Albert C. Carey
Ocean City councilman · active 1896–
Elected to the Ocean City city council at the biennial election of May 4, 1896 — the only one of the four winners who actually lived in the town, his two colleagues being Baltimoreans and the third a Berlin contractor. The Careys were an Ocean City family of the period: Edward A. Carey of Ocean City was appointed a deputy game warden for Worcester County by Governor Lowndes in June 1896, and Edward J. Carey of Ocean City was appointed a special policeman in the central district of Baltimore in August. — 1897 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: The Official Register for 1 July 1897 lists an 'Albert C. Carey' as a surfman at the Ocean City life-saving station, Maryland-born, appointed from Worcester County, at $60 a month — fourteen months after an Albert C. Carey was elected to the Ocean City city council as the only one of the four winners actually resident in the town, and nine months before Surfman Albert C. Carey dived fully clothed into the surf to save William J. Purnell in the April 1898 dory disaster. The 1898 pass asked whether the surfman and the councilman were the same man. This does not prove it, but it puts the same name on the station payroll in the same years, and a serving councilman on the beach patrol is now the most economical reading. Do not merge the records without a census or payroll check.
In the record (3)
1897 · 1897-07-01
The Ocean City life-saving crew, named for the first time: Keeper Joshua J. Dunton at $900 a year and seven Worcester County surfmen at $60 a month.
The roster the campaign has been owed for five years, from the Official Register of the United States for 1 July 1897 (Vol. I, "Life-Saving Service at Large", Fifth District, pp. 289–290). Keeper Joshua J. Dunton, born Virginia, appointed from Worcester County, Maryland, $900.00 a year. Surfmen, in the order printed: Baldwin F. Williams, John S. Pruitt, William Taylor, Robert C. Quillin, Albert C. Carey, Thomas B. Birch — each at $60.00 a month — and Samuel J. Massey at $65.00. All seven were Maryland-born Worcester County men. The register has no rank column; the $5 premium is how the No. 1 surfman (the boat-steerer) is identified in every other station block on the same page, so Massey is very probably the No. 1 surfman, but the document does not print the rank. The same pages give the two other Maryland stations: North Beach under Keeper John A. J. Hudson, and Green Run Inlet under Keeper Adelbert Soper — the man Dunton had swapped posts with in April 1892. Fifth District Superintendent Benjamin S. Rich sat at Daugherty, Va., at $1,600. Assateague Beach is listed under Virginia, and Maryland has exactly three stations in 1897; Isle of Wight, added in FY1898, is the fourth.
Eight men held the ocean front of Maryland, all of them from the county, six of them paid the same sixty dollars a month. This is what the town's only public institution actually consisted of.
United States Life-Saving ServiceCapt. Joshua J. Dunton
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1898 · 1898-04-13
Two sturgeon fishermen drown on the bar half a mile below the life-saving station; surfman Albert C. Carey takes out a second dory and dives, fully clothed, to save a sinking man.
At about 6.20 on the morning of 13 April 1898 a dory carrying Charles W. Powell, Frank Parker, William J. Purnell and Joshua Quillin capsized on the bar some 150 yards offshore, half a mile south-southwest of the Ocean City Life-Saving Station, Fifth District, coast of Maryland. The crew fished sturgeon for a local firm; the weather was clear with a light northwest breeze but the surf was too high for a fishing boat. Surfman Albert C. Carey, on patrol to the southward, saw two dories preparing to launch, ran to argue them out of it, and reached the second boat only as the first swamped. He asked leave to take charge of the second dory; Thomas Richardson and John W. Quillin went with him. They pulled Joshua Quillin aboard, then reached William J. Purnell, who had already sunk two or three feet below the surface — 'Carey now rose up, and with all his clothes upon him dived boldly into the water beneath the sinking man and bore him to the surface and alongside the boat.' Purnell was resuscitated on the sand and moved to the station; Keeper Dunton and the crew took over the care of the rescued men and telegraphed for Dr. Edwin J. Dirickson of the Marine-Hospital Service at Berlin. Powell's body was recovered from the surf about a mile below the station, tangled in the seine; Parker's two days later, six miles south. Dr. Dirickson wrote to the General Superintendent on 21 April commending Carey's 'noble effort... at the imminent peril of his own life.' The Wilmington Evening Journal carried the story from Ocean City on 14 April.
The service's own annual report calls Carey's judgment 'faultless.' If he is the Albert C. Carey elected to the city council in 1896 — the only resident on that board — then the town's councilman spent the following spring diving under a drowning man in an April surf.
United States Life-Saving ServiceCapt. Joshua J. DuntonEdwin J. Dirickson
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1903 · 1903-05-09
In 1903 a Baltimore Avenue corner lot in Block 1 North was advertised at $400 on terms, while the county's land records show whole Ocean City lots changing hands for $90 to $380.
The Snow Hill real-estate agent O. M. Purnell ran the same three-line advertisement all summer: "$400 will buy Baltimore Avenue Corner lot in Block 1, N., Ocean City, on time to suit purchaser." The Worcester County land records, printed monthly in the same paper, give the transactions behind it: on 9 May, "Oscar M. Purnell from Thomas W. Jenkins, 2 lots at Ocean City. Consideration $380," and "John E. Lynch, from Abigail Keen, Lot No. 160, Ocean City. Consideration $90"; on 7 February, "John D. Showell, from Edwin F. Abell et al., two lots in Ocean City. Consideration $250." In March, "T. M. Purnell, Esq., has purchased the lot on Baltimore Avenue, adjoining his cottage at Ocean City, of Thos. W. Jenkins, of Baltimore." At the other end of the ledger, the town was selling lots for unpaid corporation taxes: James H. Mumford, Collector of Corporation Taxes for Ocean City, advertised lot No. 7 in Block 17 North (assessed to Miss Mary M. Semmes, taxes of 1900 and 1901 in arrears) and lots 196, 200, 203 and 205 North (assessed to Albert C. Carey, taxes of 1901) for sale on the premises on 7 February 1903, and lot No. 3 in Block 6 South (assessed to George W. Hoffman) for 13 June. Compare 1899, when Waggaman's lots sold at $105 to $385 [fact:1899-waggaman-owns-the-town].
Thomas W. JenkinsJames H. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-06