Alexander Jackson
lawyer, Ocean City · b. 1880
A lawyer in private practice living at house 905 Atlantic Avenue, Ocean City, in April 1940 — 60 years old, widowed, born in Maryland, owner of a house valued at $5,000, with two sons, a daughter, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law, a grandson and a servant, Beatrice Purnell, 23, in the house. His son Robert, 26, is the likeliest candidate for the 'Bob Jackson' whom the Ocean City council made one of its two Air Wardens on 11 December 1941.
In the record (1)
1940 · 1940-04-01
All sixty-two sheets of the 1940 census for Ocean City and West Ocean City have now been read, and they show what the town's minute book never says: Black households living inside the corporate limits, street by street, alongside white ones.
The 1940 pass reached six of the sixty-two manuscript sheets for enumeration districts 24-22, 24-23, 24-24 and 24-25 and produced the campaign's first named Black households — three of them, on the last block of South Division Street. All sixty-two have now been read. The picture is an order of magnitude larger. Inside the incorporated town, on sheet after sheet of ED 24-22, Black householders rent for six and seven dollars a month between white neighbours: William Pitts, 64, with two lodgers, Agnes Hill, 65, a widow, and William Campbell, 54, born in Georgia; Linton Robbins, 38, and his wife Mary, 37, with three Dennis step-children; George Slowell, 37; Samuel Dennis, 63, and his wife Alice, 51, born in Florida, with a boarder, Emma Brittingham, 19; Louisa Cherry, 49, with her cousin Mary Robbins, a lodger Otis Williams from Virginia and her grandson Earnest Schaffner, 4; Henry Morris, 35, with a housekeeper, Jennie Adkins, 45; Robert Armstrong, 22, and his wife Gladys, 20; John Dennis, 20, and his wife Paulina, 20, with a two-year-old and a one-year-old. And Black women and men are entered as servants in the white houses of the town's officers — Roketta Scott, 28, and Chancil Whittington, 23, in John B. Lynch's house at 1404 Baltimore Avenue; Beatrice Purnell, 23, in Alexander Jackson's on Atlantic Avenue; Edward Purnell in Virginia Ayres's; Maggie Jones, 34, at John S. Townsend's; Flossie Ross, 36, and George B. Ross, 37, at Joseph Mann's. Across the bay in West Ocean City, ED 24-24 is a sustained Black farming and fishing community running unbroken over a dozen sheets — Thomas H. Purnell, 42, and Ida M., 37, with nine children; William S. Davis, 69, and Hester, 61; Arzie L. Dennis, 37, and Persis W.; John W. Kennis, 55, and Mamie J., 52, with six children and a nephew; Elwood Fooks, 32, and Eliza, 31, with six; Harry Henry, 28, and Carrie, 25; and at the head of household 224, renting for three dollars a month, Margaret Reed, 58, a widow born in Texas — a schoolteacher, and the only Black professional the campaign has yet found in this place.
Margaret ReedLinton RobbinsLouisa CherryJohn B. Lynch
Source · checked 2026-08-11