Albert C. Ritchie

In the record (7)

1. 1925 · 1925-07-13

   Governors Ritchie of Maryland and Robinson of Delaware, two congressmen and a Virginia gubernatorial candidate all spoke at Ocean City in one evening, 13 July 1925.

   The Maryland Press Association and the Del-Mar-Via Press Association held their joint summer outing at Ocean City on 12–14 July 1925, more than eighty newspapermen, entertained free of charge by the Board of Trade and the hotel proprietors. Monday's meeting was in the auditorium of the State School building, decorated with flags and bunting; the address of welcome was made by Mayor William McCabe, with responses from Ridgely Melvin of Annapolis and Edwin H. Brown of Centreville, presidents of the two associations. State Comptroller William S. Gordy, Jr. "explained why the several counties had not received their full quota of school funds." Charles A. Carter of the Colonial Hotel, "a former western newspaper man," welcomed the visitors for the hotel men; "The formal welcome on behalf of the Board of Trade was made by Dr. Charles W. Purnell, its president, and also proprietor of the Atlantic Hotel." At noon the party took a motor-boat cruise down Sinepuxent Bay to the inlet, "enlivened by a jazz orchestra," and landed at "Eagle's Nest," the bayside lodge of W. H. Kearfott about three miles below the town, for a crab feast on the lawn. In the evening Governor Albert C. Ritchie of Maryland and Governor Robert P. Robinson of Delaware spoke, with Congressmen T. Alan Goldsborough and John Philip Hill; G. Walter Mapp, candidate for governor of Virginia, was also on the programme. The invitation had been extended the previous January at Salisbury by Clarence L. Vincent, editor of the Snow Hill Democratic Messenger, and the associations chose Crisfield for 1926.

   Two sitting governors, two congressmen and a would-be third governor, on a beach that fifty years earlier had one hotel and no road.

   Atlantic HotelMaryland Press AssociationDel-Mar-Via Press AssociationBoard of Trade of Ocean CityRobert P. RobinsonT. Alan GoldsboroughWilliam W. McCabeDr. Charles Washington PurnellW. H. KearfottCharles A. Carter

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

2. 1926 · 1926-01-01

   There is no 1926 session of the Maryland General Assembly — the Assembly moved to odd years, and the town had nobody in Annapolis to ask.

   Archives of Maryland Online's index of session-laws volumes runs, without a gap in its own numbering: item 313, '1924, Jan. 2 – 1924, Mar. 31, Regular Session'; item 314, '1927, Jan. 5 – 1927, Apr. 4, Regular Session'; item 315, '1929'. There is no 1925 and no 1926 session, regular or special, and no Acts of 1926 volume. This breaks a standing assumption of this research campaign — that Maryland legislated biennially in EVEN years through this era — which is true from the 1860s to 1924 and false afterwards. The practical consequence for Ocean City is that everything the town might have wanted from the state in 1926 had to wait for January 1927: any further amendment of the charter after the four acts of 1924, and above all the money for the inlet jetties that Governor Ritchie had vetoed out of Chapter 347 of 1924. The State Roads Commission's timber jetty of 1924 had been built out of highway funds after that veto, and in 1926 the county paper reports the jetties are working — but there was no legislature sitting to pay for more.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

3. 1926 · 1926-09-28

   The Claiborne–Annapolis Ferry puts a new Diesel boat named for Governor Ritchie on the bay — eighty automobiles a trip, and an hour instead of ninety minutes.

   Worcester Democrat, 10 July 1926: 'High frequency ferry service between Annapolis and Claiborne will be greatly augmented with the maiden trip of the new commodious vessel on the line July 15, according to B. Frank Sherman, general manager of the Claiborne-Annapolis Ferry, Inc. The new ferry boat will be the largest in the Bay service, it is said, with a capacity of 3000 passengers and 70 automobiles. The boat is of the double end type, avoiding the necessity of turning the autos on board. Motive power is furnished by four Diesel engines... The speed of the new boat is much greater than that of the other ferries, requiring but an hour for a trip that ordinarily consumed an hour and a half.' The first hull had been lost: on 17 April the paper reported it 'wrecked in Long Island Sound during a heavy blow' while under tow from Connecticut to Brooklyn, 'pronounced a total loss'. The boat that finally entered service is advertised in the paper of 25 September: 'FALL SCHEDULE IN EFFECT, SEPT. 28, 1926... Our new ferry boat, the 'Gov. Albert C. Ritchie' will run this schedule. Capacity — 80 automobiles and trucks, 1200 passengers.' In the same season in which the Pennsylvania Railroad stopped underwriting the railway to Ocean City, the road to Ocean City got a bigger boat.

   Claiborne-Annapolis Ferry, Inc.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

4. 1927

   Ocean City donates twelve building lots and the General Assembly asks Ritchie for $15,000 to build the Governor of Maryland a summer home on them.

   Joint Resolution No. 28 of 1927, approved 26 April 1927: "A Joint Resolution of the General Assembly of Maryland requesting the Governor to prepare a supplementary budget authorizing the appropriation of Fifteen Thousand Dollars ($15,000.00) for building and furnishing a summer home for the Governor of Maryland on an ocean front site at Ocean City, Maryland, donated for said purpose. WHEREAS, Ocean City is Maryland's only seashore resort, where thousands of citizens from Baltimore and all parts of Maryland reside during the summer and large numbers go for week-end outings for health and rest, being recognized by health authorities as one of the best health resorts for bathing on the Atlantic Coast, and is easily reached by concrete roads from all the Eastern States; and WHEREAS, Citizens of Ocean City have donated for the purpose six building lots on the ocean front and Baltimore avenue and six building lots on Baltimore avenue and Maryland avenue, extending to the Maryland Highway; therefore, be it Resolved by the General Assembly of Maryland, That the Governor be and he is hereby requested to prepare at once and submit to the General Assembly a supplementary budget authorizing the appropriation of Fifteen Thousand Dollars ($15,000.00) for building and furnishing a cottage on said land at Ocean City, for the use of the Governor of Maryland as a summer home." NOTHING CAME OF IT. The 1929 session passed thirteen joint resolutions and the volume's own printed Index to Joint Resolutions lists every one; none concerns Ocean City or a governor's cottage. The only summer home in the volume is Joint Resolution No. 5, memorialising Congress to site the PRESIDENT's summer home in Maryland.

   Twelve donated lots on Baltimore Avenue — a block and a half from where the power plant burned — offered to the state to plant a governor on. It is the boldest civic advertisement the town ever attempted, and the resolution's preamble is a Board of Trade brochure with a seal on it. Whether Ritchie ever submitted the budget, or the cottage was ever built, no source found says.

   Board of Trade of Ocean City

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

5. 1929

   Nothing came of the governor's summer home: the 1929 General Assembly's thirteen joint resolutions do not mention Ocean City, and the only summer home it asks for is the President's.

   Joint Resolution No. 28 of 1927 had asked Governor Ritchie to submit a supplementary budget appropriating $15,000 to build and furnish a cottage for the Governor's use at Ocean City, on twelve building lots donated by citizens on the ocean front, Baltimore Avenue and Maryland Avenue. The printed INDEX TO JOINT RESOLUTIONS in the 1929 volume lists all thirteen resolutions of that session — copyright law, elections, a home for the aged, legislative reference, motor vehicles twice, oysters, Judge Pattison, Pulaski, social welfare and the rest — and not one concerns Ocean City. The only summer home in the volume is Joint Resolution No. 5, approved 8 March 1929, memorialising Congress to select a site in Maryland for the summer home of the President of the United States.

   The boldest civic advertisement Ocean City ever attempted simply stops appearing. Two years after twelve Baltimore Avenue lots were offered to plant a governor on, the legislature that asked for the cottage spent its resolution lobbying Washington for a presidential one instead.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

6. 1931 · 1931-07-13

   Governor Ritchie comes back for the Maryland Automobile Trade Association's second convention, and a Pennsylvania commissioner warns from an Ocean City platform that fast cars may be banned.

   Washington Times, 13 and 14 July 1931, datelined Ocean City: "Solution of the used car problem and the future of the annual save-a-life campaign are two matters of national interest to be discussed before the second annual convention of the Maryland Automobile Trade Association." The next day, under "FAST CARS CURTAILED, DEALERS TOLD — Commissioner Eynon Utters Warning at Ocean City, Md.; Gov. Ritchie Guest Tonight": Benjamin G. Eynon, Pennsylvania's motor vehicle commissioner, told the dealers that "the day may come when the people, tired of reckless driving and automobile accidents, will demand that manufacture of cars capable of excessive speed shall be stopped", and that "no one denies that the brewers, distillers and saloon keepers, in a large measure, brought the prohibitory laws upon themselves." The Eastern Shore of Maryland Association of Optometrists held its SIXTH annual convention at Ocean City in August, electing Dr. Fred J. Wright vice-president.

   The convention trade is what the town has in the trough, exactly as in 1930 and 1932 — and in 1931 the motor age is holding its own conference on the boardwalk of a resort that a railway excursion still took six hours to reach.

   Eastern Shore of Maryland Association of Optometrists

   Source · checked 2026-08-10

7. 1931 · 1931-10-12

   On the night of Monday 12 October 1931 Euel Lee is taken "in the negro section of Ocean City, Md.", and by Tuesday a mob of two thousand is round the Snow Hill jail.

   Green K. Davis, his wife Iva and their daughters Elizabeth, 15, and Mary Lee, 13, were found shot and axed in their beds at Taylorsville, on the Berlin-Ocean City highway, on Monday 12 October 1931. The Milford Chronicle of 16 October: "Early Monday night the authorities received word that a man answering the description of Jones had been arrested IN THE NEGRO SECTION OF OCEAN CITY, MD. SHERIFF PURNELL AND STATE'S ATTORNEY CHILD went to Ocean City and returned with the prisoner" — with $70 including gold pieces, rings and a pocketbook identified as the Davis family's. The Washington Times of 13 October, from Snow Hill: "Angered by failure of Pocomoke county authorities to obtain a confession from Orphan Jones, 55-year-old negro... a mob of 2,000 persons surrounded the county jail here this afternoon and demanded lynching of the negro." He was moved to the Baltimore city jail. On 18 November the Washington Times reported "a company of State militia, traveling in three busses, and a detail of 25 State policemen" escorting him to Cambridge for trial, "as much to protect [Bernard] Ades as to guard Lee against mob feeling", after Governor Ritchie promised "the negro would be adequately protected". The Communist Daily Worker, 15 and 16 October, called it "a brazen frame-up", reported the International Labor Defense denied access, and said a deputy warden told its attorney Lee was being "patched up" as he had been "busted up" the day before.

   The 1932 pass reconstructed this case from its trials. 1931 has its beginning, and the beginning is an Ocean City story: an arrest in a part of the town the papers name only as "the negro section", made by the county sheriff in person, and a lynch mob two thousand strong twenty miles inland. The case would end by putting Black names on every jury list in Maryland.

   International Labor DefenseEuel LeeBernard Ades

   Source · checked 2026-08-10