Dr. Hilary R. Pitts

In the record (12)

1. 1875 · 1875-06-20

   Three hundred guests at the Atlantic Hotel watch a half-hour ocean mirage on 20 June 1875 — a fortnight before the day the town dates its founding to.

   "An ocean mirage of a most sublime and awe-inspiring character was witnessed by over three hundred guests at the Atlantic Hotel, Ocean City," the Snow Hill Shield reported, "exhibiting to the astonished gaze of the beholders not less than thirty vessels of different descriptions in the atmosphere above the horizon, with an upper tier of inverted ships corresponding to the lower ones, and presenting an illusive ocean also — or, in other words, one upon another upside down. The scene lasted for over half an hour, and was felt to be the grandest and most sublime spectacle imaginable. The stories of phantom ships by nautical fiction writers could not interest any in comparison to the sight witnessed from our beach as above. We obtained our facts from Dr. H. R. Pitts and Col. L. J. Mapes, who enjoyed it." The item ran in the Washington Evening Star on July 23, 1875 and in the Cecil Whig the next day. THE DATE: the Evening Star of 23 July 1875 gives it as "on the 20th ult." — the 20th of the previous month, i.e. 20 June 1875. The OCR could not read the numeral, which is why the campaign carried the month as disputed for four passes; the page itself is unambiguous. A second, independent full-resolution reading (section-C pass, 2026-08-06) confirms "on the 20th ult." and adds the hour — "at about 6 o'clock p. m." — and the Shield's phrase "from our beach."

   Ocean City's first recorded piece of folklore is a superior mirage — a real atmospheric effect, correctly described, on a beach that had existed as a town for a matter of weeks.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

2. 1876 · 1876-02-24

   Maryland charters the Ocean City Bridge Company — and the act reveals the bay bridge was already built, privately, without permission.

   Chapter 24 of the Acts of 1876, approved February 24, 1876, incorporated the Ocean City Bridge Company. Its preamble is the year's most useful sentence: "during the interval since the last session of the Legislature, public necessity urgently demanded a bridge across Synepuxent Bay, from Hommock Point to Ocean city, in Worcester county, and WHEREAS, to meet this necessity and relying upon future legislation to authorize and confirm their act, Hillary P. Pitts, William Showell, Cyrus L. Williams, John M. Taylor, John R. Purnell, and others, associated together and at their own expense, constructed a secure and substantial bridge at the above named point, with a draw in the same twenty-five feet wide, which will admit the convenient passage of all boats and vessels capable of navigating this portion of said bay." Section 1 retroactively authorized the structure; capital stock was capped at $10,000 in 400 shares of $25; the stockholders were to meet at Berlin on the first Monday of March (March 6, 1876) to elect five directors; Section 6 required a keeper "always in readiness to open" the draw free of charge; Section 9 denied banking privileges; Section 10 reserved the General Assembly's right to amend at pleasure. The bill was reported favorably in the House by Mr. Purnell on January 20, 1876 and passed the Senate 15–0 on February 14, 1876.

   The bridge that made Ocean City a resort was built first and legalized afterwards. Five men put up their own money, threw a drawbridge across the bay, and then asked Annapolis to make it legal — which Annapolis did, in one page, with no fine imposed.

   Ocean City Bridge CompanyWicomico and Pocomoke RailroadWilliam ShowellCyrus L. WilliamsJohn M. TaylorJohn R. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

3. 1876 · 1876-05-10

   Ocean City's first known product endorsement: the Atlantic Hotel's paint job, vouched for by the railroad president.

   A trade notice in the Wilmington Daily Commercial of May 10, 1876 read: "The Atlantic Hotel, at Synepuxent Beach, was painted last summer, with Harrison's Town and Country Ready Mixed Paint, and notwithstanding the effects of the winter weather it shows no depreciation in color or firmness. So says H. R. Pitts, President of the Wicomico [and] Pocomoke R. R. Co." It is a small item that does three useful things: it dates the Atlantic Hotel's painting to the summer of 1875, it shows the new resort already being used as advertising copy 250 miles up the peninsula, and it puts Dr. Hilary R. Pitts in the president's chair of the Wicomico & Pocomoke in May 1876.

   Wicomico and Pocomoke RailroadAtlantic Hotel Company

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

4. 1877

   June 26, 1877: fifty Baltimore notables and a party of editors ride 236 miles to Ocean City, bathe until sundown, and file the first detailed description of a night at the Atlantic Hotel.

   H. F. Kenney, superintendent of the P.W.&B., organized a promotional excursion from Baltimore on Tuesday, June 26, 1877. Special cars went on the 9:55 a.m. express from President Street depot carrying "over fifty guests from Baltimore city, comprising some of her most prominent citizens" — Hon. Charles G. Kerr, Hon. R. T. Banks, Henry Clay Dallam, James Hodges, Professor Powhatan Clarke, Judge Henry F. Garey among them. The Westminster editor joined at 6:20 a.m. and reached the beach at 5 p.m., 236 miles, on a day the thermometer showed 92 degrees in the shade; the train once ran 25 miles in 27 minutes and twice stopped to cool its journal boxes. Within half an hour of arrival "a number of the excursionists were out in the surf, and the broad beach was a lively scene, till the going down of the sun." Then supper in the Atlantic's "spacious salon," euchre in the parlors, promenaders on the porticos, and — the line worth keeping — "at eleven the first snore of the season at Ocean City broke the sweet, sad monotony of the moaning surf." Breakfast next morning was Spanish mackerel, fried oysters, stewed chicken, hot rolls, waffles, cakes, toast, coffee, tea, milk and butter, consumed "in alarming quantities," and "mine host Tracey was made to tremble for his larder."

   The single most vivid page in Ocean City's early record, and it was written by a Westminster newspaperman on a free ticket. Read it as advertising and it is still the only surviving account of what the Atlantic Hotel smelled, sounded and tasted like in its third summer.

   Atlantic HotelJohn TracyH. F. Kenney

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

5. 1879

   August 1879: a rumour goes round the Shore that a Russian nobleman staying at Ocean City has handed Dr. Pitts a draft for $30,000 to build a new hotel.

   The Smyrna Times of August 6, 1879, quoting the Salisbury Times, printed: "report from Ocean City has it that a Russian nobleman now sojourning there has given Dr. Pitts a draft for $30,000 for the erection of a new hotel." Dr. Hilary R. Pitts of Berlin was one of the men who conceived the resort on the beach in 1873 and was president of the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad in 1877 — the plausible recipient of such a gift and the plausible source of such a story. No hotel answering the description appears in the 1879 or 1880 record. The item is filed here as the town's first documented boom rumour, not as a transaction: three papers deep in hearsay, hedged by its own printer, and worth about $30,000 in 1879 dollars if true.

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

6. 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 TaberB. Jones TaylorGranville StokesGeorge W. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

7. 1882 · 1882-08-03

   The Atlantic Hotel Company reports its first mortgage paid off and property worth twice what the stockholders put in.

   At the stockholders' meeting at Ocean City on Thursday, August 3, 1882, the Board of Directors reported: "The first mortgage of $3,000 is paid in full, leaving the second mortgage of $6,500 to be paid out of the rents. This is expected to be extinguished in the next two or three years. The company now has property worth from $25,000 to $30,000 that cost the stockholders $15,000." The directors elected were Dr. H. R. Pitts, B. Jones Taylor, R. J. Henry, Col. Lemuel Showell, Dr. Geo. R. Dennis, Dr. S. P. Dennis and E. Stanley Toadvine — six of the seven from the circle of Berlin, Snow Hill and Somerset men who conceived the resort on the beach in July 1873 and bought the land in 1875.

   Seven years after the founding syndicate spent $15,000 on a sandbar, the sandbar was appraised at twice the money and the first mortgage was gone. The resort had stopped being a gamble.

   Atlantic HotelAtlantic Hotel CompanyB. Jones TaylorCol. Lemuel ShowellGeorge R. Dennis

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

8. 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 TaberB. Jones TaylorGeorge W. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

9. 1888 · 1888-08-16

   Dr. Hilary R. Pitts's estate is auctioned in front of his own Ocean City drug store — three town lots, a shuttered signal-service office, and stock in the bridge, the hotel and the railroad.

   By the will of Dr. Hilary R. Pitts, late of Worcester County, deceased, his executor John W. Pitts offered the estate at public auction at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, August 16, 1888, "in front of the Drug Store formerly owned by Dr. Pitts, at Ocean City." The advertisement is the closest thing to a property inventory of 1880s Ocean City in this campaign's record: (1) a lot with a two-storied house formerly used as a drug store; (2) an adjoining lot with a two-storied house "formerly occupied as a signal service office"; (3) the lot immediately south, carrying a house recently owned by Stephen T. Aydelotte, sold subject to Aydelotte's twenty-year lease from May 14 at an annual rental of thirteen dollars; and (4) personal estate — shares of the capital stock of the Ocean City Bridge Company, nineteen shares of the capital stock of the Atlantic Hotel Company, Ocean City, and two and a half shares of Delaware, Maryland & Virginia Railroad stock. Terms: ten per cent cash, the balance in two equal annual instalments on the purchasers' interest-bearing bonds.

   Hilary Pitts was on the beach at the 1873 committee meeting that resolved to build a hotel here. Fifteen years later the town he helped invent is a numbered list in a legal advertisement — bridge stock, hotel stock, railroad stock, and a drug store with the signal office next door.

   Ocean City Bridge CompanyAtlantic Hotel Company

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

10. 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. WilliamsGeorge W. PurnellB. Jones TaylorStephen Taber

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

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 TaberB. Jones TaylorGeorge W. Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

12. 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 CompanyGeorge W. Purnell

    Source · checked 2026-08-15