G. Bertrand Cropper
civil engineer, Ocean City · active 1939
The man who spent 1939 trying to give Ocean City a building code. In February and March he bid against Clark Gardner to survey and grade the northern sewer extension, at $260 against Gardner's $385, and lost because Gardner was already employed. On 23 May the council adopted his plan for draining the surface water at Worcester Street and Philadelphia Avenue and employed him at $50 to furnish grades and supervise the work. On 2 May he asked the council for 'a rigid building code with a City inspector to have charge of all building & repairs', the cost to be carried on the permits; he was told to put it in writing. On 19 September the council said it would act on his application to be inspector at the next meeting, and on 3 October it unanimously decided to pass no ordinance requiring one. — 1946 FULL PASS, 2026-08-15: THE ENGINEER WHO SPENT 1939 TRYING TO GIVE OCEAN CITY A BUILDING CODE BECAME ITS FIRST BUILDING INSPECTOR ON 4 JUNE 1946, appointed on John B. Lynch's motion seconded by Rudolph Dolle 'to carry out the Zoning ordinance'. He came to it from the other side of the same year: on 12 March 1946 he told the council that the survey was not correct from North Division Street north, which set off five meetings and brought in a registered surveyor from Berlin to check his own field notes - and Pitts found them mathematically correct. He furnished the grade for the St. Louis Avenue sidewalk on 11 June, was sent to mark the true line of 6th Street in the Normandy porch case, set fifteen survey markers from South First Street to Fifteenth in September, held the 5th Street grade to four inches above the centre of the street, took Magee Oil Co.'s filling-station application straight from the clerk on 1 October, and on 22 October was told to go ahead towards a unified grade for the streets of the entire City. He fixed Ocean City's permit fees with the council on 18 September at $10 for a garage and $15 for a dwelling, or a quarter of one per cent of cost. ⚠ THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE MINUTES' 'Geo. Bert Cropper' / 'George B. Cropper, Esq.' WITH THIS RECORD IS BY NAME, TOWN AND PROFESSION ONLY AND IS NOT DOCUMENTED ON ANY PAGE READ. He is called 'Bert' by his lawyer and is a different man from Robert Lee Cropper, Hugh Cropper and Donald Cropper, all of whom appear separately in the 1946 minutes.
In the record (16)
1939 · 1939-03-31
After refusing three times in 1938, Ocean City agreed in 1939 to run sewer and water to the Yacht Club Island - for a $15,000 assessment
On 24 March John Lynch, John D. Ayer, Frank Truitt and others came before the council 'in interest of Yacht club island asking for Extension of Sewer & water', and the question arose whether the sewage would run by gravity, the city engineer having figured the 14th Street sewer as reaching only St. Louis Avenue underground. On 31 March: 'Yacht Club Island Sewer discussed and decided that if they wanted sewer & water City would run sewer & water to East Side Chicago Ave, they to connect there and put them on tax books for $15,000 assessment. Carried.' In the new-assessment list of 21 June the clerk entered 'Yacht Club 12000'.
In 1938 the council was asked about this island three times and would not touch it - it 'could not help' in May, 'promised to think it over' in November, and on 22 November refused to buy it 'owing to the City's finances'. In 1939 it named a price. What changed was not the island but the answer to the question the 1938 pass could not settle: the town's interest in the Yacht Club Island was, in the end, the tax books.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-10-03
A civil engineer spent 1939 asking Ocean City to adopt a building code, and in October the council unanimously declined
On 2 May 'Bertram Cropper before Council asking that a rigid building code be passed with a City inspector to have charge of all building & repairs and that cost of same be placed on the granting of permits; Council asked him to place his ideas in writing that they might study same.' On 19 September the council told him it would act on his application for inspector at the next meeting. On 3 October: 'Question of Building inspector was taken up and Council unanimously decided to pass no Ordinance at present requiring inspector.' The council had in the same year refused to employ the Board of Health's proposed sanitary inspector at $450 for three or four months, on the ground of finances. — 1940 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The council that unanimously voted down a building code in October 1939 was discussing land-use control within twelve months. On 2 October 1940: 'The desire of an Ordinance to protect the kind of business & building that should be erected on the properties near the new Bridge was discussed and decided to go over that situation with attorney at next meeting, also the advisability of an Ordinance covering signs.' Nothing was enacted in the three remaining meetings of 1940. The reversal is not a change of principle; the trigger named in the minute is the bridge.
Ocean City in 1939 had a fire code it had passed in December 1938, a sanitary ordinance, a licence ordinance running to thirty-five heads and a notice rule with a 250-foot radius. What it would not have was anyone whose job was to go and look. Every one of those instruments depended on a neighbour complaining.
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 MasseyE. Raymond BoundsHarold J. RayneClifford P. CropperJames D. Jarman
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1946 · 1946-03-13
Ocean City called in a registered surveyor from Berlin in March 1946 to check its own surveyor's work, and was told its iron monuments stood about 2.2 feet south of where the town's founding plat put them.
Geo. Bert Cropper came before the council on 12 March stating that the survey was not correct from North Division Street north; a call went out to W. D. Pitts of Berlin, who came down at eleven the next morning and reported. His letter, typed and filed with the minutes, says he went over Cropper's field notes and calculations and found them mathematically correct; that he then went into the field and checked the angles and measurements as they pertain to 'the iron pipe monuments set up by the town of Ocean City, Md. some years prior to this date' - those at the south-east and south-west corners of Baltimore Avenue and North First Street - and found them 2.26 feet too far south of the true corners shown on the plat of the Synepuxent Beach Company of Baltimore City recorded in Liber F.H.P. No. 1, Folio 550; and that a check measurement from the stone on the east side of Baltimore Avenue at South Division Street to the same corner made the error 2.17 feet. He signs himself William D. Pitts, Registered Surveyor #165. The clerk's own minute of the same morning calls the discrepancy 'approximately 25 1/2 inch', and records that the town's answer was to get the city attorney to draw legal papers 'and lessen the width of North Div. Street enough to correct' it.
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-04-02
Ocean City spent five meetings in March 1946 relitigating the physical basis of every property line north of North Division Street, and settled it by adopting a survey made in 1924.
On 2 April the full board met with three surveyors - Robert C. Walker, William D. Pitts and George B. Cropper - and city attorney John S. Whaley, 'for purpose of discussing means to correct error in Survey from N. Div. Street to North 15th Street'. Walker gave an account of his findings since 1917 as recorded in his field notes, up to the time he helped Schoolfield survey the city in 1924, and all three surveyors agreed that the 25 1/2 inches in question were caused by the width of North Division Street and 'was an error in the map and not in Survey'. Whaley cited two deeds on record long before the city was surveyed, giving distances to North First and North Second Streets, and 'it was decided by the Council that the measurements by Surveyors should hold to the ones as made in 1924', with Whaley to prepare whatever legal papers were necessary to establish the lines permanently. It is the ground being cleared five weeks before the zoning map was adopted: the town fixed its coordinate system first, and zoned on it. On 19 March it had already resolved that Cropper place markers at the proper place on Baltimore Avenue and that the boundary 'be recognized as the proper starting point for all future Surveys'.
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-04
Ocean City's whole boundary fight came down to two feet between a deed and a plat - and the lawyer drafting the fix put 977 feet in his own resolution because, as he wrote, he had inadvertently added fifty.
Two letters of 4 May 1946 from John S. Whaley of Staton, Whaley & Price, both under the firm's file number 16,724, are filed with the minutes. To George B. Cropper - 'Dear Bert' - he reports that Robert C. Walker has called his attention to a typographical error on the ninth line of page 4 of the tentative resolution circulated about 10 April: the distance of 977 feet should have been 927 feet, and 'I did not check the resolution carefully before it left my office as to distances, etc., as I was confident that there would be some changes to be made before the resolution was finally drawn'. To Walker at Bronxville he sets out the arithmetic: 'An attempt is, of course, being made to show that there is a difference of two feet in the distance along Atlantic Avenue, as shown on said Plat, and as shown in the description of the deed prior to the Plat... Apparently I inadvertently added fifty feet. I have checked the deed, and the distance given in the deed is 925 feet. Unless I have made another error in addition, what is supposed to be the corresponding distance as shown on the Plat is 927 feet.' The two-foot gap between the deed and the Sinepuxent Beach Company plat is the same error Pitts measured in the field on 13 March, and it is what the 28 May resolution was drawn to settle.
The deed says 925 feet and the plat says 927 - the two-foot difference Ocean City spent the spring of 1946 arguing about.
Staton, Whaley & PriceSinepuxent Beach CompanyJohn S. Whaley
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-24
Ocean City's lawyer would not put the town's rewritten ordinance in the post in May 1946 - 'under the present transportation situation' he had it carried by hand instead.
Writing to George B. Cropper on 24 May 1946 - 'Dear Bert' - John S. Whaley thanked him for his letter of 11 May, told him 'I have rewritten the Ordinance, and enclose herewith a copy of the Ordinance as rewritten, embracing your suggestions', and then: 'Under the present transportation situation I shall not risk mailing the rewritten Ordinance to Mayor and City Council of Ocean City, but shall see that it is in some way delivered in person. I shall send at least two copies thereof to the Mayor and City Council, so that the Mayor and City Council can give Mr. Walker one copy. I shall also send a copy of the rewritten Ordinance to Bill Pitts.' The date is the height of the national railroad strike. It is the only trace in the whole 1946 minute book of the post-war disruption reaching Ocean City's paperwork - and it puts at least four copies of a rewritten ordinance into circulation by hand, which is four chances that one of them survives.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Staton, Whaley & PriceJohn S. Whaley
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-28
Ocean City told a 6th Street hotel to move its porch off the sidewalk in ten days and was told the supports had stood there for twenty years - so the council sent its surveyor to find out where the street actually was.
A letter went out on 21 May to Mary B. Cormine about her building on 6th Street being partly on the sidewalk, asking that she remove it within ten days. On 28 May Dr. C. W. Purnell and Mrs. Carmine were before the council about the Normandy's porch supports being on the sidewalk; they stated the supports had been there for twenty years and that they had done nothing toward building that required a permit. The council told the secretary to have Bert Cropper give the proper line for 6th Street, and said they would look the property over after the street line was marked. It is a small case with the year's two big themes inside it: a new permit regime meeting a twenty-year-old building, and both sides deferring to a surveyor because nobody was sure where the line ran.
The clerk spelled the same woman's name two ways a week apart - Cormine and Carmine.
Dr. Charles Washington Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-06-04
Ocean City appointed George Bert Cropper its first Building Inspector on 4 June 1946 - the engineer who had spent 1939 trying to give the town a building code got the office four weeks after zoning gave him one.
'On motion by J. B. Lynch, seconded by R. Dolle, Geo. Bert Cropper was appointed Building Inspector to carry out the Zoning ordinance.' Ordinance No. 99 had created the office in function on 7 May and named nobody to it; every permit, every certificate of occupancy and every referral to the Board of Zoning Appeals runs through it. Four days before the appointment, William H. Price had ended a letter to the clerk on an unrelated sewer question with a postscript: 'Will you please write me the name of the Building Inspector under the Zoning Ordinance when appointed?' Cropper was already the town's working surveyor - it was his field notes that started the boundary fight in March, and the same meetings that made him Inspector sent him out to give the grade for a sidewalk and to mark the line of 6th Street. By 22 October the council had told him to go ahead towards making a unified grade for the streets of the entire City.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Staton, Whaley & PriceJohn B. LynchRudolph Dolle
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-06-11
One week after appointing a Building Inspector, Ocean City turned its new zoning ordinance on the unpermitted building going up north of 15th Street.
'John B. Lynch brought up the class of building that was going up above 15th Street, and it was decided to notify the owners to get permits before going any farther with building.' It is the first recorded enforcement action of the 1946 zoning regime, and the phrase 'class of building' is the ordinance's own vocabulary. North of Fifteenth Street is exactly where the adopted map had just dropped the height limit from forty feet to thirty and made the whole town residential as far as Twenty-Second Street; it is also the stretch where the front-yard setback falls to eight feet, and where in 1946 the building was actually happening. No owner is named and no penalty is mentioned. On 18 September the council went further and put a notice in the paper telling the town to do no building or repairs until a permit had been secured.
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-09-09
Ocean City organised its new government on 9 September 1946 two councilmen strong, made Rudolph Dolle President and Cranford Savage Secretary-Treasurer, and hired the lawyer who had written its zoning ordinance as City Attorney.
Judge Jones Robins was called in and swore in Daniel Trimper as Mayor for a two-year term and R. Dolle and C. D. Savage as councilmen for two years; Lynch's seat stayed empty. The council elected Rudolph Dolle President and Cranford D. Savage Secretary and Treasurer, appointed Joe Savage Police Chief, and appointed John S. Whaley City Attorney - the Snow Hill partner who had cited the deeds in the boundary fight in April and rewritten an ordinance in May. The same meeting was told that the busses had quit and ordered the secretary to write Mr. Colonell asking why he quit before 1 October, and decided to have Geo. Bert Cropper present at the next meeting to settle about the price for charging for permits. It also read and approved the minutes of 'Aug. 5, Aug 10th & August 27th'.
Daniel W. Trimper, Jr.Rudolph DolleCranford O. SavageJohn S. Whaley
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-09-18
Ocean City fixed its first building-permit fees on 18 September 1946: ten dollars for a garage, fifteen for a dwelling, or a quarter of one per cent of the cost of the building.
Bert Cropper was present and discussion was had as to cost, and on motion by R. Dolle seconded by C. D. Savage it was agreed: $10.00 minimum for a garage; $15.00 for a dwelling, or one quarter of one per cent of the cost of the building. Counsel had advised on 4 May that permit charges 'should be incorporated in a separate ordinance', and four and a half months later the council set them by motion instead. The same meeting ordered fifteen survey markers put in the centre of the street from South First Street to Fifteenth, every other street; held the grade on 5th Street to Cropper's grade, four inches above the centre of the street; and put a notice in the paper that no building or repairs were to be done until a permit was secured. The town had been running a permit regime for four months and had not been charging for it: on 9 September the council had to decide to have Cropper present at the next meeting 'to settle about price for charging for permits'.
Rudolph DolleCranford O. Savage
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-10-01
Magee Oil Co. came back for its filling station at 2nd Street and Philadelphia Avenue in 1946 - and this time the council did not hold a hearing, it handed the application to the Building Inspector.
'Letters from Magee Oil Co asking for permit for Oil Station on lots [at] 2nd Street & Phila. Ave.', and the secretary was instructed to hand the application over to Geo. Bert Cropper for answer. Eleven months earlier the same company had asked for a $15,000 all-steel-and-porcelain station on the same corner; the council wrote to every property owner within 250 feet, held a hearing on 31 October 1945 at which eight owners objected and not one spoke in favour, read five more letters of objection on 5 November and refused it. In 1946 the question is not put to the neighbours at all. It is the clearest single illustration of what zoning changed: a discretionary political decision taken in a room full of neighbours became an administrative one taken by one man against a map. What answer Cropper gave is not recorded.
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-10-22
With the council a man short since August, a townsman wrote in asking to be appointed - and the minutes record no answer.
'Letter from Talbot Bunting asking to be appointed as a member of City Council was read.' No action is recorded, and the seat John B. Lynch resigned on 27 August was still vacant at the last meeting of the year on 26 November. Bunting was one of the party-boat dock owners the council had summoned in March to explain their charges to boatmen, and in December 1944 he had come before an earlier council with Frank Sacca in the interest of advertising Ocean City by radio. The same 22 October meeting read letters from the Public Service Commission about a bus permit, from Arthur Harris on the Inlet, and from Clarke Gardner on bonds for water extensions, and told Bert Cropper to go ahead towards a unified grade for the streets of the entire City.
Public Service Commission of MarylandJohn B. LynchClark Gardner
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-11-15
Six weeks after constituting its Board of Zoning Appeals, Ocean City decided that small repairs need not go to it at all - the Building Inspector could simply O.K. the work.
'Question of permits was discussed, and Council agreed for the small repair or alteration jobs that it would be better for [the] Inspector to O.K. the work rather than send it to [the] Appeal Board.' It is recorded as the council's own judgment, with no motion and no reference to any provision of Ordinance No. 99 - which requires the Building Inspector to forward within ten days any application that only the Board can grant, and requires four of five concurring votes for the Board to grant anything. The same meeting refused Roland Beauchamp permission to use wood shingles, the first recorded permit refusal on materials under the new regime, in a town that had burned before and had just written an eight-inch-masonry incentive into its zoning law.
Ocean City Board of Zoning Appeals
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1973 · 1973-01-03
Martha Cropper, forty years in Ocean City and wife of the contractor G. Bertrand Cropper, died at home on 3 January, the same week the paper reported the State's dune-line suit against a builder of that name
"OCEAN CITY - Mrs. Martha Walter Cropper, 60, died Wednesday in her Ocean City home after a long illness. She had lived here for the past 40 years and was the wife of G. Bertrand Cropper, who survives. Mr. Cropper is an Ocean City building contractor and heads a concrete mix business. Born in Frankford... She was a member of the Atlantic United Methodist Church here." Funeral in Atlantic Church with the Rev. Lawrence Wimbrow, assisted by the Rev. Dr. C. Wilbert Sterner of First Presbyterian; interment in Berlin's Evergreen Cemetery. Obituaries, 10 January 1973 (the Wednesday is 3 January). The 3 January front page had reported the Department of Natural Resources' new suit against "George [Bert] Cropper to halt construction of property on the dune line" (the middle name is broken in the OCR).
Source · checked 2026-09-10