George W. Purnell
trustee, landowner · active 1876–1880
One of three trustees — with Hillary Pitts and Benjamin Jones Taylor — to whom Stephen Taber conveyed Ocean City beach land by deed of July 28, 1876. The north line of that trustees' parcel is the northern boundary of the town as chartered in 1880.
In the record (16)
1880 · 1880-04-10
The 1880 charter draws the town as a strip between two Stephen Taber deeds, anchored on the Ocean City Bridge Company's bridge.
Section 2 of Chapter 209 fixes the corporate limits: "Beginning at a point in Synepuxent Bay at or near the easternmost end of the Ocean City Bridge Company's bridge," south along the bay to the south line of the land Stephen Taber conveyed to Granville Stokes by deed of August 28, 1879, east across Atlantic Avenue to the ocean, north along the surf to the north line of the land Taber conveyed to Hillary E. Pitts, Benjamin Jones Taylor and George W. Purnell, trustees, by deed of July 28, 1876, then north 76 1/8 degrees west across the beach to the bay and back down to the bridge. The commissioners were ordered to have "a survey made by a competent surveyor of all the streets and avenues of said town" and to set a stone at the north and south sides of every east-west street at its intersection with Atlantic Avenue. The original town of Ocean City is, legally, the ground between two parcels Stephen Taber sold — the same New York congressman who patented the 280-acre beach tract in 1869.
Ocean City Bridge CompanyThe Commissioners of Ocean CityStephen TaberDr. Hilary R. PittsB. Jones TaylorGranville Stokes
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1885 · 1885-08-13
Ocean City hosts a judicial nominating convention that ballots 134 times in two days and nominates nobody.
On Thursday, August 13, 1885 the Democratic convention of Maryland's First Judicial Circuit — Dorchester, Wicomico, Somerset and Worcester, four delegates each — met at noon in the Atlantic Pavilion at Ocean City to nominate a candidate for associate judge. The vacancy existed because Judge Charles F. Holland had been appointed by Gov. McLane to fill the seat left by Ephraim K. Wilson's election to the United States Senate. Elihu E. Jackson of Salisbury called the meeting to order; Samuel W. Woolford of Dorchester was president and Oliver D. Collins of Worcester secretary. It deadlocked instantly and never moved: Dorchester and Wicomico voted eight for Holland, Worcester and Somerset eight for George W. Purnell of Snow Hill, ballot after ballot. The convention sat through Friday the 14th, adjourned to 9 p.m., took one more futile ballot and gave up, adjourning to Cambridge on September 2 — where, after eleven more ballots, Worcester's delegates went over and Holland was nominated. Salisbury and Snow Hill partisans came down by train to watch.
The first documented political convention held in Ocean City ran for two days, cast well over a hundred ballots, produced no candidate at all, and moved to Cambridge. The town got the trade regardless.
Atlantic HotelEphraim King Wilson II
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1886 · 1886-04-07
Maryland empowers the Commissioners of Ocean City to extend the town half a mile north and half a mile south.
Chapter 474 of the Acts of 1886, approved April 7, empowered "the Commissioners of the town of Ocean City, Worcester county" to extend the town's bounds in two pieces. The northern extension began at the Atlantic Ocean end of the line of the land Stephen Taber conveyed to Hilary R. Pitts, Benjamin Jones Taylor and George W. Purnell, trustees, by deed of July 28, 1876 — "and now the northern limit of said town" — and ran a half mile north along the ocean, west to Synepuxent Bay, and back. The southern extension ran a half mile south from the original south boundary, bay to ocean. Section 2 required the commissioners to have the additional territory "carefully surveyed and marked." The act is permissive: it grants power to extend, and no source found in this pass shows the survey being made or the extension taking effect.
Six years after Ocean City was incorporated inside a rectangle of somebody else's farmland, the state handed the town a mile of new beach — and this is the first act of the Maryland General Assembly ever addressed to Ocean City's own municipal government rather than to the men who owned it.
The Commissioners of Ocean CityStephen TaberDr. Hilary R. PittsB. Jones Taylor
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1888 · 1888-06-27
The only railroad to Ocean City is sold on the courthouse steps and passes to its bondholders — and into the Baltimore & Eastern Shore's orbit.
George W. Purnell of Snow Hill was appointed trustee to sell the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad and filed his bond in the Circuit Court on May 24, 1888 in the sum of $300,000 — "by far the largest bond ever filed in this county." The advertisement described the property plainly: "all the real and personal estate, property and franchises of every kind and description, including Road Bed, Rolling Stock, Depots, Grounds... The said Railroad being located in Worcester and Wicomico Counties... and is the only Railroad leading to Ocean City." The sale was held in front of the Atlantic Hotel in Berlin on Wednesday, June 27, 1888. Bidding opened around twenty-one thousand dollars and the road "was struck off, the purchasers being the bondholders, who have perfected an agreement with the Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad Company to run it in their interest." Gen. J. B. Seth, president of the B.&E.S., was among the railroad men present. Through June the county had been betting the Pennsylvania would buy it and "put on fast trains, which will be a big boom for Ocean City"; the Pennsylvania did not, but a month later a fast daily express was running anyway.
Train Depot SiteWicomico and Pocomoke Railroad
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1889
C. W. Spofford of Washington's Riggs House leases the Atlantic Hotel for five years — and brings the capital's trade with him.
In February 1889 the Snow Hill Democratic Messenger reported from Berlin that "the prospects for Ocean City seem brighter now than for a long time. The Atlantic Hotel at that place has just been leased to Mr. C. W. Spofford, of the Riggs [House], Washington, D.C. ... Mr. Spofford is a well known [hotel] man and will undoubtedly be the [cause] of quite a number of Washingtonians spending next summer at Ocean City." The Smyrna Times of February 20 carried the lease term: "The Atlantic House at Ocean City has been leased to C. W. Spofford, of the Riggs House, Washington, for five years." By March 30 I. N. Mills, superintendent of the Delaware Railroad, had run a special train down to Ocean City with Spofford aboard, and Hon. George W. Purnell had been elected a director of the Atlantic Hotel company. John Tracy, who had run the Atlantic since at least 1882, moved across to the Seaside for 1889.
The proprietor of the Riggs House — the hotel where presidents' cabinets ate — took a five-year lease on a hotel on a sandbar. Washington's summer colony had been coming to Ocean City for a decade; in 1889 Washington's hotel trade came too.
Atlantic HotelAtlantic Hotel CompanyJohn Tracy
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1890 · 1890-04-09
The Atlantic Hotel is auctioned off at Snow Hill on April 9, 1890 to its own biggest creditor — and resold within ten weeks.
'The Atlantic Hotel at Ocean City was sold at public auction here to-day by George W. Purnell and E. Stanley Toadvin, trustees,' ran the dispatch from Snow Hill on April 9. 'The sale included the hotel building and land upon which it was situated, with the furniture and bath houses. Judge Charles F. Holland of Salisbury was the purchaser... He was the only bidder. The hotel is the largest at Ocean City, and was built about fifteen years ago by a syndicate at a cost of over $35,000. Liens existed against the property amounting to over $12,000, and it was to satisfy these that the sale was made. Judge Holland, the purchaser, was the principal creditor. He has not announced what disposal will be made of the property other than that it will be continued as a hotel.' The price is reported as $15,000 by the Wilmington Evening Journal; the Delaware Gazette's figure is illegible in the surviving scan. Holland did not keep it. By mid-June the Smyrna Times was reporting that 'Judge Charles F. Holland, who purchased the Atlantic Hotel at Ocean City at its last sale by trustees, has sold [it] to a syndicate of Eastern Shoremen. It is stated that the price paid was $12,000' — a figure Baltimore's German daily Der Deutsche Correspondent repeated from Salisbury on June 5. The house Ocean City was founded to build had gone under the hammer for less than half its cost.
sold for a reported $15,000
Atlantic HotelAtlantic Hotel CompanyJudge Charles F. Holland
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1893
The town sells lots at auction for six years of unpaid corporation taxes, and the notices name Ocean City's tax collector and its Board of Commissioners.
Through the first half of 1893 the Democratic Messenger carried, week after week, collector's sale notices signed "BALDWIN F. WILLIAMS, Collector of Corporation Taxes for Ocean City." The first ran from March 4 against Lot No. 129, seized for taxes owed "to the Board of Commissioners of said Ocean City" for the years 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891 and 1892 — six consecutive years unpaid. The lot is described as being "on the North Corner of Caroline Street and Philadelphia Avenue, and is described as Lot No. 129 on the plat of said Ocean City filed among the land records of said Worcester County with the deed from Stephen Taber and wife to Hilary B. Pitts, B. Jones Taylor and George W. Purnell as Trustees" — the founders' 1876 purchase, still the town's root of title. A Circuit Court order nisi of August 17, 1893 ratifying the sale records the lot as assessed to Edward W. LeCompte "(and alleged to be the property of the heirs of James A. Stewart, deceased)" at Liber I.T.M. No. 4, folio 538. A second round of notices ran from April 29 against Lots 81 and 194 for 1890–1892 taxes, sold on the premises May 27, and a third against Lot 183, assessed to Manners, Fisher & Co., sold July 22.
The Commissioners of Ocean CityBaldwin F. WilliamsDr. Hilary R. PittsB. Jones TaylorStephen Taber
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1893
Three hotels open the eighteenth season, and the Atlantic Hotel company rents Congress Hall as well.
"The Atlantic Hotel, at Ocean City, was opened for the reception of guests on the first day of June," the Democratic Messenger reported on June 3. "The hotel company have rented Congress Hotel for the season, and will run it on the European plan." Theodore L. Page managed the Atlantic and a Baltimore Sun correspondent singled him out in July as a man who "has put his house on the same plane as the best houses at any" resort. The Sea Side Hotel "was opened to guests by Proprietor John Tracey" on Tuesday June 13; the Sun's man called Tracy "the veteran Salisbury hotel keeper... who has been doing business every summer at Ocean City with success, for the past fifteen or twenty years." Congress Hall's arrangement changed hands over the summer: on June 24 "Will Rayne has leased Congress Hall, Ocean City, for the season," and on July 8 "Congress Hall, Ocean City, opened on Saturday last with William E. Rayne proprietor and John L. Nock clerk." Billy McKew took the Hotel de Purnell. By July 1 there were "about two hundred people at the various hotels, more than usually found at Ocean City so early in the season," four cottages were building, and "many improvements have been made about the beach." George W. Purnell announced he would build "a handsome cottage at Ocean City between now and next season" on "one of the choicest lots on the beach," and William Warrington, secretary of the Sinepuxent Beach Company, meant to put up a cottage on Atlantic Avenue. — 1893 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: The Congress Hall conflict has a third state that resolves the shape of it: Rayne did not only lease, he bought. A Baltimore Sun correspondent reprinted in the Messenger of 15 July 1893 names "Mr. William R. Rayne, who has just bought of William B. R. Selby's estate the large hotel known as Congress Hall and proposes to put $10,000 worth of improvements on it." So the sequence is: the Atlantic Hotel company rented Congress Hall for the season on 3 June; Will Rayne leased it on 24 June and opened it on 1 July; and within a fortnight of opening he bought the freehold out of the Selby estate. The two claims in the conflict are both true and sequential. Add also that by late October the hotel was in winter care: "Mr John Willet moved his family to Ocean City Wednesday, and will take care of Congress Hall during the winter." And in March 1893 the Baltimore & Ohio had sent an agent to Ocean City "to examine the Congress Hall property with a view to purchasing the same" — a railroad nearly bought the hotel five months before Rayne did.
Congress Hall changed hands between June and July 1893 — the hotel company took it first, Will Rayne ran it
Atlantic Hotel CompanySinepuxent Beach CompanyTheodore L. PageJohn TracyWilliam E. RayneWilliam Warrington
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1893 · 1893-04-08
A surveyor spends a week laying off Ocean City's streets and avenues, and the town asks him to stop people building in the middle of them.
From the OCEAN CITY column of 8 April 1893: "Mr. D. C. Hudson spent several days here last week laying off the several streets and avenues. We hope there will be no more houses put in the middle of the streets and that surveys will be made so that people will know when they are building on their own lots." The block-and-lot grid on the Ocean City plat had been in use in deeds since at least January 1892, and the collector's tax notices of 1893 place lot No. 129 "on the north corner of Caroline Street and Philadelphia Avenue" by reference to the plat filed with the Taber trustees' deed of 1876. What that grid had evidently never had was a set of stakes in the sand. Eighteen years after the founding, and in the middle of the boom the Sinepuxent Beach Company was running, the streets of Ocean City were being marked on the ground for the first time the record can see — and houses were already standing in some of them.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1894 · 1894-05-05
Twelve cottages go up at Ocean City over the winter of 1893-94, in the teeth of the depression.
Democratic Messenger, May 5, 1894: "Ocean City has made considerable headway during the past winter. There have been 12 cottages completed, among the number a very fine one by the Hon. George W. Purnell, of the Snow Hill bar." The season's letters name more of them — R. G. Keene repainting his cottage for Charles Goldsborough's family, Randolph Mordecai building "a very pretty and roomy cottage south of the hotels" for occupancy by July 1, new cottages north of the Atlantic Hotel on the ocean front for Mrs. Prune of Baltimore and Mr. McLean of Washington, and Granville Stokes painting his new cottage. By August a Baltimore Sun correspondent counted "half a dozen or more" already projected for 1895. Eighteen months after the Panic of 1893, Ocean City was still building. — 1894 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: Two counts survive for 1894 and they are not the same count. The county paper reports twelve, twice: 'There has been many improvements made at Ocean City since last season. Altogether there have been twelve buildings erected including several new cottages and some improvements on old buildings' (28 April 1894, p3), and 'Ocean City has made considerable headway during the past winter. There have been 12 cottages completed, among the number a very fine one by the Hon. George W. Purnell' (5 May 1894, p3). Note that the first says twelve BUILDINGS including several cottages, and the second says twelve COTTAGES — the paper contradicts itself in a week. Then on 7 July the Messenger reprinted the Baltimore American: 'SIXTY new cottages at Ocean City indicate very clearly that Maryland's great seashore resort is rushing to the front in importance and prosperity.' The twelve is a winter count from the county paper; the sixty is a Baltimore paper's summer figure and may be cumulative rather than a single season's. The disagreement is recorded rather than resolved. — 1894 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Independently corroborated outside Worcester County: the Smyrna (Del.) Times of 2 May 1894, in its 'Maryland Items' column, states flatly that 'Twelve new buildings have recently been put at Ocean City, Md.' The figure is the county paper's, arrived at independently in a Delaware weekly in the same week.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1894 · 1894-09-01
The whole of Fenwick's Island is auctioned at the Atlantic Hotel, Ocean City — advertised on the strength of a canal that had not been dug.
By a decree of the Circuit Court for Worcester County in Hickman v. Gum and Du Pont (Chancery Docket No. 1456), trustees Clayton J. and George W. Purnell offered "all those tracts, pieces or parcels of land comprising all the lands known and called by the name of 'Fenwicks Island' and lying in Isle of Wight Bay and surrounded by the waters of said bay and its tributary streams and the Atlantic Ocean" at public sale "at the Atlantic Hotel, Ocean City Maryland, on SATURDAY, September 1st '94, At 11 o'clock A. M." A memorandum records that an 1872 survey by George A. Jones and B. Frank Waggaman put "the whole property in Delaware and Maryland, known as 'Fenwicks Island' and the islands adjacent thereto" at twelve hundred acres more or less, including land covered by water. The selling point is the waterway: "The property described is situate on the projected waterway from the Delaware Bay to the Synepuxent Bay, which is expected to give Philadelphia inside waterway communication with the Synepuxent Bay and its tributaries. The United States Government is appropriating money for this purpose, the Canal having already been opened to Indian River by Government aid." Terms were ten per cent cash, the balance in two equal instalments at six and twelve months.
A twelve-hundred-acre barrier island, sold in a hotel lobby at Ocean City, on the promise of a canal. The price it fetched is not in the paper — which is the annoying half of the find.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1895
Lots inside the original fifty acres — the ground Stephen Taber deeded to the founders' trustees on July 28, 1876 — go to auction in the Atlantic Hotel, and a bayfront-to-oceanfront block is cut into seven lots.
A trustees' advertisement ran in the Democratic Messenger through July and August 1895: a sale "at the Atlantic Hotel at Ocean City in said Worcester County, on SATURDAY, August 17th, 1895, sale commencing at 3 o'clock p. m., all those lots of land situated at said Ocean City within the original fifty acres as laid off by Stephen Taber by deed to Hillary R. Pitts, Benjamin Jones Taylor and Geo. W. Purnell, Trustees, dated the twenty eighth day of July in the year eighteen hundred and seventy six, recorded among the land records of said Worcester County in liber I. T. M. No. 4 folios 536, 537 and 538, and are described on the plat filed in the office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court for Worcester County." That deed is the founding conveyance of Ocean City, and its date and recording reference are recovered here from an auction notice nineteen years later. The market above it was busier: the paper of August 31 advertised a block at the corner of a numbered street and Baltimore Avenue "divided into seven desirable building lots, the usual size 50x100 feet each, and sold at reasonable prices. Ocean City is booming and there are very few desirable locations purchasable. These lots, especially the ocean front lots, are the best located on the beach."
Atlantic HotelStephen TaberDr. Hilary R. PittsB. Jones Taylor
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1895 · 1895-08-17
Sixty-odd lots 'within the original fifty acres as laid off by Stephen Taber' are sold at auction in the Atlantic Hotel, and the advertisement cites the founding deed of 28 July 1876.
Trustees appointed in Taber v. Taber, on the Chancery Docket of the Circuit Court for Worcester County, advertised through July and August 1895 a public sale 'at the Atlantic Hotel at Ocean City in said Worcester County, on SATURDAY, August 17th, 1895, sale commencing at 3 o'clock p.m., all those lots of land situated at said Ocean City within the original fifty acres as laid off by Stephen Taber by deed to Hillary R. Pitts, Benjamin Jones Taylor and Geo. W. Purnell, Trustees, dated the twenty eighth day of July in the year eighteen hundred and seventy six, recorded among the land records of said Worcester County in liber I. T. M. No. 4 folios 536, 537 and 538,' with the lots described on the plat filed in the Clerk's office and listed by number — 52, 76, 77, 78, 84, 97, 103, 104, 106, 109, 112, 121, 134, 136, 143 and on through the 190s. One hundred and fifty dollars in cash was required on the day of sale, the balance in two equal annual instalments. The advertisement is a citation to the town's founding conveyance, and it matters twice over: it fixes the deed's date, parties and recording reference, and it shows that record surviving in 1895 — because it is a LAND record, not one of the chancery papers that burned with the Snow Hill court house in 1893.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1896 · 1896-12-12
A life-saving surfman buys the Synepuxent House and its livery stable for $2,470, and thirty-six Taber estate lots are sold off the bay side.
Two sales bracket the year's property record. In August the Ocean City column reported: "A sale of Ocean City lots took place. Thirty-six lots, lying on the bay side of the beach and belonging to the estate of Stephen Taber, deceased — George W. Purnell and George M. Upshur, trustees — were all readily disposed of at satisfactory prices. John Walter Smith, of Snow Hill, bought ten of the lots and James W. Owens bought several. The rest were purchased by residents of Ocean City or vicinity." The newly elected mayor was one of the trustees selling; the state senator was the largest buyer. In December, out of the estate of Isaac S. Jones, "Mr. William Taylor, of Ocean City Life Saving Station, purchased the Sinepuxent House and lot, also the livery stable and lot, each 40x80 feet, at Ocean City of Calvin B. Taylor at public sale last Saturday. He paid $2470 for the two lots, which was considered a good price." A surfman buying a hotel is the clearest single measure of what beach property was worth, and to whom, in 1896. Smaller transfers that year run from $28 for a tax-sale lot to $900 for lot No. 17 with improvements; Sarah Ann Lynch paid $330 in August for lot No. 6 in Block 15 that William W. Bigger had bought from the Sinepuxent Beach Company for $100 in February. — 1896 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Confirmed, with the December buyer identified by occupation. The Messenger of 19 December 1896: 'Mr. William Taylor, of Ocean City Life Saving Station, purchased the Sinepuxent House and lot, also the livery stable and lot, each 40x80 feet, at Ocean City of Calvin B. Taylor at public sale last Saturday. He paid $2470 for the two lots, which was considered a good price.' The purchaser was a serving surfman of the Ocean City station buying a hotel and a livery stable — which is a fact about what federal surfmen's pay and standing could buy on this beach, and it belongs to the life-saving thread as much as to the property record. He or his namesake would offer the same Sinepuxent House at auction in 1908.
Sinepuxent Beach CompanyStephen TaberJohn Walter Smith
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1918
A trustee's sale reveals the State took 6.2 of the 9.9 acres of the Taber "Hommock" opposite Ocean City for the bridge.
A sale notice run in the Messenger through July 1918 describes land "lying on the westerly side of Synepuxent Bay, opposite Ocean City, called 'Hommock,' which was conveyed to the said Sarah E. Taber by George W. Purnell, trustee, by deed dated the 20th of June, 1898 ... except so much thereof as was condemned by the State of Maryland at the instance of the State Roads Commission, under proceedings instituted in Case No. 5 on the Miscellaneous Docket of the October Term, 1916, of the Circuit Court for Worcester County; said deed from said trustee calling for 9 and 9-10 acres, more or less, and said proceedings of condemnation taking 6 and 2-10 acres, more or less; leaving 3 and 7-10 acres." The remainder is bounded by "a lot lying near the westerly end of the railroad bridge and belonging to The Farms Company." The same notice offered "lot No. seven (7) on the original plat of Ocean City." This is the mainland end of the bay bridge, taken by eminent domain from the family of Stephen Taber -- the man who patented the beach and sold the lots that made the town in 1875 -- to build the road that would end its dependence on his railroad.
Maryland State Roads CommissionStephen Taber
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1946 · 1946-05-28
Ocean City wrote its own boundaries into the minute book on 28 May 1946, back to a deed of 1876, declared North Division Street to be 75 feet and not the 77 its founding plat showed, and gave away everything north of the corrected line.
Seven pages of the minute book are one unanimously passed resolution. It recites the deed of 29 July 1876 from Stephen Taber and wife to Hillary R. Pitts, B. Jones Taylor and George W. Purnell, Trustees, in Liber I.T.M. No. 4, Folio 536, and with it the plat of the original town of Ocean City at Folio 538; the bronze point set in a block of concrete, for more than twenty years, at the intersection of the westerly line of Atlantic Avenue with the southerly line of North Division Street; the deed of 11 June 1891 in Liber F.H.P. No. 1, Folio 550 by which Stephen Taber's executors, Robert Goldsborough Keene and Theophilus Tunis conveyed to The Sinepuxent Beach Company of Baltimore City, with which the company's plat was recorded; a deed of 1 February 1881 to R. Jenkins Henry measured 525 feet north of a stone monument on a bearing of North 27 3/8 degrees East; a deed of 11 March 1880 to Lemuel Malone measured 925 feet from the same monument; and the corporate limits themselves, from mean low water in the Atlantic where the north line of South Seventh Street extended would strike the ocean, west to the middle of Sinepuxent Bay, north along the middle of Sinepuxent and Isle of Wight Bays to where the south line of North Twenty-Sixth Street extended would meet it, and back to the ocean - 'as is more specifically shown in Article 24, Section 134, of Flack's Code of Public Local Laws of Maryland, 1930 Edition'. It then finds, on deeds, plats, markers and testimony the council 'deems to be conclusive', that the width of North Division Street is seventy-five feet and not the seventy-seven the Sinepuxent Beach Company plat indicates; resolves the correct northerly line of North Division Street to be a line drawn 75 feet up Atlantic Avenue from the bronze point and parallel with the southerly line to Sinepuxent Bay; resolves that North First Street meets Atlantic Avenue 425 feet from the same point; and, in the clerk's block capitals, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the town 'hereby waives all right, title, interest and estate in, and any jurisdiction or control over' any part of North Division Street north of that line.
Sinepuxent Beach CompanyDr. Hilary R. Pitts
Source · checked 2026-08-15