Harry C. Ludlam
first chief, Ocean City volunteer fire department · active 1903
Named chief when Ocean City organised its volunteer fire department in February 1903. The Ludlam name runs through the town's water business in this decade: a 'Captain Ludlum' stood on John F. Waggaman's winning council ticket in the 1902 municipal election, Samuel S. Ludlam was one of the fire company's two foremen, and Captains Charles and Christopher Ludlam — the latter a former keeper in the U.S. Life-Saving Service — pulled the drowning crew of a capsized fish boat off the bar in September 1903. Whether these are one family has not been established from any source read.
In the record (3)
1903 · 1903-02-21
Ocean City organises a volunteer fire department — the town's first — and the county paper prints the whole roster, Harry C. Ludlam chief.
Democratic Messenger, 21 February 1903, under the head "Ocean City Firemen": "A volunteer fire department has been organized at Ocean City, with the following members: Chief, Harry C. Ludlam; assistant, Chas. Mayo; foremen, Samuel S. Ludlam and A. J. Wyatt; assistants, L. Bunting and Henry B. Purnell; marshall, Thomas Cropper; assistant, Cyrus Purnell; president, John W. Quillen; vice president, R. C. Quillen; secretary, Harvey Trader; treasurer, H. B. Purnell; Lem Wyatt, R. C. Moore, John L. Quillen, Jesse Truitt, Jr., Claud Richards, Ed Hastings, Thomas Moore, John Cropper, Riley Quillen, John Purnell, Ezra Bunting, S. J. Johnson, Thomas Purnell, Daniel Trimper, Jr., Ralph Dennis, C. R. Bunting, Henry [...]" — the list runs off the column. The town had had a beachfront arson fire two years earlier and no organised way to fight it [fact:1901-boardwalk-bathhouse-fire]; twenty-two years later the 1925 fire would show what a wooden resort still had to lose.
Twenty-eight named men, one of them a Trimper, and a roster that reads like the 1903 town directory.
Ocean City Volunteer Fire Department
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1905 · 1905-07-29
A Washington summer visitor, David Moore, organises a 32-man volunteer fire brigade at Ocean City with uniforms, a small engine and three stations along the boardwalk — the event behind the modern "1905" founding date.
"A volunteer fire brigade has been organized at Ocean City by Mr. David Moore, of Washington, now staying at the Atlantic Hotel. Mr. Moore has been elected chief. Mr. Moore says he will establish three stations along the boardwalk. Last Wednesday the company, which has 32 enrolled volunteers, gave its first drill in their new uniforms and with the small engine which has recently been purchased. Last week a small fire on the lower boardwalk was effectively extinguished by the brigade with buckets." Ocean City had already organised a volunteer fire department in February 1903 under Chief Harry C. Ludlam; the 1905 brigade is a re-founding on a larger and better-equipped footing, and is very probably the origin of the widely repeated 1905 date for the Ocean City Volunteer Fire Company.
Modern accounts date the Ocean City fire company to 1905. The 1903 pass found it organised in February 1903. Both are right about something: 1903 is when it was formed, 1905 is when it got uniforms, an engine, three stations and a fire it actually put out.
Ocean City Volunteer Fire DepartmentDavid Moore
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1926 · 1926-09-11
Captain Christopher Ludlam, mayor of Ocean City and the man who set the first ocean fish pound on the Maryland coast, dies at eighty.
Worcester Democrat, 11 September 1926, 'FROM OUR EXCHANGES': 'Funeral services for Captain Christopher Ludlam, former Ocean City Mayor and Pioneer of the Ocean City fishing industry, were held last week at St. Paul's by the Sea Church at Ocean City, Rev. Lewis B. Sheen, rector of the church, conducting the services. Captain Ludlam died at the home of his son, Charles Ludlam, in Ocean City from a complication of diseases. He was 80 years of age. The first ocean fish trap, or pound, on the Maryland coast was constructed by Captain Ludlam off Ocean City over thirty years ago, marking the beginning of the fishing industry for Ocean City. Captain Ludlam was born in New Jersey and at one time was keeper of the Anglesea Coast Guard Station. He retired from business in Ocean City over five years ago. The deceased is survived by six children, four sons: Harry C. Ludlam, Samuel S. Ludlam, Charles Ludlam, of Ocean City; Ansley Ludlam of Florida; two daughters, Mrs. Anna V. Long, of Wachapreague, Va., and Mrs. Clara Hackney of Millville, New Jersey. Interment was made in St. Paul's Episcopal Church cemetery at Berlin, Maryland.' Three details are new to the registry: his birth in New Jersey, his earlier service as keeper of the Anglesea (N.J.) station, and the attribution to him of the first ocean fish pound on the Maryland coast, 'over thirty years ago' — that is, in the early to mid 1890s. His daughter-in-law Mrs Chas. Ludlam was running the Hastings Hotel on the boardwalk the same summer.
Source · checked 2026-08-06