E. Raymond Bounds

councilman, Ocean City; garbage contractor · active 1938–

Bid $26.50 a day to haul Ocean City's summer garbage on 31 May 1938 and lost the contract by a dollar fifty. Nine weeks later he was elected to the town council with 216 votes, second of six candidates for three seats, and was sworn in on 12 September. In October the council he now sat on granted him a permit to remodel a garage into stores and apartments. — 1940 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: role / activeYears / bio: councilman, Ocean City; garbage contractor; activeYears '1938-' → councilman of Ocean City 1938-1942 and President of the City Council from 2 January 1940; garbage contractor — He was elected President of the City Council on the afternoon of 2 January 1940, to the chair Clifford P. Cropper vacated on becoming mayor, and held it through the year and into the new term - his signature 'E. R. BOUNDS, President of the City Council' is on the engrossed ordinance of 15 January 1940 repealing the town's grant of North Division and Caroline Streets to the State Roads Commission, and on Irving Faustin's building permit of 24 October 1940. He seconded the nomination that made Cropper mayor, undertook to secure the new county assessments the town was required by law to adopt, moved the borrowing resolutions of April and November, polled 189 votes at the election of 5 August 1940 - second highest of five candidates for three seats - and was re-elected President by the new council on 10 September. — 1944 FULL PASS, 2026-08-12: RESIGNED FROM THE OCEAN CITY COUNCIL ON 3 AUGUST 1944, FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION IN WHICH HE DID NOT STAND. His typed letter is bound into the minutes of 7 August 1944: 'Gentlemen kindly accept my resignation from being a member of your Council as of August 3 1944, AS my duties are of such nature they so compel me too.' The resignation was noted on 12 August and read to the council on 9 September. Earlier that year, on 15 February 1944, he had applied as a sitting councilman for a chicken-dressing plant in the old laundry building on Talbot Street and a hall of about twenty-two citizens voted against it.

In the record (50)

1938 · 1938-05-31
Five men bid to haul Ocean City's summer garbage for ninety-one days in 1938, and the cheapest won at $25 a day
'Bids for hauling garbage from June 16 to Sept 14 inclusive 91 days were opened & were: Raymond Bounds 26.50 per day; Geo H Jones 25.00; L J Clark 28.95; J H Trimble 28.00; C P Cropper 29.00. Mr. Jones was awarded the Contract.' Two of the five bidders were elected to the town council nine weeks later. The winter contract was let separately on 6 September: Ralph Trimble at $7.75 a day, George Jones at $7.50, and Jones took that too. The summer rate is fifty cents up on 1937's $24.50; the winter rate is identical to 1937's $7.50. Ocean City's garbage in 1938 therefore cost $2,275 for the summer season and about three-tenths as much a day for the other nine months - the sharpest single number the record gives for how completely the town emptied after Labor Day.
George Jones Clifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-08-01
Ocean City turned out its mayor of four years in August 1938 and elected its own lawyer, on 323 votes cast between two o'clock and six
The minute of 1 August 1938 records 'A Special town Election was held in Firemans Building for purpose of Electing one person for mayor and three persons for Councilmen to serve two Years'. The returns, filed by the election judges Stephen J. Quillen, Horace O. Cropper and Williams, were: 'For Edmund H Johnson for Mayor 323 Votes. Harold J Rayne for Councilman 219 Votes. E Raymond Bounds 216. C.P. Cropper 199. John D Ayres 149. C Parker Smith 136. Dr. Francis J Townsend 154. No other Votes were Cast. Election held from 2 O'Clock P.M. Until 6 O'Clock P.M.' Six men ran for three council seats and the sitting councilman, Dr. Francis J. Townsend, came fourth and lost. W. Thomas Elliott, mayor since 1934, does not appear on the return at all - no votes were cast for him, and he did not stand. The man who replaced him was the town's own solicitor, Edmond H. Johnson, who nine weeks earlier had been appointed the council's attorney to collect Ocean City's share of the Worcester County liquor profits and had been paid $915 for the work on 31 May.
A four-hour poll in the firehouse, 323 votes, and the resort changed hands. Ocean City did not so much elect an outsider as promote its lawyer - and the councilman who had spent the year pushing sanitary ordinances the council would not second was the one the voters removed.
Edmond H. Johnson W. Thomas Elliott Harold J. Rayne Clifford P. Cropper Francis J. Townsend Stephen J. Quillen Horace O. Cropper C. Parker Smith
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-09-12
The new mayor of Ocean City was sworn in with a bouquet of flowers and a wish for a 'Successful and Harmony Administration'
'The new Mayor & Council met Promptly at 8 O'Clock P.M. and were sworn in by Magistrate Stephen J. Quillen. Soon as the Ceremony was completed the New Mayor Ed[mond] Johnson was presented with a large Boquet of Flowers by several ladies and gentlemen who expressed their desire to Mayor Johnson and members of Council for a Successful and Harmony Administration.' The councilmen sworn were Clifford P. Cropper, E. Raymond Bounds and Harold J. Rayne. Cropper was unanimously elected President of the Council and Rayne Treasurer; J. M. Mumford was reappointed City Clerk to June 1939; and William H. Scott, who had sat as a councilman under Elliott, was named City Attorney - so the outgoing solicitor became mayor and an outgoing councilman became solicitor. The council's printed letterhead by 20 October reads: EDMOND H. JOHNSON, Mayor; WILLIAM H. SCOTT, Solicitor; J. M. MUMFORD, Sec.-Treas.; COUNCILMEN: CLIFFORD P. CROPPER, Pres.; HAROLD J. RAYNE, Sec.-Treas.; E. RAYMOND BOUNDS.
Edmond H. Johnson Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne William H. Scott Stephen J. Quillen J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-11-22
On 22 November 1938 Ocean City's council unanimously refused a permit for a Colored Recreation Hall, after six named white neighbours objected
The application ran seven months and three meetings. On 4 April the council told Charles C. Richards to apply again on the proper form and it would notify every owner and set a hearing. On 10 November his application was 'Continued'. On the evening of 22 November it was the first item of business, and the minute is exact: 'Mr. Richards was present and explained he want to use the property for Colored Recreation Hall. Property owners objected by letter were Nancy Truitt & Ida Corey. And the following were present in Person Objecting to Granting of permit, Will Quillen and Windsor Resort. Council promised Mr. Richards they would decide on application within a week and before adjourning unanimously decided to Refuse permit.' Two letters, two men in the room, and a company. Counting the April objectors, six parties are named against the hall across the year - Trimper Bros., Mrs. Charles Hudson, Mrs. Nancy Truitt, Ida Corey, Will Quillen and the Windsor Resort - and not one person is recorded as speaking for it except Richards himself. The council did not even take the week it had just promised. — 1938 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: THE SILENCE IS NOW MEASURED ACROSS A SECOND COMPLETE NEWSPAPER. The 1938 pass established that the refusal appears in none of the 588 pages of the Democratic Messenger. It appears in none of the 704 harvested pages of the Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise (sn89060127) either: the phrase 'recreation hall' returns ZERO pages, 'colored hotel' ZERO, 'colored dance' ZERO, 'Henry Hotel' ZERO, and the only 'Ludlam' in the 1938 run is a white Charles Ludlam of Ocean City whose wife was a Red Cross chairman for the town in November 1938. It also appears nowhere in the 1939 Ocean City minute book, in any of the 25 documents and 47 pages read: Charles C. Richards is not mentioned once in 1939, there is no second application, no appeal, and no permit for any recreation hall to anybody. AND IT IS ABSENT FROM THE BLACK PRESS TOO: a sweep of 59 located 1939 issues of the Baltimore Afro-American with 2,537 queries returns ZERO hits for Ludlam, Sam Ludlam or 'excursion Ocean City', and the seven Charles C. Richards hits spot-checked were column-break false positives.
This is the clearest thing the campaign has ever found about how segregation actually worked in Ocean City, and it is not a sign on a door. It is a building permit, a hearing, a list of neighbours, and a unanimous vote - the ordinary machinery of a small town's planning power, turned on a Black social hall and used to stop it.
Windsor Resort Company Charles C. Richards Mrs. Nancy Truitt Ida Corey Will Quillen Edmond H. Johnson Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-11-22
Ocean City granted at least twenty-two building permits in 1938 and, for the first time in the campaign's record, refused four
The permits, as the minute book lists them: Atwood & Lynch, Collins Ayres and one other at Philadelphia Avenue and Fifth and Third Streets (23 February); John W. Burbage on Twelfth Street (14 March); Magee Oil Co. on Somerset Street, Chas. W. Purnell at the Post Office, and Ruth Kubit on Eighth Street (4 April); Mr. and Mrs. Salvatore Rousevalle at Baltimore Avenue and Ninth, Edward Evans on the west side of Philadelphia Avenue at Seventh, and Dr. C. W. Purnell at the Boardwalk and Wicomico Street (12 April); L. W. Farlow in the Ninth Street alley and Collins Ayres a small house behind his own on Fifth (10 May); Joe H[eckmott], Mrs. Jane B. Townsend, Clarence Carey a garage, Charles S. Powell an addition to a hotel, J. P. Whaley a garage, and Raymond Bounds to remodel a garage into stores and apartments (14 October); Parker Smith and Evans Development (10 November); an addition to a restaurant building and a bungalow (22 November). What is new is the refusals. Thomas Shill's shed at the corner of Ninth was rejected on 10 May after six neighbours objected. Sam Ayres withdrew an application for a chicken house on 14 October rather than have it voted on. On 22 November the council refused Charles C. Richards's Colored Recreation Hall, refused Nathan Rapport's application to move a building opposite South Division Street on Atlantic Avenue, and refused Edward Evans a wood shingle roof.
Clarence Carey Charles C. Richards Dr. Charles Washington Purnell Edward Evans
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-02-03
Ocean City opened bids for 30,000 feet of boardwalk lumber in 1939 and awarded the contract to a sitting councilman
The minute of 3 February 1939 records bids for supplying 30 M. feet of lumber: the Adkins Company $22.50, Samp West $21.50, R. H. Powell $22.00, and Raymond Bounds $21.00. 'Contract awarded Raymond Bounds.' E. Raymond Bounds had topped no poll but was one of the three sitting councilmen, and he seconded most of the year's motions. He was low bidder by a dollar and a half a thousand.
He was the cheapest, the bids were opened in public, and the minute records it without a flicker. That is the point: in a town of this size the councilman who sells you the boardwalk is also the councilman who votes on the boardwalk, and 1939 saw nothing to remark on in it.
The Adkins Company
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-05-23
Ocean City sold $10,000 of sewerage bonds in May 1939 to run lateral sewers off the plant it had just built
Chapter 269 of the Acts of 1939 (House Bill 598), approved 13 April as an emergency law, empowered the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City to issue coupon bonds to the amount of ten thousand dollars 'for the purpose of improving the sewerage system of said town by construction of lateral sewers to connect with the sewerage disposal system recently completed in Ocean City under a Public Works Administration project'. They were to be styled 'Ocean City Sewerage and Improvement Bonds of 1939'. The council passed the sale ordinance on 18 April, coupons dated 1 May and 1 November and one bond retiring each year from 1940 to 1949 inclusive. Bids were opened at the meeting of Tuesday 23 May: Marburg, Price & Co. 101.699; Mackubin, Legg & Co. 103.2799; Stein Bros. & Boyce 103.939. On Rayne's motion, seconded by Bounds, the sale was made to Stein Bros. & Boyce.
The plant was finished in 1937 and the town spent 1938 discovering it could compel people to connect to it. 1939 is the year it borrowed to build the pipes that would let them - which is to say the sewer took three years and three separate acts of will, and the order was backwards throughout.
Stein Bros. & Boyce Harold J. Rayne Clark Gardner
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-07-18
Ocean City priced bingo at $500 a season, then cut it to $150 when it was pointed out that bingo could only pay off in merchandise
Both 1939 licence schedules carry, under concessions, 'Bingo, Radio, Fortune, Keno, Po-Keno and similar games $500.00' - by a wide margin the highest fee in the ordinance, more than three times the $150 for a night club and ten times the $50 for a circus. On 18 July Dale Showell came before the council asking that the licences on theatres and bingo be reduced. The minute: 'After Considering the Licence on Bingo and the method which had to be of paying off with Mdse. only the Council decided fair to amend the Licence ordinance' - and on Rayne's motion, seconded by Bounds, item 11 was amended to read $150 instead of $500, with a new sub-head 11B covering 'Game Known as penny Boards' at $100. Passed unanimously.
Five hundred dollars was not a fee, it was a discouragement - the price you set when you would rather the thing did not happen. What changed the council's mind was not principle but arithmetic: a game that can only pay out in merchandise cannot carry a gambling-sized licence. The town wanted the amusement and had accidentally taxed it as a vice.
Harold J. Rayne
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-09-19
Ocean City's council voted $250 for a radio broadcast in September 1939 and the mayor vetoed it
The minute of 19 September 1939: 'C. P. Cropper offered Resolution, seconded by R. Bounds that City pay Broadcasting Station the Sum of $250.00 on program that was sent from Ocean City. Vote was taken and passed by Council, then Vetoed by Mayor Johnson.' The same meeting refused James D. Jarman's bill for salary as the town's fishing press agent while paying his $87.36 of expenses, and settled a boardwalk injury claim by Mrs. V. E. Landon - who had fallen on 24 August - by offering her $25; she held out and was paid $50 on 24 October.
Three months later Johnson resigned. This is the only recorded veto of his mayoralty in 1939 and it was aimed at the one line of the budget the council never stopped feeding - advertising, which had already taken $250 for an outdoor show in January, $500 at Annapolis in March, $600 for the Chamber of Commerce office in May and would take $300 for a show in New York in December.
Edmond H. Johnson Clifford P. Cropper James D. Jarman Capt. Crawford Savage
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-10-24
Ocean City contracted for four new artesian wells in October 1939 and deliberately took the cheaper bid without the guarantee
Bids for drilling new wells at the north pump station were opened on 24 October. M. A. Pentz of Denton bid $3.00 a foot for a 6-inch well and $14.00 for screen. The Artesian Well Drilling Co. of Philadelphia bid $3.25 a foot on the well and $13.00 a foot on screen, guaranteeing 1,000 gallons a minute on four wells. The Shannahan Artesian Well Co. Inc. of St Michaels bid $3.40 a foot with screens at $10.75, on a guarantee of 1,000 gallons a minute - or, alternatively, $2.35 a foot on well and $10.75 on screen 'for each foot not guaranteed'. On C. P. Cropper's motion, seconded by Bounds, 'Contract was awarded Shannahan on non guaranteed Basis'. The specification had gone out on 3 October: four wells to supply 250 gallons a minute each. — 1940 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The four wells contracted in October 1939 on the cheaper, non-guaranteed bid were not enough. On 15 January 1940 the council unanimously resolved 'that the well contractor drive a fifth well to supply a sufficient quantity of water to the water tank at the south end of the town.' The cost then drove the tax rate: the minute of 8 July 1940 raises the rate to $1.20 partly because 'the cost of the new wells for north Pump Station would have to be carried over for 1940' and notes had been given to pay for them.
The council took a dollar and five cents a foot off the price by giving up the guarantee that the wells would produce water. In a town whose budget sheet that summer showed three years of uncollected water rent, that is not thrift so much as a bet.
Shannahan Artesian Well Co. Inc.Clifford P. Cropper William H. Scott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1940 · 1940-07-08
Ocean City put its tax rate up to $1.20 in July 1940 and wrote down exactly why: the county's assessment came in lower than the town's, and the new wells still had to be paid for
The council met at three on Monday afternoon 8 July 1940 and discussed the rate. The minute is unusually explicit about the arithmetic behind it: 'finding that the assessment was considerably lower by taking the County assessment, even with the properties built in 1939 added, and that the cost of the new wells for north Pump Station would have to be carried over for 1940, it was necessary to increase the rate to care for retiring the notes given to pay for the wells and expense of water & new pump.' On Rayne's motion, seconded by Bounds, 'the tax rate for 1940 was made $1.20 per hundred assessment,' and the clerk was instructed to send the bills out accordingly. Five assessments were ordered on to the books the same afternoon, including a hotel at $1,500 in the names of Minnie Hearn Jones and Marvin Elgin, two entries for Dr. F. J. Townsend at $2,900 and $5,750, and $7,000 of stock for Harry J. Cropper. — 1941 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The rate held. On 12 May 1941, on Harold Rayne's motion seconded by Robert L. Cropper, the Ocean City council set the tax rate for 1941 at $1.20 per hundred — the same figure it had adopted on 8 July 1940 to carry the notes for the north pump station wells — and the clerk was instructed to make up the tax books accordingly. The 1940 increase was therefore not a one-year expedient.
Ocean City's rate went 100 cents, 85 cents, 100 cents, 120 cents across four years - and 1940's rise is the only one the minute book explains. The town had been made to adopt the county's assessment by law on 2 January, discovered in July that the county valued Ocean City lower than Ocean City did, and had to raise the rate on the smaller base to pay for a well it had ordered in January. Being assessed by somebody else cost the town twenty cents on the hundred.
Harold J. Rayne
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1940 · 1940-08-05
Ocean City's 1940 election was decided by one vote: the third council seat went to Robert Lee Cropper on 128 against Frank Salea's 127
'An Election was held in Firemens Building Monday August 5th 1940 for purpose of electing one person for Mayor and three persons for City Councilmen for a term of two years from 2nd Tuesday of September 1940 to 1942.' The polls were open from 2 P.M. to 6 P.M. The returns were filed with the clerk by three election judges, Stephen J. Quillin, Horace H. Richardson and Thomas L. Savage. For Mayor: Clifford P. Cropper 167, Charles W. Purnell 97, C. Parker Smith 2, John B. Lynch 3. For City Council: Harold J. Rayne 208, E. Raymond Bounds 189, Robert Lee Cropper 128, Frank Salea 127, Talbot E. Bunting 91. Three seats were to be filled, so Rayne, Bounds and Robert Lee Cropper took them and Salea missed by a single vote. The new mayor and council were sworn in by Magistrate J. Edward White at nine o'clock on the evening of 10 September, and organised by electing Bounds President of the Council and Rayne Treasurer, and reappointing J. M. Mumford Secretary and Wm. H. Scott attorney.
Four men stood for mayor and 269 votes were cast for them; five stood for three council seats and 743 votes were cast, so the same electors were plainly splitting their tickets. The mayor the council had appointed in January was confirmed by the town in August with a comfortable majority over the doctor who owned the Atlantic Hotel - and the last seat on the board turned on one elector, in a town whose whole year-round population the census had just put near a thousand.
Ocean City Volunteer Fire Department Clifford P. Cropper Dr. Charles Washington Purnell Harold J. Rayne Robert Lee Cropper Frank Salea John B. Lynch J. Edward White (magistrate)William H. Scott J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1940 · 1940-08-08
The county paper printed Ocean City's election three days after it happened and put a figure on the town's whole electorate: 271 votes cast out of 600 eligible
The Democratic Messenger of 8 August 1940 confirms the minute book almost line for line: 'Mayor Clifford P. Cropper, of Ocean City, won re-election for a two-year term as chief executive of the Maryland resort, in the Ocean City Municipal election held on Monday. Cropper defeated his lone opponent, Charles W. Purnell, in the Mayoralty race, by a vote of 167 to 97 - a majority of 70 ballots. Only 271 votes were cast out of a total of 600 eligible. In the Councilmanic contest, E. Raymond Bounds and Harold J. Rayne, incumbents, were re-elected, the third Council post going to Robert L. Cropper.' Its official list gives Rayne 208, Bounds 189, Robert L. Cropper 128, and the fifth candidate 127, with Talbot E. Bunting last. And it says outright what the clerk left the reader to work out: 'Candidate Frank Sacca fell short one vote to tie R. L. Cropper for the third Council seat.' Two differences from the minute book are worth keeping. The paper calls Purnell Cropper's 'lone opponent' and prints no line for C. Parker Smith's 2 votes or John B. Lynch's 3, which the clerk recorded. And the paper's 271 votes cast does not equal the 269 mayoral votes the clerk added up.
Six hundred eligible voters. That is the whole political weight of Ocean City in 1940 - fewer people than registered for the draft in the same town ten weeks later - and 271 of them turned out to decide a council seat by one vote. The most useful thing in the paragraph is the denominator, which the minute book never gives and which nobody in this campaign has had before.
Clifford P. Cropper Dr. Charles Washington Purnell Robert Lee Cropper Frank Salea Harold J. Rayne
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1940 · 1940-10-14
Four objecting households turned out against a ninety-by-seventy-five-foot store building at Ninth Street, and the council granted the permit anyway
The 250-foot notice machinery ran once in 1940 and it ran for Irving T. Faustin. On 2 October the council considered his application to move a bungalow off the Boardwalk on to Ninth Street next to the alley and to build 'a one Story building 90x75 ft on the 2 lots' of the Crook property, and instructed the secretary to notify all property owners in the two blocks of a hearing. Two typed notices dated 3 October went out over the clerk's name: 'There will be a hearing on the application for building permit of Irving Faustin for permit to build on cor. 9th street and Atlantic Ave. on the Crooks property a building 90x75 ft. for stores. Hearing will be held Monday Evening October 14th 1940 at 7 P.M. at the City Council Office.' At the hearing 'objectors present were Mr. & Mrs. Benson, Della K. Powell, Phil. C. Dennis & wife, and Mr. Sam Faustin was present in interest of permit. After hearing the objections, motion by Harold Rayne, seconded by R. Bounds, permit was granted.' The permit application itself, dated 30 September with the year corrected from 1939 to 1940, survives in the file, marked 'Granted Oct 24 1940' over the signature of E. R. Bounds as President of the Council: a one-storey building for stores, ninety feet by seventy-five, piers under it and a built-up roof.
Ocean City's permit rule let the neighbours be heard and then let the council decide, and in 1940 it decided for the applicant over four households. That is the control the campaign needs for 1938: the same machinery that refused a Colored Recreation Hall on the objection of six white neighbours granted a white applicant a building four times its size on the objection of four. The rule was never the rule. Who was asking was the rule.
Irving T. Faustin Harold J. Rayne
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-03-12
The town told its solicitor to write a charter bill on 12 March; the General Assembly passed exactly the two changes he was asked for, and the Governor approved them on 28 April.
This is the cleanest two-source chain the campaign has for how a small town legislated. On 7 January 1941 the council 'discussed the need for new legislation and was decided to go over the entire charter and decide just what changes were needed'. On 12 March: 'Changes in Charter were discussed and attorney Wm. H. Scott instructed to prepare bill for same. Changes were in Holding Election, and printing city audit.' Both landed. Chapter 573 of the Acts of 1941 (Senate Bill 474) added Sections 135A and 135B to the Ocean City sub-title of Article 24 of the Code of Public Local Laws: a candidate for Mayor or Councilman must now file a written statement of candidacy with the City Clerk five days before the election, and the official ballot must list every qualified candidate alphabetically by office, with write-ins permitted. Chapter 568 repealed and re-enacted Section 150 with amendments, 'changing the date of publication of annual receipts and expenditures of Mayor and City Council of Ocean City' — an itemised statement of every dollar received and spent, published in a Worcester County newspaper by the first week of November each year. Both were approved 28 April 1941 and took effect 1 June 1941. The election bill is the town's answer to 1940, when a council seat had turned on a single vote and the fifth candidate's own surname could not be read the same way twice.
William H. Scott Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne Robert Lee Cropper J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-04-21
Ocean City borrowed four times in 1941 to keep its own books straight, and was still signing papers to get money out of a bank that had failed.
The town's cash position runs through the year like a pulse. On 12 March the council resolved 'that City borrow up to $5,000 as needed by May 1st from Bank of Ocean City'. On 21 April it borrowed $5,000 more on notes of the First National Bank. On 11 December, in the same minute that created the home defence council, it resolved to borrow from the Bank of Ocean City 'to care for bonds and cupons due Jan.1st'. And on 21 April, between the borrowing and the mini-golf licence, sits a single sentence of Depression aftermath: 'Resolution passed for Clerk to sign papers in distribution of tied up funds in Bank. Carried.' Eight years after the bank holiday of 1933 the town's own money was still coming back to it in instalments. In January 1942 the council resolved to join with other towns 'in pooling their material on hand to aid each other' — the same thin balance sheet, now with a war on it.
Bank of Ocean City Harold J. Rayne Robert Lee Cropper J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-05-06
Four men bid to haul Ocean City's garbage in 1941 and the clerk wrote down every price: Raymond Massey took it at $30 a day in summer and $12 in winter.
The minute of Tuesday 6 May 1941 sets out the whole tender. 'Bids were opened on hauling garbage and Contract awarded to Raymond Massey for $30.00 day for summer & $12 daily winter hauling. Bids were as follows: James Trimble 35.00 day summer, 13.50 winter; Raymond Massey 30, 12.00; Vincent Lewis 31.95, 11.25; Ted Jones 40.00, 18.00.' The secretary was instructed to prepare the contract and have Massey sign it. Vincent Lewis had in fact bid lower for the winter work and higher for the summer; the town bought on the summer figure, which is where the volume was. Three years earlier E. Raymond Bounds had bid $26.50 a day for the same summer work and lost it by a dollar fifty — and was now sitting on the council that opened the envelopes. The same evening James Jarman and Bert Cropper asked for a reduction in the bicycle licence, and Salisbury wrote asking Ocean City to take part in the Strawberry Festival and appoint a Princess.
Raymond Massey Harold J. Rayne Clifford P. Cropper James D. Jarman G. Bertrand Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-05-12
Fortune telling, fifty dollars; every boat at a dock, a quarter, collected from the dock owner; and the tax rate held at $1.20 for a second year.
On Monday evening 12 May 1941, with the full board present, the council went over the licence ordinance and amended it item by item: 'Item #6 to read $100.00; #7, 100.00; #11 fortune telling 50.00. All other Items to remain as passed on June 2nd 1939. Ordinance was also amended for Docks to Charge 25¢ for each boat to be collected from the Dock owner.' Then the tax rate: on Rayne's motion, seconded by Robert L. Cropper, 'that the tax rate be $1.20 per hundred' — the same rate the town had set in July 1940 to pay for the north pumping station's new wells — and the clerk was instructed to make up the tax books accordingly. The amendments were engrossed a month later: on Friday 13 June the council passed 'Ordinance # L-3... relateing to lisence on various business', to take effect on the date of passage. This is the first Ocean City ordinance the campaign has found carrying a number that is actually printed on it. The licence ordinances of 7 February and 2 June 1939 both survive headed 'ORDINANCE NO. ____' with the number left blank; by 1941 the town was numbering its licence ordinances in an L series.
Harold J. Rayne Robert Lee Cropper Clifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-07-30
A year after the town tried to fund its advertising by licensing the fishing boats, Capt. Crawford Savage came and asked that the boats be let off altogether — and the council voted the Chamber of Commerce another $500 to cover its deficit.
In May 1940 the advertising committee had proposed to raise $2,000 by licensing the sport fishing boats at $10 for a native boat and $25 for a foreign one, and the town spent the rest of that year looking for the legal power to do it. On the evening of 30 July 1941, with only the mayor and two councilmen present, 'Crawford Savage was present asking that fishing boats be relieved of any lisence for this year and on motion by Rayne seconed by councilman Bounds council agreed to help the Chamber of commerce not exceeding $500. addition to what was guaranteed to settle their deficit and they were to cut their budget according to the money they have to spend.' The clerk has run the request and the motion into a single sentence, so what the council actually decided about the boats is not recorded — only that it reached again for its own pocket to cover the Chamber's shortfall. The scheme to make the charter fleet pay for the town's advertising had failed twice in fifteen months.
Ocean City Chamber of Commerce Capt. Crawford Savage Harold J. Rayne Clifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-09-15
The fire company asked for room to house another engine; the town found it by tearing out the heating plant, and paid Harry J. Cropper $975 to do it.
On Monday evening 15 September 1941, 'Fire chief Peacock and Allen Quillen were present asking that room be provided for housing another engine and council agreed to see if space could be provided by changeing heating plant and secretary ordered to secure prices on makeing the change.' Ten days later, on 25 September, 'Heating plant was discussed with Harry J. Cropper and he offered to make the change for $975. and on motion by Harold Rayne seconed by Raymond Bounds that order be given to Ma.Cropper for plant.' Nine hundred and seventy-five dollars is most of what the town had just voted the Chamber of Commerce, and it bought floor space rather than apparatus. Twelve weeks later Morris Peacock was one of the two men the council put over the Department of Fire Protection of its new home defence council, alongside Archie Davis, who had been the company's chief in 1939. The same statutory year had already brought the company money from Annapolis: Chapter 37 of the Acts of 1941, approved 15 April, required three-quarters of the sums raised in Worcester County to be divided equally among the incorporated volunteer fire companies of Ocean City, Berlin, Newark, Snow Hill, Stockton, Bishopville and Pocomoke City.
Ocean City Volunteer Fire Department Morris Peacock Harry J. Cropper Harold J. Rayne Archie Davis Clifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-09-25
The town sold something it called 'kits hill' to James R. Kelly for three hundred dollars, and the minute says nothing else about it.
The whole entry, from the typewritten minute of 25 September 1941, is: 'Motion was made by Harold Rayne seconed by Raymond Bounds that city sell kits hill to James R.Kelly for $300. was carried.' Nothing in the Ocean City record before or after 1941 explains what Kit's Hill was, where it stood or how the town came to own it — and on a barrier island whose highest natural ground is a dune, a place named a hill is worth finding. The same meeting granted John D. Ayers a dwelling on lot 1 block 20, let Wm. Hasting move his house, and let John Jones move his from North Division Street to 6th Street on condition the solicitor drew the permit and Jones signed an agreement protecting the city from any damage — North Division Street being, by then, the street the new bridge was about to land in.
Harold J. Rayne Clifford P. Cropper William H. Scott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-11-13
Mrs George Purnell would build on 9th Street only if the town bulkheaded the end of it; the council agreed to fifty feet if she paid for twenty-five.
On Thursday evening 13 November 1941, with the full board present for the first time since June, 'Mrs George Purnell asked for permit for building on lot 34 on 9th street provided Council would bulkhead 9th street and after discuss[ion] motion was offered by Raymond Bounds Seconed by Harold Rayne that ci[ty] agree to bulkhead 9th street of 50 foot across end of street provide[d] Mrs Purnell would build 25ft on 9th street as a tie back at her ex[pense] and that the lots south bulkhead so as to protect both her property and 9th street. Motion was carried.' It is a small bargain with the bay: a woman would not put a building at the end of a street the water was taking, and the town bought her investment with fifty feet of timber. Two weeks earlier the council had given George Elliott the job of painting and cleaning the town's tanks for $450. Ocean City spent 1941 holding its edges — bulkheading the bay side, painting the water tanks, and watching the ocean side reclaim the Inlet jetties it had settled below sea level.
Harold J. Rayne Clifford P. Cropper Robert Lee Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-12-11
Four days after Pearl Harbor and on the day Germany declared war, the Ocean City council sat down and organised a home defence council — eleven departments, twenty-two names, and a Department of Evacuation.
The 1940 minute book does not mention the war once, in the year of the fall of France. The 1941 book does not mention it either — until 11 December. The council met at 7:15 on Thursday evening with Mayor C. P. Cropper and Councilmen Harold Rayne and Raymond Bounds, granted a building permit to Chas. S. Powell for a two-apartment dwelling on the alley between 11th and 12th Streets, let the English Diner move to a site next to the Post Office on Dr. Chas. W. Purnell's ground, and resolved to borrow from the Bank of Ocean City to meet bonds and coupons due 1 January. Then: 'Mr. S. Earl Tromley, John I. Timmons and Miss Lena Riggin were present to help in organizeing home defence council and the following were selected to head the orginization.' Those three were not helpful neighbours. As the Worcester Democrat printed a week later, they were the entire executive of the Worcester County Council of Defense — Tromley its Executive Director, Timmons its Chief Air Raid Warden, and Miss Lena H. Riggin its Executive Secretary, all three of Snow Hill — going town to town. They were carrying an order. The same paper prints the telegram that sent them: 'Supplementing my telegram December 10, immediate arrangements must be made to hold blackouts just as quickly as possible. No delay in this matter, as conditions are very serious. Let me know when ready. Col. Henry Barrett, Director of air raid Precaution Service for Maryland.' The roster Ocean City adopted that night, verbatim from the minute: John B. Lynch, Commander. Harold Rayne and L. B. Cropper, Dept. of Public Safety. J. M. Mumford and Robert Allen, Dept. of Public Works. Dr. F. J. Townsend and Guy R. P. Dennis, Dept. Public Health. Archie Davis and Morris Peacock, Dept. Fire Protection. D. Trimper Sr. and Denard Baker, Dept. Transporation. Arthur Davis and Preston Laws, Dept. Gen. Supplies. Rev. Dewees and F. W. Truitt, Dept. Evacuation. Willie Ludlam and Gladys Jackson, Red Cross. E. M. Scott and Chas. J. Jackson, Communication. Bob Jackson and Wm. H. Purnell, Air Wardens. The council adjourned at eleven. Pocomoke City's mayor and council met specially the same Thursday evening and resolved to organise a Civilian Defense Corps of their own, and Pocomoke's published department list — Public Safety, Evacuation, Transportation, Communications, Public Works, Fire Protection, General Supply, Public Health — is the same scheme under the same headings. So the eleven departments were a template handed down, not a local invention; what Ocean City supplied was twenty-two names, and the names are the whole value of the document. By 18 December the county could report that Home Defense Corps in Snow Hill, Pocomoke City, Berlin and Ocean City were 'now complete in every detail', and Mayor Clifford P. Cropper sat on the county council himself.
Ocean City Home Defense Council Worcester County Council of Defense Bank of Ocean City Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne John B. Lynch S. Earl Tromley Miss Lena H. Riggin Gladys Jackson Morris Peacock Willie Ludlam Francis J. Townsend Archie Davis L. B. Cropper Robert Allen J. M. Mumford Daniel Trimper, Sr.W. Preston Laws F. W. Truitt Edward M. Scott William H. Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-01-06
The first council meeting of 1942 gave a permit to tear down a building the town called 'the Virginia' and put a four-storey house on the site.
On Tuesday evening 6 January 1942, three weeks after the town organised its home defence council and a fortnight after gunfire offshore shook its houses, the Mayor and Council issued two building permits. 'Building permits were granted to Crawford O. Savage to build 2 Apartment house on 7th street rear of Balto. Ave. house. Permit to James Jarman to tear down the Virginia and build 4 story house in place.' The clerk names the building without explanation, the way you name something everyone knows, and gives no street. Nothing else in the 1942 minute file identifies it. Building four storeys in January 1942 is itself remarkable — within months the War Production Board would be rationing the materials, and by December the town could not get fire hose without a federal priority rating. The same meeting passed a resolution 'that city join with other towns in pooling their material on hand to aid each other', the first wartime-scarcity measure in the book; answered the Chesapeake Air Line that the city had no ground that could be used as a landing field 'but would gladly aid what it could'; and refused Jacks Beach Service an exclusive franchise while offering to licence parts of the beach for such a service.
Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-04-14
In April 1942 Ocean City made Baltimore Avenue, Philadelphia Avenue, Caroline Street and North Division Street one-way, at the State Roads Commission's request, to handle traffic from a bridge that would not open for seven months.
The new Sinepuxent Bay bridge had been structurally complete since 8 December 1941 and stood closed, waiting on the Herring Creek approaches; it did not carry traffic until 16 November 1942. That did not stop the State Roads Commission from arranging the town behind it. At the meeting of 14 April 1942, after the air-raid wardens had retired, 'the ordinance for placeing signs makeing Baltimore avenue, Philadelphia Ave., Caroline and North Div. streets one way street was read and passed', and the clerk added the reason in his own parenthesis: '(this ordinance was at request of state roads commission that they might put up the necessary signs to handle traffif from the new bridge.)' It is the town's whole future street pattern being set, in wartime, for a road nobody could yet drive. A letter from the same Commission about traffic signs and lights had already been read and answered by the town's attorney on 3 March. The same April meeting also closed a chapter: 'Motion was made by Rayne Seconed by Bounds that city sell the bank shares received in final settlement of the tied up funds.'
Route 50 Drawbridge (Harry W. Kelley Memorial Bridge)Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne Robert Lee Cropper William H. Scott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-05-02
Ocean City's air-raid wardens had to argue the council into it, and then the town passed a blackout ordinance on a Saturday night in May and put a man on the payroll at forty dollars a week to screen the lights.
The war had been in the minute book since 11 December 1941, but the machinery took five months to bite. On the evening of Tuesday 14 April 1942 the Mayor and Council did something they had not done before: they met with the wardens. The clerk's sentence is careful and it records a disagreement. 'After listening to arguments about ordinance being passed to enable the enforcement of blackouts the council assured the wardens that they would submit such an ordinance to our attorney and when put in proper form would pass same and would support the wardens in any thing reasonable.' The wardens then retired, and the council turned to one-way streets. It took two and a half more weeks. On Saturday evening 2 May 1942 the council met specially: 'Ordinance relative to air-raid precaution and blackout in Ocean [City] were read and on motion by Harold Rayne Seconed by Raymond Bounds Ordinance was passed.' In the same sitting the council hired the enforcement: 'Bert Cropper was present and council agreed to employ him at $40.00 week beginning May 11th until June 15th to direct the screenin of lights where they had to be shielded.' Forty dollars a week was more than the town paid its captain of lifeguards ($25) and twice what it paid a lifeguard ($20). Five weeks of it, ending 15 June — which is to say the lights were to be shielded before the season opened, not after. The police got a five-dollar raise from 1 June. Set the calendar against the water: the Atwater was shot to pieces twenty miles offshore on 2 April, the wardens came to the council on the 14th, and the ordinance passed on 2 May.
Ocean City Home Defense Council Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne William H. Scott J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-05-06
With the coast dimmed out and bodies from a torpedoed freighter lately at its Coast Guard station, Ocean City hired a lifeguard captain, three extra policemen and voted $1,750 of public money to advertise the 1942 season.
The clearest measure of what a resort does in the first summer of a war at its own beach is what it spends. At a special call meeting on Wednesday evening 6 May 1942 — four days after the blackout ordinance, five weeks after the Atwater — the council employed Thomas E. Price as captain of the life guard at $25.00 a week and set the men's pay at $20.00; decided to have McCabe repaint the peeling road signs and 'the new signs to let go for this year'; agreed, on Harold Rayne's motion seconded by Raymond Bounds, that 'the City agreed to finance them for $1750.00 for the season', 'them' being the Chamber of Commerce and its advertising; and told the chief of police to take on three extra police 'and if more were needed to try to secur more as needed'. Set that against 1941, when the town paid its lifeguards $17.50 a week: the men's wage rose to $20 in the year the visitors were least likely to come. The season was run, and it was run in the dark — on 11 September the council's own minute says 'we were dimed out and not sufficent light'.
Ocean City Chamber of Commerce Thomas E. Price Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne L. B. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-05-15
Ocean City ran its building permits by written notice to every neighbour and a public hearing, and in May 1942 a screened porch on 11th Street took two meetings and a Saturday-morning site visit.
David M. Nichols applied on 13 May 1942 to close in the upper porch of his cottage on 11th Street — property sold to him by Upshur and Mary Morris, adjoining John Burbage on one side and Charles S. Powell on the other — the porch 'to be closed in with frames and glass' having 'been screened with wire for several years'. The clerk issued the notice the same day and the Mayor and Council gave the hearing on Friday evening 15 May at eight. 'Application for permit was read and Miss Dale Ayers was present sponsoring the application and Chas. S. Powell was present objecting to the granting of permit, arguments was listened to and Mayor Cropper and Council agreed to look the building over on Saturday morning and give their answer.' The answer is not in the file. It is the same procedure the town ran in 1941 — written notice to every abutting owner, a public hearing, the council sitting as a tribunal — applied to an enclosed porch in the second summer of the war, and it is the clearest picture the record gives of how small the government of this town was and how seriously it took its building line.
Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne David M. Nichols M. Dale Ayres
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-06-17
Ocean City's 1942 tax rate was $1.20 per hundred, and by then the town had authorised borrowing $6,000 on notes from a bank in Berlin and sold the bank shares it took in settlement of its frozen deposits.
Four minutes describe the town's money in 1942 and they run in sequence. On 3 March, 'resolution was offered by Harold Rayne and seconed by Raymond that city borrow on notes as needed up to $6000. from Exchange & Savin[gs] bank of Berlin Maryland, resolution carried' — authorised outside the town's own Bank of Ocean City, which had carried the 1941 note. On 14 April, 'Motion was made by Rayne Seconed by Bounds that city sell the bank shares received in final settlement of the tied up funds, motion carried' — the closing entry on money the town had had frozen, taken at last in stock and turned back into cash. On 17 June the council read the secretary's report of finances and resolved that 'Tax rate for 1942 be struck at $1.20 per hundred and that books be set up at that basis'. And the year's real revenue problem was three years old: on 11 November the council took up 'the question of 1939 taxes' and decided to write the delinquents; on 9 December it handed the statement of tax accounts round and instructed the secretary to have attorney Edmond Johnson write the 1939 delinquents if they had not paid by the last of the month; and on 3 January 1943 it decided to wait on Mr Ernest Hastings and Leroy Cropper until the next meeting. A resort with no visitors was still chasing the taxes of the year before the war.
Harold J. Rayne Clifford P. Cropper Edmond H. Johnson J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-06-17
Ocean City got its ambulance in 1942 as a private gift, and the council's only recorded act was to write and say thank you.
At the meeting of 17 June 1942 'the question of letter to Mr. Lloyd Watson thanking him for his gift to the city of ambulance was discussed and secretary was instructed to write the letter expressing the thanks of the council for same'. The minute does not say when the ambulance arrived, what it was, or who was to drive it — only that it had been Watson's and that the town now had it. In a summer when the nearest hospital was in Salisbury, thirty miles inland, and the beach was under Coast Guard patrol, an ambulance was not a small thing to be given. The same meeting struck the 1942 tax rate at $1.20 per hundred and ordered the election notices published in both county papers for the last two weeks of July.
Lloyd Watson Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-07-22
Ocean City's 1942 boardwalk trade, priced by the council: fifty dollars to work a wagon on the Boardwalk, ten dollars to rent umbrellas, and the bingo licence left undecided until August.
The council met at seven on the evening of Wednesday 22 July 1942 and adjourned at eight. 'Lisences was discussed and decided to wait until first of Augest and decide on amount to collect on the bingo games.' Then: 'James N. Jarman was present and council garnted him lisence for to use his wagon on the boardwalk for $50.00 and he was not to solicit business from in front of any property that was renting umbrellas and objected to his being in front of their property other renters of umbrellas were to be taxed $10.00.' It is the 1941 push-cart quarrel again, settled the other way. In 1941 a delegation of Boardwalk businessmen had got the council to licence umbrella hire at five dollars and to keep the trade off a push cart; in 1942 the wagon gets its licence at fifty dollars with a keep-away condition attached, and the fixed renters pay ten. That the council was still arguing about umbrella pitches in the summer of 1942, and that a mobile licence was worth fifty dollars, is itself evidence that somebody was on the beach. The same evening Mrs I. S. Mumford asked by telephone to build stairs to an upper apartment on Caroline Street and was refused in writing: the walk is only five feet wide and three feet inside the wall is city property.
Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-08-03
Ocean City held a municipal election on 3 August 1942 and twenty-five votes were cast in four hours — every one of them for the unopposed slate.
The polls opened at two in the afternoon in the engine room of the fire house and closed at six. Three judges sat: Clarence Wright, C. T. Jackson and John J. Rayne. 'Only 25 votes were cast and were all cast for' Clifford P. Cropper, mayor, 25 votes; E. Raymond Bounds, council, 25; Harman D. Parsons, 25; Harold J. Rayne, 25. Returns were properly made to the city clerk. A town of about 1,052 year-round people, in the first summer of the war at its own beach, returned its mayor to a third term on twenty-five ballots and no opposition. Robert L. Cropper, on the council since 1940 and still on the letterhead in 1942, does not appear among the elected; Parsons replaces him. The new board was sworn in on Friday 11 September before trial magistrate Edward White and organised itself in the city office in the fire house: Cropper mayor, Bounds president of council, Rayne treasurer, Parsons councilman, Edmond H. Johnson city attorney, J. M. Mumford secretary-treasurer, L. B. Cropper chief of police — the same men who had run the town before, in the same order. The election judge C. T. Jackson matters beyond the arithmetic. A Chas. T. Jackson stood on the clerk's March 1941 list of neighbours notified of a building hearing, and he is a different man from the Chas. J. Jackson whom this council put on its Communication department on 11 December 1941. The 1940 census finds him: Charles T. Jackson, 72, head of household 161 in Ocean City, owner of a house valued at eight thousand dollars, with his wife Mabel and a son-in-law from North Carolina. — 1944 FULL PASS, 2026-08-12 [extended]: Turnout returned in 1944. Ocean City's municipal election of 7 August 1944, held in the Engine Room of the Fire House with polls open 2 to 6 PM, drew 452 VOTES - against the 25 cast in 1942. Daniel Trimper Jr. beat the sitting wartime mayor Clifford P. Cropper 231 to 160, and both sitting councilmen finished last of six for the three council seats.
Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne Herman D. Parsons Clarence Wright Charles T. Jackson John J. Rayne Edward White Edmond H. Johnson J. M. Mumford L. B. Cropper Robert Lee Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-09-11
On 11 September 1942 the Ocean City council resolved to stop the autumn's 'colored days' — and gave the dim-out, rubber and gasoline as its reasons.
For two consecutive years the Ocean City minute book had named no Black resident and no Black institution. In 1942 the silence breaks, and it breaks as an act of policy against Black visitors. The newly sworn council met on the evening of Friday 11 September 1942, and the clerk recorded this, verbatim: 'Councilman Harold J. Rayne reported that he had heard that some of the boardwalk stand people were trying to advertise that there would be colored excursions again this fall starting on Sept 24th and being the Gov. was requesting the saving of rubber and gas and as we were dimed out and not sufficent light that the city was justified in trying to stop the having of colored days and the secretary was instructed to get the chief of police to contact the parties that were advertiseing and request that they abandon the idea for this season.' Four things are in that sentence and each is a finding. First, Ocean City had colored excursions — 'again this fall' — so they were an established autumn trade and not a novelty. Second, the people advertising them were 'boardwalk stand people': white concessionaires who wanted the business, which means the council was overruling its own merchants to keep Black visitors off the beach. Third, every reason given is a war reason — the Governor's rubber and gasoline conservation, and the town being dimmed out with insufficient light — which is what makes the minute so useful: it shows a wartime emergency being picked up and used, and the councilman saying out loud that this made the city 'justified'. Fourth, the instrument was not an ordinance and not a refusal of a licence. It was the chief of police sent to 'request that they abandon the idea', which leaves nothing to appeal against and no record beyond this paragraph. Whether anything ran on 24 September 1942 is not recorded here.
Harold J. Rayne Clifford P. Cropper L. B. Cropper J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-10-14
Five weeks after telling itself the town was dimmed out, Ocean City voted to make the street light on Baltimore Avenue brighter.
The minute of 14 October 1942 is in the clerk's longhand and it is short. 'Lights on street was discussed and it was decided that it would be wise to increase the street light on Baltimore ave to 250 Candle Power and Secretary was ordered to write the local office of Electric Co. requesting the la[mps] be changed.' On 11 September the same council had justified stopping the autumn's colored excursions partly on the ground that 'we were dimed out and not sufficent light'; on 14 October it asked the electric company for a stronger lamp on the town's main street. The two are not necessarily contradictory — a dim-out regulated light visible from seaward, and Baltimore Avenue is a block back from the ocean — but the sequence is worth having, because it is the same council, five weeks apart, treating the darkness as an obstacle when it wanted light and as a justification when it wanted to turn people away. The same meeting refused Chas. Clark leave to build a showcase on the old Denman store because it would extend beyond the building line.
Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne Herman D. Parsons
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-12-09
Ocean City's fire hose failed in 1942 and the town could not simply buy more — the War Production Board had to rate it.
The war reached the fire company through its plumbing. On 11 November 1942 a delegation from the Fire Company came before the council asking 'that the House manager be informed of his duties and that a check of the equipment be made by him on return of apparatus after being used'. The same minute records the substance: hose bought on 23 July 1940 having gone bad, the council decided to ship three sections back for examination and to ask that 600 feet be shipped at once to replace it. Four weeks later, on 9 December, the answer had come from two directions: 'Letters was read from War Production Board reference to rating on hose and from American La-France Foamite Corp. reference to finding of hose returned for inspection.' A town on a barrier island, whose whole history is fire, needed a federal priority rating to replace two-year-old hose. The matter was still unfinished on 3 January 1943, when a letter from Ryder about the hose was read at the first meeting of the new year. That 9 December meeting is the shortest in the 1942 book: convened at 7.30, adjourned at 7.45.
Ocean City Volunteer Fire Department Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne Herman D. Parsons Edmond H. Johnson
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1943 · 1943-03-10
The fire company came to the council in March 1943 for an additional fire alarm and got consent to spend up to $175 connecting it.
Ocean City Volunteer Fire Department Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne Herman D. Parsons J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-03-17
A special full-board meeting on 17 March 1943 passed an ordinance handing Caroline Street and North Division Street to the State Roads Commission — the two blocks that carry the bridge traffic onto Baltimore Avenue.
Maryland State Roads Commission Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne Herman D. Parsons J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-05-12
The council offered the 1943 lifeguard captaincy to Robert S. Craig in April, then took it back in May because it 'desired to employ Home town Boy to take charge of Guard'.
— 1944 FULL PASS, 2026-08-12 [extended]: The captaincy was contested again in 1945 and the minute book does not say who won it. James Parker asked for the job on 3 April 1945 and no action was taken; Gordon Shipley made formal application on 10 April 1945. On 15 May the secretary was told to answer the letters from boys asking for lifeguard jobs by saying the town would hear from them after 1 June. The 1945 crew went on at about six men over the Memorial Day weekend, a full crew from 15 June at $30 a week, and was kept on past 9 September.
Ocean City Beach Patrol Robert S. Craig Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne Herman D. Parsons J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-05-19
Only one man bid to haul Ocean City's garbage in 1943, and Raymond Massey got the summer at $40 a day for 92 days and $20 a day for the thirty days after it.
— 1944 FULL PASS, 2026-08-12 [extended]: In 1944 the price went the other way and fast. Chester A. Lynch took a two-year contract on 19 April 1944 at $50 a day summer and $20 winter; by 26 July he was on $60, by 29 July $72, and by 12 August $99 a day for three trucks and ten men - because, in the clerk's words, 'the garbage man could not get enough help at price he was receiving'. In February 1944 the town had asked for garbage bids and received NONE AT ALL.
Raymond Massey Harold J. Rayne Herman D. Parsons Clifford P. Cropper J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-06-09
Ocean City's 1943 beach patrol went on the sand on Friday 11 June with four or five men, to be added to 'as demand came'.
Ocean City Beach Patrol James Parker Clifford P. Cropper Herman D. Parsons J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-06-09
The council held Ocean City's 1943 tax rate at $1.20 per hundred, the same as 1942 — unanimously, in the middle of the war.
— 1944 FULL PASS, 2026-08-12 [extended]: Held again twice. The 1944 rate was set at $1.20 per $100 on 14 June 1944, unanimously, on motion by Rayne seconded by Bounds. The 1945 rate was set at $1.20 on 24 July 1945, on motion by Savage seconded by Dolle - the sixth consecutive year at that figure and the first of the peace.
Herman D. Parsons Clifford P. Cropper J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-08-11
In the middle of the war, with no tourists to speak of, the council spent an August evening on the need for rebuilding the old Boardwalk and for examining the town's water supply.
Clifford P. Cropper Herman D. Parsons J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-09-15
On 15 September 1943 the council wrote to both Maryland senators, its congressman and its state senator asking that the bay channels be redredged, the steel jetty be connected to the Coast Guard base and the inlet jetties be raised.
Herman D. Parsons Clifford P. Cropper J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1944 · 1944-02-15
A sitting Ocean City councilman applied to put a chicken-dressing plant in the old laundry building on Talbot Street, and a hall of his neighbours voted him down.
The council held a public hearing at the Firemen's Hall on the application of E. Raymond Bounds - a sitting councilman - for a chicken-dressing plant in the Old Laundry Building on Talbot Street. Mayor Cropper and the full council attended, and about twenty-two citizens are named in the minute, among them Hugh T. Cropper, Les Bunting, Turner Cropper, Jackson Bunting, Mamie Townsend, F. W. Truitt, Owen Mumford, Cranford Savage, Talbot Bunting, Maud and Charles Clark, Mrs. John Rayne, Savannah Dennis, Ella E. Dennis and Marion Hearn. 'Arguments were heard and on vote from citizens it was more unanimous that they did not want the plant at that location.' Mayor Cropper told the citizens the meeting was over.
Clifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1944 · 1944-06-14
Ocean City set its 1944 tax rate at $1.20 per hundred - the fifth straight year at that figure.
On motion by Rayne, seconded by Bounds, the council unanimously set the 1944 tax rate at $1.20 per $100 of assessed value and told the secretary to set up the tax books accordingly. The rate had been put up to $1.20 in July 1940 and held there through 1942 and 1943; it would be held again for 1945. At the same meeting Mrs. H. J. Cropper asked the council to take up with the proper officials the keeping of signs off the highway from Herring Creek to Ocean City, under a law passed in 1943, and Herman Levy was refused a permit to connect his boiler to the old chimney in his building.
Harold J. Rayne
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1944 · 1944-06-22
On 22 June 1944 the Ocean City council declared 24 August an annual Marlin Day.
At a special meeting called mainly to deal with the B. & E. Railroad Company's freight lots, the council on motion by Bounds, seconded by Parsons, declared August 24 an annual Marlin Day. The same meeting offered $500 for lots the clerk writes as the 'Hobbs' lots - the word is uncertain in the original - decided the town was not interested in the freight lots at the price asked, and told the secretary to write Red Star Buss Co. that they would have to park their buses off the streets except for loading and unloading passengers.
Red Star Motor Coaches, Inc.
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1944 · 1944-08-07
Ocean City cast 452 votes on 7 August 1944, turned out its wartime mayor and both sitting councilmen, and made Daniel Trimper Jr. mayor.
The municipal election was held in the Engine Room of the Fire House, polls open 2 to 6 PM, with Clarence Wright, Joseph Elliott and Charles Clark as judges. 452 votes were cast. For mayor: Daniel Trimper Jr. 231, Clifford P. Cropper 160. For council: John B. Lynch 268, Rudolph Dolle 200, Cranford O. Savage 199, Henry J. Burbage 175, Harold J. Rayne 159, Herman D. Parsons 102. The sitting mayor lost and both sitting councilmen finished last. Dolle and Savage had both stood against the Red Star bus terminal as private citizens three months earlier. Trimper, Lynch, Dolle and Savage took office on 1 September 1944 for a two-year term. Bound with the return is a typed letter of 3 August 1944: 'Gentlemen kindly accept my resignation from being a member of your Council as of August 3 1944, AS my duties are of such nature they so compel me too.' - E. Raymond Bounds, resigning four days before the poll.
Daniel W. Trimper, Jr.Clifford P. Cropper John B. Lynch Rudolph Dolle Harold J. Rayne
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1944 · 1944-08-12
Five days after being voted out, Ocean City's council could not be assembled at all, and its clerk ran the town's business over the telephone.
The minute for 12 August 1944 opens: the City Clerk called the Mayor and Councilmen and could not get a meeting, so was told over the phone to have the garbage man get an extra truck with driver and two men. It is one of two 1944 sittings that failed for want of members - on 29 July only the mayor and one councilman came - and it falls five days after the election that turned the mayor and two councilmen out. E. Raymond Bounds's resignation, effective 3 August, is noted in the same minute and was read to the council at the meeting of 9 September.
J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1976
Zoning is mentioned 443 times across 14 meetings — more than beach, water or police — and the EPA appears in July, "possibly now for the first time aware of it", over permits
A bulkhead at 83rd Street went out to bid in January with a single bidder. Kelley in June: "this is the best year that this City has ever had" — the second year running he says so. Thirty-two meetings produced about 1.56 million characters, four of them verbatim sessions running to nearly 200,000 characters each. Mayor Harry W. Kelley; President Elbridge "Newt" Cropper; Councilmen William Purnell, Harold Gordy, J. Warren Frame, Granville Trimper, Josh Richardson, Bernard Deutsch; Attorney Dale Cathell, City Solicitor; Sheldon Dietert, Clerk-Treasurer; Brady Bounds, Building Inspector; William Hoover, Zoning Administrator; Chief Lee Duggan, Police; Jim Gordon, Public Relations.
Harry W. Kelley Granville Trimper
Source · checked 2026-09-02
1980
Thirty-one meetings, one source, and the last year of the Maryland Coast Press holding at the State Archives — 1980 closes the run that SC 5241 could have supplied
Mayor Harry W. Kelley; President J. Warren Frame; Councilmen Purnell, Harrison, Laws; Mr. Bounds, Building Inspector. SC 5241 holds the Maryland Coast Press for 1969-1980 and SC 4414 the Eastern Shore Times for 1973-1979. Neither has been read for any year. From 1981 the archive holdings this campaign has identified run out and the newspaper-gap plan turns to Enoch Pratt.
Harry W. Kelley W. Preston Laws
Source · checked 2026-09-02

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E. Raymond Bounds

In the record (50)

Five men bid to haul Ocean City's summer garbage for ninety-one days in 1938, and the cheapest won at $25 a day

Ocean City turned out its mayor of four years in August 1938 and elected its own lawyer, on 323 votes cast between two o'clock and six

The new mayor of Ocean City was sworn in with a bouquet of flowers and a wish for a 'Successful and Harmony Administration'

On 22 November 1938 Ocean City's council unanimously refused a permit for a Colored Recreation Hall, after six named white neighbours objected

Ocean City granted at least twenty-two building permits in 1938 and, for the first time in the campaign's record, refused four

Ocean City opened bids for 30,000 feet of boardwalk lumber in 1939 and awarded the contract to a sitting councilman

Ocean City sold $10,000 of sewerage bonds in May 1939 to run lateral sewers off the plant it had just built

Ocean City priced bingo at $500 a season, then cut it to $150 when it was pointed out that bingo could only pay off in merchandise

Ocean City's council voted $250 for a radio broadcast in September 1939 and the mayor vetoed it

Ocean City contracted for four new artesian wells in October 1939 and deliberately took the cheaper bid without the guarantee

Ocean City put its tax rate up to $1.20 in July 1940 and wrote down exactly why: the county's assessment came in lower than the town's, and the new wells still had to be paid for

Ocean City's 1940 election was decided by one vote: the third council seat went to Robert Lee Cropper on 128 against Frank Salea's 127

The county paper printed Ocean City's election three days after it happened and put a figure on the town's whole electorate: 271 votes cast out of 600 eligible

Four objecting households turned out against a ninety-by-seventy-five-foot store building at Ninth Street, and the council granted the permit anyway

The town told its solicitor to write a charter bill on 12 March; the General Assembly passed exactly the two changes he was asked for, and the Governor approved them on 28 April.

Ocean City borrowed four times in 1941 to keep its own books straight, and was still signing papers to get money out of a bank that had failed.

Four men bid to haul Ocean City's garbage in 1941 and the clerk wrote down every price: Raymond Massey took it at $30 a day in summer and $12 in winter.

Fortune telling, fifty dollars; every boat at a dock, a quarter, collected from the dock owner; and the tax rate held at $1.20 for a second year.

A year after the town tried to fund its advertising by licensing the fishing boats, Capt. Crawford Savage came and asked that the boats be let off altogether — and the council voted the Chamber of Commerce another $500 to cover its deficit.

The fire company asked for room to house another engine; the town found it by tearing out the heating plant, and paid Harry J. Cropper $975 to do it.

The town sold something it called 'kits hill' to James R. Kelly for three hundred dollars, and the minute says nothing else about it.

Mrs George Purnell would build on 9th Street only if the town bulkheaded the end of it; the council agreed to fifty feet if she paid for twenty-five.

Four days after Pearl Harbor and on the day Germany declared war, the Ocean City council sat down and organised a home defence council — eleven departments, twenty-two names, and a Department of Evacuation.

The first council meeting of 1942 gave a permit to tear down a building the town called 'the Virginia' and put a four-storey house on the site.

In April 1942 Ocean City made Baltimore Avenue, Philadelphia Avenue, Caroline Street and North Division Street one-way, at the State Roads Commission's request, to handle traffic from a bridge that would not open for seven months.

Ocean City's air-raid wardens had to argue the council into it, and then the town passed a blackout ordinance on a Saturday night in May and put a man on the payroll at forty dollars a week to screen the lights.

With the coast dimmed out and bodies from a torpedoed freighter lately at its Coast Guard station, Ocean City hired a lifeguard captain, three extra policemen and voted $1,750 of public money to advertise the 1942 season.

Ocean City ran its building permits by written notice to every neighbour and a public hearing, and in May 1942 a screened porch on 11th Street took two meetings and a Saturday-morning site visit.

Ocean City's 1942 tax rate was $1.20 per hundred, and by then the town had authorised borrowing $6,000 on notes from a bank in Berlin and sold the bank shares it took in settlement of its frozen deposits.

Ocean City got its ambulance in 1942 as a private gift, and the council's only recorded act was to write and say thank you.

Ocean City's 1942 boardwalk trade, priced by the council: fifty dollars to work a wagon on the Boardwalk, ten dollars to rent umbrellas, and the bingo licence left undecided until August.

Ocean City held a municipal election on 3 August 1942 and twenty-five votes were cast in four hours — every one of them for the unopposed slate.

On 11 September 1942 the Ocean City council resolved to stop the autumn's 'colored days' — and gave the dim-out, rubber and gasoline as its reasons.

Five weeks after telling itself the town was dimmed out, Ocean City voted to make the street light on Baltimore Avenue brighter.

Ocean City's fire hose failed in 1942 and the town could not simply buy more — the War Production Board had to rate it.

The fire company came to the council in March 1943 for an additional fire alarm and got consent to spend up to $175 connecting it.

A special full-board meeting on 17 March 1943 passed an ordinance handing Caroline Street and North Division Street to the State Roads Commission — the two blocks that carry the bridge traffic onto Baltimore Avenue.

The council offered the 1943 lifeguard captaincy to Robert S. Craig in April, then took it back in May because it 'desired to employ Home town Boy to take charge of Guard'.

Only one man bid to haul Ocean City's garbage in 1943, and Raymond Massey got the summer at $40 a day for 92 days and $20 a day for the thirty days after it.

Ocean City's 1943 beach patrol went on the sand on Friday 11 June with four or five men, to be added to 'as demand came'.

The council held Ocean City's 1943 tax rate at $1.20 per hundred, the same as 1942 — unanimously, in the middle of the war.

In the middle of the war, with no tourists to speak of, the council spent an August evening on the need for rebuilding the old Boardwalk and for examining the town's water supply.

On 15 September 1943 the council wrote to both Maryland senators, its congressman and its state senator asking that the bay channels be redredged, the steel jetty be connected to the Coast Guard base and the inlet jetties be raised.

A sitting Ocean City councilman applied to put a chicken-dressing plant in the old laundry building on Talbot Street, and a hall of his neighbours voted him down.

Ocean City set its 1944 tax rate at $1.20 per hundred - the fifth straight year at that figure.

On 22 June 1944 the Ocean City council declared 24 August an annual Marlin Day.

Ocean City cast 452 votes on 7 August 1944, turned out its wartime mayor and both sitting councilmen, and made Daniel Trimper Jr. mayor.

Five days after being voted out, Ocean City's council could not be assembled at all, and its clerk ran the town's business over the telephone.

Zoning is mentioned 443 times across 14 meetings — more than beach, water or police — and the EPA appears in July, "possibly now for the first time aware of it", over permits

Thirty-one meetings, one source, and the last year of the Maryland Coast Press holding at the State Archives — 1980 closes the run that SC 5241 could have supplied