving Service's own usage of 'Winter Quarter Beach' as a place worked by the Green Run Inlet station. Neither is anywhere described in 1895 as a cut, a proposed cut, or a site of one.

   cut on the Worcester County barrier beach in August 1892 — the county paper says at Winter Quarter, a New York paper says near Scott's Beach (Green Run), and the two points are not the same

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

4. 1893 · 1893-08-07

   The business half of Snow Hill burns on the night of 7 August 1893, taking the Worcester County courthouse and jail with it — but not the records.

   "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!! The Entire Business Portion of Snow Hill Reduced to Ashes," the Democratic Messenger headlined on 12 August, in an issue it had to have printed out of town. The fire started "in the store of G. Marion Dryden, how no one knows, but it was purely accidental," a few minutes before ten on Monday night, in the middle of a solid block of frame buildings. Within an hour "the whole square between Pearl and Washington streets and Green and Market streets was in a solid blaze." People carried their goods to the courthouse yard as the one safe place: "this afterward proved to be a costly error, for everything placed in the courthouse yard was to go up in smoke." Then the flames took the Odd Fellows' hall, "the flames from it shooting over to the cupola of the courthouse, which ignited and soon the interior of the old temple of justice was on fire. The building was destroyed except its walls, which are standing." The jail, also brick, burned at about the same time; its two prisoners were released and "worked manfully in the bucket brigade." The bucket brigade was directed by Col. John Walter Smith, the county's state senator, "who fought the fire until he was soaking wet and exhausted"; fire engines telegraphed for from Salisbury and the Phoenix of Wilmington did not arrive until about 5.30 a.m., after the fire had been checked. The count: "Seventy-six houses were burned in all, including three hotels, two banks, the Methodist Protestant Church and the court house and jail. The total loss is estimated at $300,000, and the insurance amounts only to about $70,000, which includes insurance of $10,000 on courthouse and jail. The fire swept away four blocks of houses and stores, covering about six acres of ground. Happily, no lives were lost and no persons were seriously hurt." Three stores were left standing in the town. WHAT WAS LOST AND WHAT WAS NOT, which is the part that matters to anyone trying to source Worcester County: "All of the court records were safe in the vaults but the court library was burned up in the clerk's office." The commissioners were less lucky: "The safe in the office of the county commissioners of Worcester county was opened last Friday morning, and it was found that all the papers and books contained in it were entirely destroyed." A fortnight later the Princess Anne Marylander was urging Somerset County to build "fire-proof vaults, such as those which preserved the county records at Snow Hill." On 4 November the grand jury asked the commissioners to rebuild "with as near fire-proof buildings as possible"; on 12 December the new board appointed James Richards, William P. Pusey and John Powell to examine the old walls, and on 19 December enlarged that committee to six — three carpenters and three brick masons — to meet at Snow Hill on 10 January 1894. THE STATUTE BOOK CONFIRMS ALL OF IT, AND SAYS WHAT WAS LOST. The General Assembly of 1894 passed two acts about this fire. Chapter 250 opens: "WHEREAS, The Worcester county court house and jail were destroyed by fire in August, in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-three, by reason of which loss to said county it has become necessary and imperative to build for said county a new court house and jail" — and directs the commissioners to apply "the sum of ten thousand dollars, which has been received by said commissioners as insurance on the said old court house and jail," to a fund "known as 'The Court House and Jail Building Fund,'" to be deposited in the First National Bank of Snow Hill. Chapter 453 is the record-loss act, and it is precise about what burned: "AN ACT to complete the proceedings in all chancery cases that were destroyed by the burning of the court house in Worcester County, Maryland, in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-three... in all cases where any of the papers, including bills of complaint, answers, demurrers, pleas, replications, joinder of issue, evidence taken by examiners, trustee's bonds, trustee's report of sales, auditor's reports, and all other papers filed in the proceedings in chancery cases, have been destroyed by fire, the docket entries in the chancery docket of the Circuit Court for Worcester county shall be received in evidence... with the same conclusive force and effect as if any or all of the original papers... were in existence." A second section deals with equity sales where title to real estate was involved and no deed had yet been delivered. That provision was carried forward permanently into the Code of Public Local Laws. So the loss inventory, from the statute rather than from tradition, is: the loose chancery (equity) case papers, the court library in the clerk's office, and every book and paper in the County Commissioners' safe. The bound record books were in the vaults and came through — which is why the 1894 legislature legislated for chancery papers and for nothing else, and passed no act to re-record deeds. Worcester County is not a burned county for land records. — 1893 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Recorded here rather than left implicit: the campaign's standing statement that '1893 courthouse fire' is why Worcester County records are hard to source is now sourced, dated and PARTLY CORRECTED. Date: the night of 7 August 1893, confirmed by the county paper, by a Wilmington dispatch datelined Snow Hill 8 August, and by the preamble to Chapter 250 of the Acts of 1894. Framing: it was not a courthouse fire but the great Snow Hill town fire, which took the courthouse last. Losses: the loose chancery case papers (for which the 1894 legislature had to make the docket entries conclusive evidence), the court library in the clerk's office, and the entire contents of the County Commissioners' safe. Survivals: the bound court records, in the vaults. The legislature passed no act to re-record deeds and Worcester County should not be described as a burned county for land records. — 1894 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: The 1893 pass concluded that the court records survived in the vaults and only the county commissioners' books burned. The 1894 session laws show that is too generous. Chapter 453, approved 6 April 1894, exists solely 'to complete the proceedings in all chancery cases that were destroyed by the burning of the court house in Worcester County, Maryland, in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-three,' and enumerates what went: bills of complaint, answers, demurrers, pleas, replications, joinder of issue, evidence taken by examiners, trustees' bonds, trustees' reports of sales, auditors' reports 'and all other papers filed in the proceedings in chancery cases.' Only the DOCKET ENTRIES survived, and the act had to make them stand in evidence for the vanished files and let a docket entry support a deed. Chapter 250 of the same session confirms the loss of the building itself in August 1893 and applies $10,000 of insurance money to a new court house and jail.

   The campaign has cited an 1893 courthouse fire for years as the reason Worcester County is hard to source. The fire is real and the date is 7 August 1893. But the sentence that has been doing the work is wrong at the crucial point: the deeds, the wills and the court records came through it, in the vaults. What the county actually lost that night was the court library and every book and paper in the County Commissioners' safe — which is to say the minutes. That is precisely the series this campaign has been asking for since 1880.

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

5. 1894 · 1894-04-06

   The General Assembly has to legislate a substitute for Worcester County's chancery papers — they burned with the court house in August 1893.

   Chapter 453 of the Acts of 1894, approved 6 April 1894, is "An Act to complete the proceedings in all chancery cases that were destroyed by the burning of the court house in Worcester County, Maryland, in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-three." It enacts that where "bills of complaint, answers, demurrers, pleas, replications, joinder of issue, evidence taken by examiners, trustee's bonds, trustee's report of sales, auditor's reports, and all other papers filed in the proceedings in chancery cases, have been destroyed by fire, the docket entries in the chancery docket of the Circuit Court for Worcester county shall be received in evidence... with the same conclusive force and effect as if any or all of the original papers... were in existence and actually produced." Where title to real estate was involved and no deed had yet passed, the court could order the trustee to convey on the docket entries alone; where auditors' reports had burned, the auditor was to reconstruct them "as near as may be, from all the evidence he can obtain." Chapter 250 of the same session states the loss: "the Worcester county court house and jail were destroyed by fire in August, in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-three," and applies $10,000 of insurance money to "The Court House and Jail Building Fund" for a new building at Snow Hill, with bonds for the rest.

   This matters more to the campaign than to the town. The 1893 pass concluded that the court records survived in the vaults and only the county commissioners' papers burned. Chapter 453 says otherwise: the chancery FILES were destroyed and only the docket entries survived, which is why the legislature had to make a docket entry stand in for a deed. Any request this project files for a nineteenth-century Worcester chancery paper has to reckon with that.

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

6. 1894 · 1894-07-10

   Worcester cuts its tax rate to 87 cents in the hundred — one of only two Maryland counties to reduce a levy in the depression year.

   "The County Commissioners at their meeting last Tuesday struck the levy of 1894. The rate is 87 cents on the $100, a reduction of three cents on the levy of last year. It has taken good financiering to accomplish this result as the expenses of the county have been very great. For instance: A considerable increase has been allowed for Public school purposes, appropriations made for repairs to the Alms House; for interest on Court House Bonds, extra large Court expenses buying law offices and other extraordinary demands." A week later the paper set the county against its neighbours: "Worcester reduced from 90 to 87 / Kent reduced 90 to 85 / Somerset increased to 1.00 / Talbot increased to 92 / Queen Anne from 87 to 92 / Cecil 60 to 80 / Caroline 1.10 to 1.17."

   The interest on the Court House Bonds in that sentence is the 1893 fire being paid for, and the county cut its rate anyway while five of its six neighbours raised theirs.

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

7. 1920 · 1920-04-14

   "FISH CROWD NEW INLET" — deep-sea species never before seen in Sinepuxent Bay were being seined wholesale within weeks of the storm.

   "Members of the State Conservation Commission have been watching development of a new seafish industry in Sinepuxent Bay since the storm broke an inlet through the strip of land just below Ocean City recently. Reports say that deep-sea fish, hitherto unheard of in the bay, are being caught in large quantities. The fisheries industry, it is reported, has been completely revolutionized. Instead of being obliged to go out three or four miles, fishermen throw their seines across any part of the channel of the bay and the inlet and haul in deep-sea fish by the wholesale. 'If the inlet remains,' said J. Edward White, a member of the Conservation Commission and a resident of Worcester county, 'it will be worth millions of dollars to Worcester county. It was an act of nature, but it was the biggest job ever put across in one night. It did exactly what it required months for us to do 10 years ago at an enormous [cost] and then it closed up overnight … there is a long bar that extends far out into the ocean that will protect it.'" White expected residents to take up oyster planting, "which heretofore has never been known above Box Iron, far south of Ocean City."

   Worcester County welcomed the new inlet as a fishery windfall; watermen down the bay expected it to salt the water and kill the oyster beds. Both were printed within eight weeks of the storm.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

8. 1922 · 1922-04-13

   Joint Resolution No. 18 of 1922 orders the State Roads Commission to spend $2,000 of Worcester County road money on dynamite to keep the inlet two miles south of Ocean City from closing.

   Approved 13 April 1922, the resolution reads in full: "Resolved, That the State Roads Commission be and is hereby authorized and directed to spend two thousand ($2,000) dollars out of any road funds available from Worcester County's Road Fund, or so much thereof as may be necessary for dynamite to keep open the Inlet and Bay two miles south of Ocean City, that is now threatened to be closed, which promises to be of great value by salting about seventy-five thousand (75,000) acres of oyster bottoms." The volume's index to joint resolutions files it under OCEAN CITY. It is the state of Maryland spending highway money on explosives to hold open a hole the sea had made — and the justification is not navigation or the resort but seventy-five thousand acres of oyster bottom. — 1922 RECTIFICATION, 2026-08-10: The joint-resolution index of the 1922 volume, p. 1721, files No. 18 under the heading **OCEAN CITY** as "To direct State Roads Commission to keep inlet near Ocean City open out of Worcester County Road Fund." That is how the state's own clerk summarised it: not oysters, not navigation — an inlet, kept open, on the county's road money.

   Ocean City Inlet & JettyMaryland State Roads Commission

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

9. 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.

   Sinepuxent Beach Company

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

10. 1927

    Worcester County puts a $300,000 school-building bond to referendum, with about $15,000 of it for a new school at Ocean City.

    Chapter 482 of the Acts of 1927, approved 26 April 1927, directed the County Commissioners of Worcester County to borrow $300,000 in $1,000 bonds "for the purpose of building and equipping a permanent new school building in each of the towns of Snow Hill, Ocean City, Bishopville, Pocomoke City and Berlin, and of procuring suitable sites therefor", subject to a referendum vote of the county — the bonds to be issued as of 1 July 1927 if the first referendum carried. A commission created by the act was to choose the sites, plans, specifications and equipment; the cost "shall be substantially the same for each of the said towns of Snow Hill, Pocomoke City and Berlin, and approximately fifteen thousand dollars each for Ocean City and Bishopville." The same session's Chapter 305 authorised the county to borrow up to $100,000 a year, for up to six months at a time, whenever tax collections fell short of the schools' maintenance and current expenses. IT EVIDENTLY NEVER ISSUED. The Assembly of 1929 passed a FRESH $300,000 Worcester County school bond (Chapter 175, approved 11 April 1929) for the same seven towns, with a fresh referendum on the second Tuesday in May 1929 — and Ocean City's share raised from about $15,000 to $30,000. What happened at either referendum is still unknown.

    Ocean City and Bishopville get $15,000 each; Snow Hill, Pocomoke City and Berlin get roughly $90,000 apiece. The resort with the largest summer population in Maryland was, for school purposes, still a village — and the county was borrowing against its own tax shortfall to keep the lights on in the meantime.

    Board of Education of Worcester County

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

11. 1929

    Chapter 145 puts a penny on every hundred dollars of Worcester County property and gives three-quarters of it, in equal shares, to the fire companies of Ocean City, Berlin, Snow Hill, Stockton and Pocomoke City.

    Approved 11 April 1929, effective 1 June 1929. The County Commissioners were 'authorized, empowered and directed' to levy annually, with the regular county levy, a special tax of one cent on each hundred dollars of assessable property. Three-fourths of the proceeds went in equal shares to the incorporated volunteer fire companies of the five towns, paid by the first day of February following the levy; the remaining quarter was to be spent at the Commissioners' discretion on any company organising and incorporating after 1 March 1929, with any unexpended balance at the fiscal year's end divided equally among all the county's incorporated companies.

    This is the first standing public money the campaign has found for the Ocean City fire company in the twenty-six years since it organised — and it arrives five months before the company had to save the Atlantic Hotel. The town's fire protection had been called 'practically useless' in this decade; in 1929 the county began taxing itself for it.

    Ocean City Volunteer Fire Department

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

12. 1933 · 1933-04-21

    Chapter 269 of 1933 gave Ocean City its own election district — District No. 10 of Worcester County

    'AN ACT to create a new election district in Worcester County and to fix the boundaries thereof… Election District No. 10 of Worcester County be and the same is hereby created and established, said new district to be known as Ocean City District.' Since the founding the town had voted inside Election District No. 3, 'East Berlin, including Ocean City' — the unit the census tables use. From 1933 the resort is its own political territory with metes and bounds of its own. Approved in the regular session of the General Assembly, which sat 4 January to 3 April 1933.

    Source · checked 2026-08-10

13. 1935 · 1935-02-04

    In February the county's councils were called together over work relief; in December the town wrote to two senators about mosquitoes

    At the meeting of 4 February 1935: “Letter of Dr. E. W. Cory on Pest Control and State Board of Health on milk ordnance and Secretary instructed to write that Council would Cooperate. Meeting of various Councils with County Commissioners for Tuesday night Feb. 5 to discuss work Relief talked over and Mayor and as many of Council as Could decided to attend.” An order also passed to give the Fire Company $25.00 towards an oyster roast. Ten months later, on 9 December, the secretary was instructed to write to F. W. Besley the State Forester, to Congressman T. Alan Goldsborough and to Senators Millard E. Tydings and George L. Radcliffe asking that the pest control be continued — a resort town of a few hundred winter residents lobbying its entire federal delegation about mosquito abatement, in the same month it was letting a sewer contract with federal money.

    Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

    Maryland State Board of HealthOcean City Volunteer Fire Department

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

14. 1935 · 1935-04-01

    Ocean City had one of Worcester's three delegates in the 1935 session — and its former mayor sat on the state's shore-erosion commission

    The Maryland Manual for 1935 gives the men who carried Ocean City's business through the session that ran from 2 January to 1 April 1935. Worcester County returned one senator, Milton L. Veasey of Pocomoke City, and three delegates: Samuel B. Brimer of Stockton, Clarence E. Robertson of Pocomoke City, and Ralph R. Dennis of Ocean City — all Democrats. The county commissioners were Charles L. Mason, Samuel E. Shockley and Thomas Y. Franklin, all with terms expiring in 1938; Thomas F. Johnson was State's Attorney, and Ernest C. West was Sheriff — the two men who between them ordered and led the boardwalk slot-machine raid of 23 August. And on page 107, among the members of the Maryland Water Front Commission created by Chapter 522 of the Acts of 1929, under the heading “Eastern Shore”: “Mayor William W. McCabe, Ocean City (1939).” McCabe had been voted out of the mayoralty in 1934 after twelve years, but he was still sitting on the state body for shore erosion, with a term running to 1939, alongside a State Roads commissioner. The Manual carries no municipal roster of any kind — there is no listing of any Maryland town's mayor and council in the volume — so Ocean City's own officers appear in it only through him. — 1936 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The Maryland Manual for 1936 names the delegation that sat through 1935-1937: Samuel E. Brimer of Stockton, Ralph R. Dennis of Ocean City and Clarence E. Robertson of Pocomoke City in the House, with Milton L. Veasey of Pocomoke City in the Senate. Maryland held no regular session in 1936 but two special ones, 4 March to 2 April and 8 to 12 December.

    Maryland Waterfront CommissionRalph R. DennisWilliam W. McCabe

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

15. 1935 · 1935-04-10

    Ocean City went on record calling the proposed Chesapeake Bay bridge a vital injury to the resort

    Over a report of the Annapolis hearing at which large Eastern Shore delegations opposed the proposed Chesapeake Bay bridge, the Salisbury Times of 10 April 1935 ran the headline stack “OCEAN CITY CALLS THE BRIDGE ‘VITAL INJURY’.” The body of the article is illegible on this scan and only the headline is recoverable. Read against the same year's other transport news — the town writing to the Public Service Commission for a bus line, Ocean City residents in the delegation that made the county commissioners reverse themselves on the Delaware-to-Virginia dual highway in October, and the citizens' committee programme of November asking that the Eastern Shore Boulevard be built “from both ends, Ocean City and the Sassafras River” — 1935 is the year Ocean City argued for every road that came to it and against the one that would carry people past it.

    Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

16. 1935 · 1935-08-23

    Twenty-one boardwalk establishments raided in one morning, eighteen slot machines seized — and some were broken up and thrown into the Pocomoke

    “Ocean City, Md., Aug. 23—(AP)—Ocean City's Boardwalk is still in place today but 18 of its numerous slot machines are missing. And, following raids on 21 of the boardwalk establishments, proprietors of the establishments are being held for grand jury action, some of them under bonds ranging up to $200 and some on their own recognizance. The wholesale raids came on the heels of a newspaper story depicting the activities of slot machine operators along the boardwalk.” They were ordered by State's Attorney Thomas F. Johnson of Worcester County after a conference with city and county officials. “The slot machines were taken to the Snow Hill jail. Some were broken up and tossed into the Pocomoke. Approximately $100 in cash taken from the machines was turned over to the county commissioners.” Johnson would not name those arrested pending the grand jury. The conference beforehand was attended by Johnson, Sheriff Ernest C. West, Deputies Crawford B. Hillman and Edwin Lynch, Constable J. William Hall, Mayor W. T. Elliott and Magistrate Ralph Parsons — the mayor of Ocean City sitting in on the planning of a raid on his own boardwalk in the last fortnight of the season. “The raids went off in orderly fashion. Sheriff West and Deputy Lynch confined their activities to the lower end of the boardwalk. Deputy Hillman took the middle and Constable Hall officiated at the north end.” The next day the Maryland State Police announced that with increased personnel officers had been permanently assigned to Ocean City, Berlin, Pocomoke and Princess Anne.

    Ocean City BoardwalkMaryland State Police

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

17. 1936 · 1936-01-01

    Who held office over Ocean City in 1936, from the Maryland Manual

    The Maryland Manual for 1936 gives Worcester County's officers: Thomas F. Johnson, State's Attorney; Bessie Bowen, Clerk of the Circuit Court; Paul Jones, Register of Wills; Ernest G. West, Sheriff; Roger W. Lankford, County Treasurer; County Commissioners Charles L. Mason, Samuel E. Shockley and Thomas Y. Franklin; Orphans' Court judges John H. Gillis, Isaac J. Davis and William S. Godfrey; and the office of County Surveyor vacant. Arthur C. Humphreys of Snow Hill was Superintendent of Schools and Dr. Bradford Massey of Pocomoke the County Health Officer. Ocean City's own appointees were Ralph B. Parsons, Justice of the Peace for the 10th District, and three notaries public - Virginia D. Ayres, Violet W. Taylor and Frank W. Truitt. Worcester sat in the First Judicial Circuit with Somerset, Dorchester and Wicomico under Chief Judge Benjamin A. Johnson of Salisbury. The Manual gives the county as 482.54 square miles with 21,624 people, 43.7 to the square mile - though the State Board of Health's tables for the same year give the area as 587 square miles.

    Sources disagree on this.

    Board of Education of Worcester CountyRalph B. Parsons

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

18. 1936 · 1936-03-17

    Ocean City had the only high school in Worcester County without a gymnasium, and in 1936 the town went to Snow Hill to ask for one

    A delegation of Ocean City residents representing the town's civic organisations - Dr. Charles W. Purnell, Capt. W. I. Purnell, Franklin Upshur and others - waited on the Board of County Commissioners at Snow Hill at five o'clock on Tuesday 17 March 1936 and asked for about $8,000 in the next annual levy toward a gymnasium annex at Ocean City High School, promising to raise the balance of the $11,000 estimated cost themselves. 'Every High School in Worcester County has gymnasium facilities except Ocean City, the Commissioners were informed.' The commissioners promised favourable action and asked for an accurate estimate and the Board of Education's approval; the June levy carried $5,000 for a Recreation School building at Ocean City, to be paid only if additional WPA or federal funds were secured. Two days after the delegation, the town's Parent-Teachers' Association appointed a Gymnasium Finance Committee and voted to ask the Board of Education to require all pupils in District 10 to attend the Ocean City school.

    Board of Education of Worcester CountyDr. Charles Washington PurnellCapt. William I. PurnellFranklin Upshur

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

19. 1936 · 1936-09-14

    Worcester County's white schools opened on 1 September 1936 and its colored schools on the 14th

    'Schools for white children in the county will open on Tuesday, September 1st, while those for colored students will open on September 14,' the Messenger reported on 13 August 1936; the announcement of the year's 31 high-school and 56 elementary teachers on 27 August gave the colored opening as 15 September. The county's 1936-37 levy carried $10,000 for new colored school buildings at Snow Hill and Berlin, $5,000 apiece and payable only when built, and $5,000 for a new Recreation School building at Ocean City payable only if additional WPA or federal funds were secured; the WPA project list of August 1936 included a $17,205 Pocomoke City Colored High School. That autumn Worcester County was paying 283 old-age pensions, about a hundred of them to Black people, of which fourteen went to Ocean City.

    Two weeks is not an administrative detail. It is the harvest calendar written into the school year for Black children only, and Worcester County printed it in the newspaper without comment.

    14 or 15 September - the same paper printed both a fortnight apart

    Board of Education of Worcester County

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

20. 1938 · 1938-01-01

    A new law gave Worcester County power over its dance halls on 1 January 1938, and eleven were licensed in the first three weeks

    'A law giving the county authority over dance halls became effective January 1st.' The county advertised at once, over the signature of B. T. Truitt, Jr., Secretary: 'All operators of public dance halls, boxing or wrestling arenas and tourist camps with cabins for hire' must apply. By 20 January the Democratic Messenger could report that 'Eleven owners of public dance halls and tourist camps with cabins have been granted permits to operate' under the new county law. For a county whose seaside resort had been running dance pavilions since the 1900s, and where a colored dance hall stood in South Ocean City in 1937 substantial enough to be used as a street direction, this is the first year in which every such hall in Worcester County had to hold a licence and be on a list.

    B. T. Truitt, Jr.

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

21. 1938 · 1938-01-13

    A walkathon was running in Worcester County in January 1938 without a permit, and Ocean City passed an ordinance to make sure it never got one

    The Depression's ugliest mass entertainment reached the lower Eastern Shore in the winter of 1937-38 - couples walking or dancing for days before a paying crowd until they dropped. On 13 January 1938 the Democratic Messenger reported that the Worcester County Commissioners 'have asked the State's Attorney and Sheriff to take necessary action to compel the operators of a walkathon endurance contest in the county, to apply for a permit to operate. The commissioners warned the walkathon Wednesday to ask a permit.' Five days later, at the first council meeting of the year on 18 January, Ocean City's clerk added a postscript beneath his own signature: 'Resolution was offered to prepare ordinance refusing any permit for Walkathon or Endurance Contest.' On 23 February the town passed it unanimously. The neighbouring contest did not last: on 24 February the paper reported from Salisbury that 'the walkathon, its employees convicted 114 times for violation of Maryland laws against work on Sunday, closed its doors last week after a checkered career.'

    Ocean City's first ordinance of 1938 was not a piece of pre-emptive priggishness. There was a walkathon a few miles away that the county could not stop and the courts could only harass, and the town wrote a law so that it could never be asked.

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

22. 1938 · 1938-08-11

    In the middle of the 1938 season the State's Attorney ordered all eight dance halls in Worcester County to stop dancing on Sundays

    'The State's Attorney also issued an ultimatum today to operators of eight dance halls in Worcester County, ordering all to stop any dancing on Sundays. Beer taverns, dance halls, and other establishments where dancing is permitted, including Public Landing and Ocean City places, were issued the warning.' It came eight months after the county acquired power to license dance halls and in the middle of the resort's peak fortnight. The eight are not named. Six months earlier a walkathon at Salisbury had closed after its employees were convicted 114 times of violating Maryland's laws against work on Sunday - which is the same statute, and shows what enforcement of it actually looked like.

    Source · checked 2026-08-11