J. M. Mumford
City Clerk and Secretary-Treasurer, Ocean City · active 1937–1939
Wrote the Ocean City minute book through 1938 in longhand and signed every meeting of the year as Clerk or Secretary. He was reappointed City Clerk by the incoming council on 12 September 1938 for a term to June 1939, attested the ordinance conveying Philadelphia Avenue to the State Roads Commission in July as Secretary to the City Council, and was voted a Christmas present of $25 from the town treasury on 13 December 1938. His hand is the only reason the campaign can read the year at all. — 1940 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: activeYears / bio: activeYears '1937-1939' → activeYears '1937-1941 or later' — He wrote and signed every one of the fifteen 1940 documents as Clerk or Secretary, attested the engrossed repealing ordinance of 15 January 1940 as Secretary, signed the typed hearing notices of 3 October and 2 November 1940, witnessed Irving Faustin's building permit, and was reappointed Secretary by the incoming council on 10 September 1940. The election return of 5 August 1940 is signed in full as 'John M. Mumford, Clerk' - which is new evidence bearing on the standing question of his given name, though the registry's existing person:john-m-mumford (Worcester County School Building Commission, 1929) is a separate record and no identification is asserted here either. — 1944 FULL PASS, 2026-08-12: Clerk and Secretary of Ocean City through the whole of 1944 and 1945; every minute of both years is in his hand and over his signature. His weekly salary was fixed at $40.00, tax taken out, on 27 September 1944 - the same figure as the man rebuilding the Boardwalk. On 29 July 1944 he could get only the mayor and one councilman to a called meeting, and on 12 August 1944 he could get no meeting at all and was instructed over the telephone to add a truck and two men to the garbage collection. He witnessed the town's five-year street-lighting contract in November 1944, signed the two-year garbage contract as Secretary in April 1944, and attested Ordinance #100 in May 1945. — 1946 FULL PASS, 2026-08-15: HIS FULL NAME IS SETTLED AS JOHN M. MUMFORD by the town's lawyers, who address him in 1946 as 'John M. Mumford, Esq., City Clerk' and 'Dear John', and by his own signature on the election return of 5 August 1946. He wrote every meeting of 1946 in longhand and signed each one; he engrossed the whole forty-page text of Zoning Ordinance No. 99 into the minute book on counsel's advice, on the wording counsel supplied him three days in advance; and he served as clerk of the municipal election of 5 August. The 1946 book carries several of his slips, recorded rather than corrected: 'Nov. 16' in the body of the 15 November minute against 'Nov 15-46' in his own margin; 'John B. Lynch' written twice in the attendance line of 20 March; a literal blank left in the middle of 'the Seaford ______ Co.'; 'D.T.T.' for DDT; and a struck-through 'Friday' at the head of the meeting of Tuesday 26 November. ⚠ NOTE THE STANDING POSSIBLE DUPLICATE: the registry also holds person:john-m-mumford, named in Chapter 175 of the Acts of 1929 as an Ocean City member of the Worcester County School Building Commission, and person:john-w-mumford. No merge is made here.
In the record (49)
1938 · 1938-06-06
Nine months after voting four to one for Worcester Street, Ocean City signed away North Division and Caroline Streets for the new bridge instead
On 9 September 1937 the town voted 275 to 97 for Worcester Street as the landing of its new highway bridge, in a referendum Congress itself had written into the bridge authorisation. On 30 December 1937 the state said the vote was not binding. On the morning of Monday 6 June 1938, at a special meeting called for the purpose, the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City enacted an ordinance approving the State Roads Commission's plans 'for the Construction of a bridge over Sinepuxent Bay from Ocean City to the mainland, and its Approaches in the Beds of North Division Street and Caroline Street', under the Commission's Contract No. WO-180, and granted the State of Maryland the public easement in the beds of both streets from Philadelphia Avenue to Sinepuxent Bay - reserving to itself, in Section 3, 'the full power and right at all times to enact and enforce all such traffic and parking rules and regulations' and all other police powers. The State Roads Commission accepted the grant by resolution at its Baltimore office on 27 July 1938, on the motion of Mr. Jarboe seconded by Mr. Luthardt, and sent a certified copy back to the town over the signature of its secretary L. H. Steuart, which was copied into the minute book. Ocean City's own council thus enacted the defeat of Ocean City's own referendum, and did it unanimously in a nine-thirty morning session. — 1940 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The 1938 fact records Ocean City signing away North Division and Caroline Streets. Two things are now added, neither of which changes it. First, the State Roads Commission formally ACCEPTED the grant by resolution at its Baltimore office on 27 July 1938, moved by Mr. Barboe and seconded by Mr. Luthardt, and a certified copy signed by L. H. Stewart, Secretary, is filed in the Ocean City minute book. Second, the town REPEALED the grant by ordinance on 15 January 1940 at a special meeting called by the new mayor - and then, on 12 March 1940, had to ask its own attorney whether the repeal was valid or whether the previous council's grant still held. The 1938 transaction was therefore not final, and the campaign should stop treating it as the end of the bridge fight.
The only time Congress ever gave a Maryland resort town a veto over a federal bridge, the town used it, won it four to one, and then thirteen weeks after the state overruled the result passed an ordinance handing over the streets the losing side had wanted. The referendum is in the record and so is the ordinance, and the ordinance is the one that built the bridge.
Maryland State Roads CommissionW. Thomas ElliottW. Preston Laws
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-07-27
On 27 July 1938 Ocean City handed Philadelphia Avenue north of Ninth Street to the State of Maryland, and the Coastal Highway was born out of a town street
At a special meeting on the evening of Wednesday 27 July 1938 - the mayor and two councilmen present, moved by Dr. Townsend and seconded by Preston Laws - Ocean City passed an ordinance granting the State Roads Commission 'the title in and to the bed of Phila. Ave and the intersecting streets from south Side of Ninth Street to the northerly Corporate limits of Ocean City, and the title to a portion of Lots # 7, 8, 9, 10 & 11 in Block 53 of a plat of Ocean City', for the purpose of 'Constructing a Costal highway leading from Ocean City to the Delaware line', under the Commission's Contract No. WO-171-1-1019 and its plats Nos. 3250 and 3251. The recital is explicit that the lots the state wanted were the town's own and were 'used in Connection with their Water System'. A week earlier, on 20 July, the council had already voted to deed the state eighteen to twenty feet off Baltimore Avenue frontage of the same lots 'for the widening of Phila. Ave. from 9th to 15th St.' and to grant the easement in the street bed from 9th to 15th. The State Roads Commission accepted the whole grant at its Baltimore meeting on 28 July 1938, again on Jarboe's motion seconded by Luthardt, and the resolution was copied into the town's minute book. Section 3 kept the town's police power, its traffic rules and its parking rules over the road - which is why parking on Coastal Highway has been an Ocean City question ever since. — 1938 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The purpose and price of the road the town gave Philadelphia Avenue for are now attested from outside the minute book. The Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise of 8 July 1938, page 2, file 0391, gives it as a $200,000 coastal highway to meet the Delaware seacoast road at the state line, one lane to be built that summer, a dual highway only hoped for. The State Roads Commission's own operating report for fiscal 1939-1940 subsequently records the highway as COMPLETED and Rehoboth as thirty miles from Ocean City by road.
Everything north of Ninth Street in Ocean City is built along a road the town gave away in a single evening in July 1938 to get a concrete highway to Delaware. It cost the town its own street, part of its waterworks lot, and nothing else - and it is the single decision that made the modern island possible.
Maryland State Roads CommissionW. Thomas ElliottFrancis J. TownsendW. Preston Laws
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. JohnsonClifford P. CropperE. Raymond BoundsHarold J. RayneWilliam H. ScottStephen J. Quillen
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-01-17
The first item of Ocean City business about a named Black resident in 1939 was what to do with an old man the town wanted institutionalised
The minute of 17 January 1939 records, between a fire-truck delegation and a list of building permits: 'Question of Wm Miller old colored man needing sending to an institution was taken up and Secretary got in touch with Commissioner Spencer Franklin who directed that city get two doctors to examine Miller and call Miss Riggen and have her send necessary papers.' Nothing further about William Miller appears in any of the twenty-five 1939 minutes.
Fifteen words of description and a procedure. The town knew his name, knew he was old, knew he was Black, and moved straight to two doctors and the necessary papers - and then the record closes over him. He is the only Black resident of Ocean City named in the whole 1939 minute book, and he is named in order to be removed from it.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-02-03
Ocean City asked the state Board of Health to help it get rid of the shanties on St. Louis Avenue
The minute of 3 February 1939: 'Secretary instructed to write Board Health asking their aid to getting rid of the Shanties on St Louis Ave, not connected to sewer.' In April Dr. Willard of the health department proposed that the town employ an inspector for three or four months at $450 to assist in improving sanitary conditions; no action was taken, and on 27 April the council decided 'best not to spend the money it would require for that purpose'. In the assessment list of 21 June the clerk entered 'T. J. Cropper Shanties 500'.
In 1938 the state told Ocean City to make the shanties connect to the sewer. In 1939 the town asked the state to help it remove them instead. Somewhere between those two sentences the problem stopped being sanitation and became the people, and the town would not pay $450 to have anyone find out which.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-02-07
In February 1939 an Ocean City councilman asked the War Department whether it intended to do anything at all about the north jetty
The minute of 7 February 1939 records: 'By request of Councilman Rayne, Secretary instructed to write Col Johnson of War Department asking if they were going to do any work on North Jetty at Inlet.' No reply is recorded in any later 1939 minute. The Corps' own report for that fiscal year confirms that nothing but surveys was done at Ocean City in the twelve months to 30 June 1939.
The town was right to ask and the answer was no. What makes the entry worth keeping is that it was asked at all: the inlet the Corps had cut and the town had spent a decade being grateful for had gone quiet, and a councilman had to write to Baltimore to find out whether it was still anyone's project.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-06-06
Ocean City's permit machinery in 1939: notify every owner within 250 feet, set a hearing, and see who turns up
On 2 June the clerk was 'instructed to notify all property owners within 250 ft of Mrs. Dennis' lot of Application for Bicycle' station, 'of a hearing to be held on the application on Tuesday Evening at 8 P.M. June 6th.' He then wrote out the sixteen people notified, by name, in a column: Mrs. E. E. Dennis, Mr. S. J. Carey, Mrs. Thelma Dennis, Mr. Kinnamon, H. D. Cropper, Dr. F. J. Townsend, Edward H. Johnson, Myrtle Brittingham and others. At the hearing on 6 June the applicant, Mr. Roman, 'stated he was not going to operate only during day light and would place lights on Sign to satisfaction of Mayor. No objectors were present or made so clerk was ordered to grant licence.' A bicycle-renting station cost $250 a year, the second-highest fee in the ordinance. — 1940 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The 1939 fact describes the machinery: notify every owner within 250 feet, set a hearing, see who turns up. 1940 runs it twice more and both runs go the applicant's way. Irving T. Faustin's 90-by-75-foot store building at Ninth Street was granted on 14 October over four objecting households named in the minute. Mrs. Bassett's two stores at the Roosevelt Hotel drew three objectors on 6 November, including the mayor's wife, and produced not a refusal but a councilman's compromise - drop back eight feet to the building line - and a site visit the next morning. Across 1939 and 1940 the rule has now been run six times in the campaign's record; it granted a popcorn stand and a bicycle station over live objectors, refused one white man, granted two more, and refused one Colored Recreation Hall.
Write the sixteen names out and the machinery stops being abstract. This is the same procedure - the same clerk, the same notice radius, the same hearing - that was turned on Charles C. Richards and the Colored Recreation Hall seven months earlier. When nobody objected it produced a licence in four days.
Ella DennisMr. RomanEdmond H. Johnson
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-06-21
The Henry Hotel added six hundred dollars' worth of building in 1939, and the town's new-assessment list is the only place it is written down
The Mayor and City Council assessed the year's new building at the meeting of 21 June 1939 and sent notice to every owner. In the middle of the list, between 'Harrison, Public Lots' and 'Joe & Edith Hickmott', the clerk wrote: 'Chas Henry add Hotel 600'. Four lines above it stands 'Clarence Carey garage 200'. The list runs to about seventy entries and is the town's whole year of construction in one page and a half: Calvin Pruitt's Admiral at $25,000 is the largest single item, John and Minnie Lynch's new cottage at $9,000 the next, Ulmer S. Evans's log cabin $4,500, the Yacht Club $12,000, Alton Purnell's Brighton Hotel, T. J. Cropper's shanties $500 and Emma Farrell's beer joint $500.
This is the third document in the whole campaign that names the Henry Hotel, and all three are the white town's own paperwork - a permit in 1937, the mayor's building list in 1937, and now a line in an assessment book. The hotel that existed to serve Black visitors is legible to us only through the ledger of the people who would not house them.
The Henry HotelChas. HenryClarence CareyCalvin P. Pruitt
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1939 · 1939-12-11
Ocean City's last council meeting of 1939 ended with the mayor telling them he would have to resign
The minute of Monday evening 11 December 1939, the last meeting of the year, closes: 'Mayor Edmond H. Johnson told the Council he would have to hand in his resignation to take effect Dec. 30, 1939.' A line is then interlined above the signature in the same hand: 'Motion by Rayne sec'd by Cropper that Johnson's Resignation be accepted.' The meeting adjourned at 9:45 P.M. Johnson had presided over every one of the year's twenty-five meetings and had personally signed the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company franchise ordinance that same evening. The minute gives no reason. The council did not meet again in 1939. — 1940 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The 1939 fact ends with the mayor telling the council he would have to resign and no successor named. The 1940 record closes it: the office was declared vacant at 2 P.M. on Tuesday 2 January 1940 and filled the same afternoon by Clifford P. Cropper, President of the City Council, nominated by Harold Rayne, seconded by E. Raymond Bounds, elected unanimously for the unexpired term and sworn before J. Edward White, Justice of the Peace. The 1940 minute also gives the effective date of the resignation as 1 January 1940 rather than the 30 December 1939 the December minute anticipated. ⚠ The other half of the 1939 question - WHY he resigned - is NOT answered: the word does not appear again in the 1940 book, and Johnson is not mentioned in any 1940 document except the printed letterhead that had not yet been reset.
The clerk wrote the resignation in as an afterthought, squeezed between the last motion and his own signature - which is either how fast it happened or how little he wanted to write it down. Whichever it was, Ocean City went into 1940, and into the last two years before the war, without the man who had run it.
Edmond H. JohnsonHarold J. RayneClifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1940 · 1940-01-02
Ocean City's council filled the mayor's chair from among itself in a single afternoon sitting, and the man who took it was the man who had been chairing the meeting
The first council meeting of 1940 opened at 2 P.M. on Tuesday 2 January with three councilmen present and no mayor. Clifford P. Cropper, President of the City Council, presided. 'By reason of the resignation of Mayor Edmond H. Johnson effective as of January 1, 1940, which had been accepted by the City Council, the President of the City Council declared the office of Mayor of Mayor and City Council of Ocean City vacant and asked for nominations for that office.' Harold Rayne nominated Cropper 'to be appointed Mayor to serve until the next election'; E. Raymond Bounds seconded; there were no other nominations, and Cropper was unanimously elected for the unexpired term. He then resigned as President of the Council, took the oath of office as Mayor before J. Edward White, Justice of the Peace, and as Mayor asked for nominations for his own vacated chair, to which Bounds was elected. The meeting adjourned at 4 P.M. The document exists in two forms: the clerk's longhand and a typed carbon on the town's own letterhead, which still prints 'EDMOND H. JOHNSON, Mayor' at its head.
Three men, two hours, and the whole succession settled by nomination, second and oath - with the outgoing mayor's name still printed on the paper it was typed on. 1939 closed with Edmond H. Johnson saying he would have to resign and no reason given; 1940 opens with the council quietly promoting its own chairman and moving on to the school lunches. The reason he resigned is still not in the record.
Clifford P. CropperEdmond H. Johnson
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1940 · 1940-01-15
Thirteen days into the new mayor's term Ocean City repealed the ordinance that had handed the State the beds of North Division and Caroline Streets for its new bridge
At a special meeting called by Mayor Cropper for 8:30 P.M. on 15 January 1940, with only two councilmen present and the reading of the previous minutes dispensed with, the council unanimously passed an ordinance repealing the ordinance of 6 June 1938. The engrossed copy filed with the minute recites the whole of what it undoes: an ordinance 'approving the construction of certain street improvements by the State Roads Commission of Maryland, in Ocean City, Maryland, and granting unto the State Roads Commission, or any successor agency of the State the title in and to the beds of North Division Street from Philadelphia Avenue to Synepuxent Bay and Caroline Street from Philadelphia Avenue to Synepuxent Bay, and relinquishing to the State of Maryland jurisdiction and control over the said streets in Ocean City to the extent necessary for the purpose of construction of a new bridge over the Synepuxent Bay into North Division Street and Caroline Street.' Section 1 repeals it and 'each section thereof'; section 2 makes the repeal effective on passage. It was signed by E. R. Bounds as President of the City Council, attested by J. M. Mumford as Secretary, and approved over the signature 'CLIFFORD P. CROPPER, Mayor'. Filed with it in the same document set is the State Roads Commission's own certified resolution of 27 July 1938 formally accepting the grant now repealed. On 12 March the council asked its attorney, Wm. H. Scott, 'to learn whether the cancelling ordinance to State Roads Commission to rights of street beds of North Div. street was valid or if the granting by previous council still held, and what rights the State Roads had in closing St. Louis Ave., if any.' — 1941 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The stakes of that 15 January 1940 repeal are now visible. On 9 December 1941 the Salisbury Times reported that 'Ocean City's new highway bridge today enters this Maryland resort at North Division Street, six city blocks north of the present highway bridge at Worcester Street.' North Division Street was one of the two streets — with Caroline Street — that the town had granted to the State Roads Commission and then repealed the grant of, and whose status it was still asking questions about in March 1940. The street the town took back from the State was the street the State's new bridge landed in.
Ocean City voted four to one for Worcester Street in 1937, was overruled, signed away North Division and Caroline Streets in 1938, and in January 1940 took them back - and then, eight weeks later, had to ask its own lawyer whether it was allowed to. The bridge fight the campaign has been following since 1937 is not over in 1940; it has simply moved from the ballot to the ordinance book, and the town is no longer sure of its own ground.
Maryland State Roads CommissionClifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1940 · 1940-03-12
Ocean City's online minute archive lists fifteen meetings for 1940; two of them are filing dates rather than meetings, and at least one meeting the council actually held is missing altogether
The town's IQM2 calendar returns fifteen entries for 1940, each with one document and nothing else - no agendas, no packets. Reading the minutes' own 'minutes of X read and approved' chain breaks the calendar apart in both directions. The minute of 12 March opens 'Minutes of Feb. 21 was Read and Approved': a meeting was held on 21 February 1940 that is on no calendar and for which no document exists. The document filed under 5 August contains two records, the return of the municipal election of that day AND the minutes of a council meeting of 6 August, which the calendar does not list separately. In the other direction, the entries for 3 October and 24 October carry no minutes at all - 3 October is two typed hearing notices, 24 October is a signed building-permit application - and the chain skips both: the meeting of 14 October approves 'Minutes of Oct. 2nd', and the meeting of 6 November approves 'Minutes of October 14'. So fourteen council meetings are evidenced for 1940 plus one municipal election, against fifteen calendar entries that do not match them. A fifteenth meeting was promised and cannot be found: on Monday 8 July the council 'decided to consider the proposition until Wednesday afternoon when they would meet again and render their decision.' No document for Wednesday 10 July 1940 exists. The archive holds nothing at all after 29 November 1940.
The 1937 pass found 21 meetings calendared and 24 in the book, and made a rule of it: count the minutes, not the calendar. 1940 is the same rule running the other way. The calendar over-counts by filing paperwork as meetings and under-counts by folding two meetings into one entry, and the only instrument that catches either is the clerk's own habit of writing down which minutes he read out. A back-of-house index of a hundred-year-old record is not the record.
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 DepartmentClifford P. CropperDr. Charles Washington PurnellHarold J. RayneE. Raymond BoundsRobert Lee CropperFrank SaleaJohn B. LynchJ. Edward White (magistrate)William H. Scott
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. ScottClifford P. CropperHarold J. RayneRobert Lee CropperE. Raymond Bounds
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 CityHarold J. RayneRobert Lee CropperE. Raymond Bounds
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-06-03
On 3 June 1941 Ocean City's clerk opened a new minute book and stopped writing by hand — and went on using letterhead that named a mayor who had resigned eighteen months earlier.
The second page of the 3 June 1941 document is a flyleaf carrying five hand-printed words: 'MINUTE BOOK FOR MEETINGS OF MAYOR & CITY COUNCIL BEGINNING JUNE 3 - 1941'. Everything before it in 1941 — 7 January, 12 March, 21 March, 21 April, 6 May, 12 May — is J. M. Mumford's longhand in a ruled ledger. Everything after it is typed on the council's printed letterhead. Sixty years of Ocean City's record change hands from pen to machine on one Tuesday evening in the middle of the last pre-war season, and the change is worth knowing about because it changes what a later reader can do with the source: a page of Mumford's cursive must be read by eye, a typed page can be read by anyone. It also introduces a trap. The letterhead the town used through 1941 comes from at least three print runs, and the sheets used for the minutes of 15 and 25 September 1941 still carry 'EDMOND H. JOHNSON, Mayor' at the top left and 'CLIFFORD P. CROPPER, Pres.' among the councilmen — although Johnson had resigned with effect from 30 December 1939 and the body of both minutes names Mayor C. P. Cropper. The letterhead of an Ocean City minute is stationery, not evidence of who held office.
Edmond H. JohnsonClifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-06-03
Ocean City ran its building permits by written notice to every neighbour and a public hearing, and the town clerk kept the tick-list — the surviving 1941 papers show the procedure working twice.
The town had no zoning ordinance in 1941 — the council had only begun to talk about one in 1940 — but it had a procedure, and 1941 is the year the paperwork survives. On 15 March 1941 the clerk sent out a printed notice: 'The Council Will Consider the application of Cullin S. Jenkins for building permit for store and apartment building 40 by 70 ft located on lot No. 5 block No. 3 adjoining property of Chas. Parker Jr. on the South and Willie Ludlam on the North. Hearing will be at 730 O'clock on Friday evening March Twenty First.' Below it the clerk listed the twenty people he posted it to — Jarman & Timmons, Willie Ludlam, Rata Tyndall, Harriet Dashiell, Floyd Watson, Francis Cloud, Laura McColley, Wm. & Carrie Turner, Chas. Parker Jr., Lillian D. Purnell, Charles S. Powell, R. B. Jenson, Irma K. Mumford, L. Franklin Purnell, S. J. Quillin, Clara Powell, Etta & James Conner, Willimina Harris, Chas. T. Jackson — and ticked or annotated them by hand as the replies came in, one of them marked with an objection. At the hearing on 21 March the council heard the property owners who came, and granted the permit. On 3 June the same machinery is described in the round: on Wm. Dale's application for a filling station on the John Jones property, with Mrs Samuel Quillin objecting and Win Wallace not, 'the Council stated there were thirteen property owners notified and only two appeared with only one objection so motion was made... that permit be granted.' Two appearances out of thirteen notices was, to this council, a mandate.
Willie LudlamL. Franklin PurnellClifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-09-29
Ocean City's council met fourteen times in 1941, none of them in August, and agreed to a fifteenth meeting with its former mayor for which no minute exists.
The IQM2 archive holds seventeen documents for the town in 1941 and the first week of 1942. Two of them are not meeting minutes at all — a hearing notice of 15 March and an engrossed resolution certified on 26 March — so the year's actual count is fourteen council meetings, on 7 January, 12 March, 21 March, 21 April, 6 May, 12 May, 3 June, 13 June, 30 July, 15 September, 25 September, 31 October, 13 November and 11 December, with a fifteenth sitting reconvened after adjournment on the night of 21 March that appears on no calendar. Every stated weekday in the year's minutes is correct for its date, which is worth recording because it is not usual: 1938 and 1939 each contained meetings mis-filed by the archive, one of them onto a Sunday. What 1941 has instead is a gap. On 25 September the council read 'Letter from Edmond Johnson asking for meeting with Council on Monday Morning at 9 O'clock A.M. Monday Sept.29th' and 'Council agreed to the meeting.' There is no document in the archive for 29 September 1941 and no calendar entry for it. The town's previous mayor, who had resigned with effect from 30 December 1939 for reasons the record has never given, asked the sitting council for a nine o'clock morning appointment; they said yes; and whatever passed between them is not in the book. The other gaps are seasonal and tell their own story — nine weeks between 7 January and 12 March, six weeks over the height of the season between 30 July and 15 September, and no meeting at all in August, the month two Ocean City women were killed on the road west of town.
Edmond H. JohnsonClifford P. 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 CouncilWorcester County Council of DefenseBank of Ocean CityClifford P. CropperHarold J. RayneE. Raymond BoundsJohn B. LynchS. Earl TromleyMiss Lena H. RigginGladys JacksonMorris PeacockWillie LudlamFrancis J. TownsendArchie DavisL. B. CropperRobert AllenDaniel Trimper, Sr.W. Preston LawsF. W. TruittEdward M. ScottWilliam H. Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1941 · 1941-12-12
A woman of Ocean City was made the town's registrar for the Women's Division of National Defense — and the county's appeal for volunteers said, in print, 'regardless of their politics, creed, race or personal position.'
'Due to the fact that the present declaration of war has made defense objectives of great importance', Mrs. John L. Whitehurst, director of the Women's Council of Defense, was urging every Maryland county to complete its organisation. Mrs. Roger W. Lankford, General Chairman of the Woman's Division of National Defense for Worcester County, named her chairmen in the Worcester Democrat of 12 December 1941, four of them for registration alone: 'Miss Irma Mumford, Ocean City; Mrs. William E. Craigmile, Pocomoke City; Miss Lolita Smith, Snow Hill; Miss Elizabeth Henry, Berlin' — and, for the county, chairmen of Americanization, Housing, Consumer Problems, Nutrition, Nursing, Agriculture, Industry, Recreation, Aviation, U.S. Stamps and Bonds, and Conservation. 'The importance of organizing for defense is understood by everyone. There will be work for every individual in the county and all citizens will be asked to volunteer regardless of their politics, creed, race or personal position.' A week later Mrs. Lankford was complaining that too few women had registered, and pressing that 'every woman over the age of 15 and under the age of 70 is capable of rendering valuable service'. An Irma K. Mumford also stands on the Ocean City clerk's March list of property owners notified of a building hearing, and the clerk's own name was Mumford.
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 CouncilClifford P. CropperHarold J. RayneE. Raymond BoundsWilliam H. Scott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1942 · 1942-06-03
Ocean City's council met sixteen times in 1942 — and for three of those sittings the town's own file holds no minutes at all, only the paperwork that occasioned them.
Every document the Town of Ocean City has filed online for 1942 was fetched and read this pass: sixteen meetings, one document each, twenty-one page images. Thirteen of the documents are minutes. Three are not. The 22 April meeting is represented only by Joseph C. Purnell's building application to remodel the Purnell building at the corner of Baltimore Avenue and Talbot Street — a restaurant on the south side, a store on the north, a glass front, a closed-in porch. The 13 May meeting is represented by David M. Nichols's application to close in the upper porch of his cottage on 11th Street and by the clerk's notice of the hearing. The 3 June meeting is represented only by the clerk's notice of a hearing on William Dale's application for a filling station on lot 104, the John Jones property on Philadelphia Avenue between Caroline and North Division Streets, 50 by 24 feet and one storey — with the list of the thirteen neighbours notified: Mrs L. M. Mumford, Robert F. Quillin, W. B. Wallace and wife, Bellie and Wm. Torgy, Walter and Lottie Jarman, Edward Evans and wife, L. B. Lynch, Henry T. Parker, Fannie M. Givens, James and Mildred P. Cannine, Samuel L. Quillin, Hattie Mary Cropper, Leah Johnson Melvin. What the council decided on those three evenings is not in the town's record. The book also has a physical shape worth recording: typed on printed letterhead from January to September, and from 14 October to the end of the year J. M. Mumford's longhand on plain sheets.
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. RayneE. Raymond BoundsClifford P. CropperEdmond H. Johnson
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. CropperE. Raymond BoundsHarold J. RayneHerman D. ParsonsClarence WrightCharles T. JacksonJohn J. RayneEdward WhiteEdmond H. JohnsonL. B. CropperRobert 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. RayneClifford P. CropperE. Raymond BoundsL. B. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1943 · 1943-02-10
Ocean City voted $25 in February 1943 for a service flag for its boys in the forces, and in May the woman who had it made brought it to the council and asked for a ceremony to raise it.
Mrs. Elizabeth StroheckerClifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-02-10
In February 1943 a citizen asked the council to help get the Government to make Ocean City a training center for the WACs — the resort trying to be requisitioned rather than waiting to be.
James D. JarmanClifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-02-10
A P.T.A. and Woman's Club delegation asked the council in February 1943 to put the chief of police behind getting Ocean City's children back into school, and to ask the county to bring the Tenth District's children in too.
Board of Education of Worcester CountyMrs. Elizabeth StroheckerMrs. Kathryn LawsCecil BlakeClifford P. Cropper
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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 DepartmentClifford P. CropperE. Raymond BoundsHarold J. RayneHerman D. Parsons
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 CommissionClifford P. CropperHarold J. RayneHerman D. ParsonsE. Raymond Bounds
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-04-14
In April 1943 the town signed a lighting contract with the Eastern Shore Public Service Company 'to care for the change in lights for the duration' — the dim-out written into a utility bill.
Eastern Shore Public Service CompanyClifford P. Cropper
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 PatrolRobert S. CraigClifford P. CropperHarold J. RayneHerman D. ParsonsE. Raymond Bounds
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 MasseyHarold J. RayneHerman D. ParsonsClifford P. CropperE. Raymond Bounds
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 PatrolJames ParkerClifford P. CropperHerman D. ParsonsE. Raymond Bounds
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. ParsonsE. Raymond BoundsClifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-08-09
The town's own August 1943 reckoning put the Life Guard at $1,500 — the second-largest line in a $6,525 summer, behind only garbage labour.
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. CropperE. Raymond BoundsHerman D. Parsons
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. ParsonsE. Raymond BoundsClifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-09-15
Ocean City reckoned its total resources at $68,668.94 on 15 September 1943, with $37,055.78 in the bank, a 1943 levy of $36,237.18 barely more than half collected, and six 1940 accounts still unpaid.
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-12-01
Between September and December 1943 Ocean City moved $5,000 of its cash into a Government bond — the war showing up as a line in the town's own balance sheet.
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1943 · 1943-12-01
Ocean City spent the back half of 1943 asking whether its wells could be blown clear and what two more would cost — and in January 1944 decided to try flowing them itself and save the money.
Shannahan Artesian Well Co. Inc.Clifford P. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1944 · 1944-04-19
Ocean City's two-year garbage contract of 1944 wrote the town's season down in collection days: three a week from April, seven a week from 1 June to 10 September, two a week all winter.
Chester A. Lynch offered to haul the garbage on a two-year contract at $50 a day summer and $20 a day winter, and the council took it. The typed contract, running 1 April 1944 to 1 April 1946, is bound into the minutes. It required him to remove all wet and dry garbage, trash and papers from every house, all wet garbage from business places within the corporate limits, and all street cans on Baltimore Avenue, emptied each hauling day; trucks were to have water-tight bodies and a cover over the load. The schedule is the town's own calendar of itself: three days a week from 1 April to 1 June, seven days a week to 10 September, three days a week to 30 September, and two days a week from 1 October to 1 April. Summer is defined as 1 June to 10 September. Witnessed twice by R. P. Rogers and signed by J. M. Mumford, Secretary, and Chester A. Lynch.
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.
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1944 · 1944-09-27
Ocean City voted to put its hurricane-wrecked Boardwalk back exactly as it had been, and told any owner who wanted his section tied down more securely to pay for it himself.
On motion by Savage, seconded by Dolle, the Board Walk was to be replaced as it was, and if any property owner wanted to tie it more secure he could have the same done at his own expense. The secretary was to get prices on 3/8 and 5/8 galvanized bars from Gunby & Whiting and order from the lower bidder, and to try to get 300 feet of cable for the Black & Decker drill. The same minute fixes the town's weekly wages with tax taken out: J. M. Mumford $40.00, Bob Allen $40.00, Joe Savage $34.00 plus $5.00 for car use, John Milbourne $30.00, Bert Freeman $26.00, John Quillin $26.00, other police $31.50, and by the hour Cyrus Jarman 65 cents, Henry Hudson 50 cents, J. P. Hall 50 cents.
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1945 · 1945-05-15
Ocean City's 1945 licence ordinance took three readings and two passages: adopted on 20 March, rewritten and passed again on 15 May as Ordinance #100.
The council went over Ordinance L-3 item by item on 10 January, spending two and a half hours and setting a further debate; gave the fee schedule a second reading on 13 March and ordered it posted; and on 20 March, with Dale Showell, Elizabeth Strohecker and Chas. and Lee Jackson present wanting to know what the fees would be, made the third reading and passed it on motion by R. Dolle seconded by C. O. Savage, unanimously, ordering it printed. On 5 April Attorney Whaley was instructed to write the ordinance up as passed. On 15 May the secretary read a letter from Whaley about it, and the ordinance was rewritten as of 15 May and passed as Ordinance #100, signed by President of Council John B. Lynch and Mayor Daniel Trimper and tested by J. M. Mumford, Secretary.
John B. LynchDaniel W. Trimper, Jr.John S. WhaleyRudolph Dolle
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1946 · 1946-04-30
Ocean City settled its 1946 garbage problem by deciding 'to employ five colored help to load trucks' and sending the clerk out to find the men.
'The handling of garbage was discussed, and decided to employ five colored help to load trucks, and Secretary ordered to contact men and employ them.' It is the whole of the entry, and it is the only reference to Black labour or to Black Ocean City in the first two thirds of the 1946 minute book - a decision to hire five men, by race, with no man named, no wage entered and the finding of them left to the town clerk. It answers the question the council had left open five days earlier, when 'what to do about getting crew to move garbage was discussed but left for further thought'. The same meeting borrowed $5,000 from the Bank of Ocean City on a thirty-day note to get the town to the season.
Bank of Ocean CityRudolph DolleCranford O. Savage
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-04
Ocean City's lawyers wrote the minute of the zoning ordinance's passage three days before the meeting - attendance, mover, seconder and the word 'unanimously' all typed in advance, with 'Ordinance No. 99' filled in by hand.
On 4 May 1946 William H. Price of Staton, Whaley & Price wrote to the Mayor and City Council: 'Pursuant to your instructions last evening, we advise as follows with respect to the minutes to be taken of your regular meeting next Tuesday night. The minutes should begin in form somewhat as follows:' - and then set out the attendance line naming Trimper, Lynch, Dolle, Savage and Mumford with the hour left blank, followed by the passage minute in full: the President laying the ordinance before the council 'as recommended by the Zoning Commission and revised following public advertised hearings', the motion by Dolle, the second by Savage, and the ordinance 'unanimously passed', with the number 99 written in by hand on the typed blank. The letter then explains why the whole ordinance had to be copied into the minute book: 'in the event of a contest the only admissible evidence as to the Ordinance is the record of the minutes of the Mayor and City Council.' The 7 May minute follows the draft. It is counsel's text, not an independent record of what was said in the room - and the reason the campaign can read Ordinance No. 99 at all.
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-07
Ocean City passed its first zoning ordinance 3-0 on the evening of 7 May 1946, and it was in force that night.
The Mayor and City Council met in regular monthly session at 7:30 P.M. with the whole board present - Mayor Daniel Trimper Jr., Councilmen John B. Lynch, Rudolph Dolle and Crawford O. Savage, and John M. Mumford, City Clerk. The President of the City Council laid before the council the form of The Zoning Ordinance of Ocean City, Maryland, 'as recommended by the Zoning Commission and revised following public advertised hearings before the Mayor and City Council and numerous sessions of the Mayor and City Council to consider suggestions and objections adduced at said hearings and at the hearings held by the Zoning Commission.' On motion by Councilman Rudolph Dolle, seconded by Councilman Crawford O. Savage, it was unanimously passed as Ordinance No. 99. Section II provides that the ordinance 'shall take effect from the date of its passage' - no delay, no publication period, no referendum. Trimper approved it the same day. The whole of the 39 manuscript pages and the map that follow are the ordinance; the clerk records no other motion, no correspondence, no bills and no adjournment. Dolle - who cast the lone dissenting vote on the bus terminal in February 1945 - moved it, voted for it, signed it as councilman and attested it as Secretary to the City Council.
Ocean City Zoning CommissionDaniel W. Trimper, Jr.Rudolph DolleCranford O. SavageJohn B. Lynch
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-08-05
Ocean City returned its whole government at a four-hour poll in the fire house on 5 August 1946: Trimper beat Robert Lee Cropper 344 to 135, and the three sitting councilmen all beat the only challenger.
'An election was held in the Engine room of Fire House on Monday August 5, 1946 for purpose of electing one person for Mayor and three persons for City Councilmen.' The polls opened at two and closed at six, kept by Election Judges Joseph Elliott, Horace H. Richardson and Chas. T. Jackson with J. M. Mumford as clerk, and 494 votes were cast. For Mayor: Daniel Trimper Jr. 344, Robert Lee Cropper 135. For City Council: Rudolph Dolle 403, Cranford D. Savage 341, John B. Lynch 335, John Sacca 165. The returns were properly made to the City Clerk and Trimper, Dolle, Lynch and Savage were declared duly elected for a two-year term to take office on 9 September 1946. It was held on a Monday in the first week of August, at the height of the season, in the engine room.
The clerk recorded 494 votes cast and a mayoral tally that adds to 479 - the two figures in the same return do not close.
Daniel W. Trimper, Jr.Robert Lee CropperRudolph DolleCranford O. SavageJohn B. LynchCharles T. Jackson
Source · checked 2026-08-15