History

Budd S. Ford

steamboat president and Maryland state senator · 1840–1879

Born in Salem, New Jersey on March 2, 1840. A wholesale drug clerk, then a steamer clerk and captain on the Chester River, he founded the Chester River Steamboat Company and served as its president and general business manager. He sat in the Maryland House of Delegates for Queen Anne's County from 1872 to 1874 and in the Maryland Senate from 1876 to 1878, as a Democrat. He drowned in the surf in front of the Atlantic Hotel at Ocean City on the afternoon of July 20, 1879, aged 39, and is buried at North East Methodist Cemetery. He is the first named person known to have died in the water at Ocean City.

Ocean City's first documented drowning was not an anonymous bather. It was a sitting-era state senator and a steamboat man — someone who knew water — and thousands of people on the beach watched it happen.

In the record (1)

  1. 1879 · 1879-07-20

    July 20, 1879: former state senator Budd S. Ford drowns in the surf in front of the Atlantic Hotel while thousands watch from the beach.

    At five o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, Hon. Budd S. Ford of Queen Anne's County — Maryland House of Delegates 1872-1874, Maryland Senate 1876-1878, and president and general business manager of the Chester River Steamboat Company — went into the surf with Mrs. E. B. Emory, wife of a Centreville gentleman, from a bench where he had been sitting among "a group of chatting friends." A correspondent's letter datelined Ocean City, July 20 and reprinted as far away as Richmond described the result: "Thousands of people lining the beach in front of the Atlantic Hotel, spellbound with horror, witnessed a strong man's vain battle with the sea, and as noble an exhibition of heroism and courage as that which gave immortality to the name of Leonidas." Ford was 39. He was buried at North East Methodist Cemetery. Two years earlier the resort's own advertising had told Wilmington readers that Ocean City, unlike Cape May, had "no such dread" of an undertow.

    Atlantic HotelChester River Steamboat Company

    Source · checked 2026-08-06