John M. Mumford
Ocean City member, Worcester County School Building Commission · active 1929
Named in Chapter 175 of the Acts of 1929 as one of the two Ocean City members of the Worcester County School Building Commission. NOTE A POSSIBLE DUPLICATE: the registry already holds person:john-w-mumford, elected to the Ocean City council in August 1922, whose surname the 1922 source OCR'd as 'Mumfonl'. The middle initials differ (M. here, W. there) and the 1929 source is a printed statute rather than a newspaper, so the two are kept apart pending a source that settles it. — 1934 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: The record has him only as one of the two Ocean City members of the Worcester County School Building Commission named in Chapter 175 of the Acts of 1929, with a standing note that he may be a duplicate of person:john-w-mumford. The 1934 town minutes settle a great deal of this. J. M. Mumford signs every one of the twenty-two 1934 meeting minutes as Secretary; the printed letterhead of the Mayor and Council in December 1934 styles him 'J. M. MUMFORD, Sec. and Treas.'; his salary was raised to $90 a month from 1 February 1934; and on 10 September 1934 the newly sworn-in council appointed him City Manager. He is also the author of the town's own mayoral succession list of 24 December 1934. Role should read something like 'town secretary and treasurer; city manager from 1934', activeYears at least '1929-1934'. The john-w-mumford duplicate question is NOT resolved by this — the 1934 signature is an initialled 'J. M.' and does not distinguish M from W. — 1935 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: 1935 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11. He is now attested continuously across a whole year. J. M. Mumford signed every one of the twenty-six sets of Ocean City council minutes for 1935, from 8 January to 27 December — in his own hand as “Secretary”, and on all four of the typed federal-form documents bound into the minute book (the special meetings of 16 and 18 October and 1 and 2 November) as “Clerk of the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City”. He personally certified, under the corporate seal, that the resolution accepting the United States' offer of a loan and grant for the sewerage system was a true and compared copy of the original, and he was the officer directed to publish notice of the special bond election and to provide the poll book, the list of qualified voters and the tally sheets. IMPORTANT NEGATIVE: the title ‘City Manager’, to which he was appointed on 10 September 1934, appears NOWHERE in the forty-three pages of 1935 minutes, and a full-text search of all 2,667 Salisbury Times pages for 1935 returns no reference to an Ocean City city manager of any name. THE POSSIBLE-DUPLICATE QUESTION WITH person:john-w-mumford IS NOT SETTLED BY THIS PASS: every 1935 source gives only the initials 'J. M.', so the middle initial M is confirmed for the town clerk but no first name is printed anywhere. Note also that the 1935 sources carry at least three other Mumfords at Ocean City who are not obviously him — a Mrs. J. S. Mumford granted a building permit for a garage and apartment on Division Street in January, an Irma Mumford assessed $1,500 in June, and a Capt. John Mumford running a charter boat out of Ocean City in the June fishing columns — so the surname alone is not a sufficient identifier in this town in this decade. — 1936 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: 1936 FULL PASS: the record held him only as one of the two Ocean City members of the Worcester County School Building Commission under Chapter 175 of the Acts of 1929, with a note flagging a possible duplication with person:john-w-mumford. 1936 settles his office. He is Ocean City's clerk, secretary and treasurer: he signs every 1936 minute as 'J. M. Mumford, Secretary' or 'Clerk'; he certifies the PWA resolutions of 9 June and 14 August 1936 as 'the duly elected, qualified and acting Clerk of the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City'; his signature appears with the mayor's on the resolution extending A. Stanley Mundy's contract; and the town's printed letterhead of 1 September 1936 reads 'J. M. MUMFORD, Sec. and Treas.' He also advertised the town's garbage contract over his own name, was sent with W. Preston Laws in March 1936 to see N. C. Phillips of the WPA about the boardwalk project, was ordered in September to buy 400 feet of fire hose, and is quoted in the Democratic Messenger of 29 October 1936 as 'City Clerk John M. Mumfnrd [sic]' explaining that Ocean City had decided to rebuild its boardwalk itself 'principally for economic reasons'. NOTE that the 1936 letterhead makes him Secretary AND Treasurer, whereas the registry records W. Preston Laws as having been made treasurer at the organising meeting of 10 September 1934; one of the two records is out of date and this pass cannot say which. — 1937 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: 1937 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: he signs every one of the twenty-one 1937 minute documents as Secretary or Clerk, and the town's printed letterhead of June 1937 still styles him 'J. M. MUMFORD, Sec. and Treas.' with W. Thomas Elliott as Mayor and Edmond Johnson as Solicitor. In 1937 he was also instructed to send the boardwalk bills out as each frontage was completed; to notify ten named neighbours of the Lambros hearing; to notify the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works of the acceptance of both sewer contracts; to notify all fireworks dealers 'of this section' that the ordinance would be enforced; and to write to W. E. Brittingham and Miss Purnell about the missing block of boardwalk. He took a building permit himself in March and was assessed $300 in the same book he wrote. He signs one 1937 page 'J. M. Mumford, Jr.'
In the record (16)
1929
Worcester County tries the school bond again: $300,000 at referendum in May 1929, Ocean City's share doubled to $30,000, and two Ocean City men on the building commission.
Chapter 175, approved 11 April 1929, directed the County Commissioners to borrow $300,000 and issue 'Worcester County Public School Bonds (Issue of 1929)', dated 1 July 1929, redeemable $5,000 in 1932 rising to $20,000 a year by 1951, to build and equip new schools at Pocomoke City, Snow Hill, Berlin, Ocean City, Bishopville, Whaleyville and Newark and in the Seventh Election District. The cost was to be 'substantially the same' for Pocomoke City, Snow Hill and Berlin, and 'shall not exceed the sum of thirty thousand dollars for Ocean City', $20,000 for Bishopville, $10,000 each for Whaleyville and Newark and $3,500 for the Seventh District. The question went to a special county referendum on the second Tuesday in May 1929, polls 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and if the majority voted 'Against School Bonds' the act was of no effect. A thirteen-man Worcester County School Building Commission was named in the act; its Ocean City members were Ralph R. Dennis and John M. Mumford.
The General Assembly of 1927 had already passed a $300,000 Worcester school bond, also subject to referendum, with 'approximately fifteen thousand dollars each for Ocean City and Bishopville'. Two years later the county is back for the same $300,000 — which is the clearest evidence available that the 1927 bond never issued. Ocean City's ceiling has doubled, and for the first time the town has its own men on the commission spending it.
Worcester County School Building CommissionBoard of Education of Worcester CountyRalph R. Dennis
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1934 · 1934-09-10
On its first night in office the new council appointed a city manager — the first the minutes ever name
The organising meeting of 10 September 1934 did four things in about seventy-five minutes: elected Wm. H. Scott president of the council and W. Preston Laws treasurer; appointed Edmund Johnson attorney for the city on Dr. Townsend's motion, seconded by Scott; and then, in a line of its own, 'J. M. Mumford was appointed as City Manager.' Mumford had been the council's secretary throughout the McCabe years — he signs every 1934 minute — and the December letterhead still styles him 'Sec. and Treas.', so the manager title sat on top of the clerkship rather than replacing it. Across the twenty-four pages of 1934 minutes this is the only appearance of the office. — 1935 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The office does not recur. J. M. Mumford is present at and signs every one of the 26 meetings of 1935, but the title 'City Manager' appears nowhere in the year's 43 pages: in his own hand he signs 'Secretary', and on every typed federal document — the two clerk's certificates, the bond resolution, the election notice and the appointment of judges — he is styled 'Clerk of the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City'. A full-text search of 2,667 pages of the Salisbury Times for 1935 returns six pages carrying the phrase 'city manager' and every one of them is Oklahoma City, Pasadena, Kansas City or Cincinnati. So the 1934 appointment stands as recorded, but the claim it implies — that Ocean City had an operating city-manager government — is not supported for 1935. The manager title sat on the clerkship for one line in one minute and was not used again.
A resort of a few hundred year-round residents that had just acquired an inlet, a federal harbour project and a rebuilt boardwalk decided, on the same evening it swore in a new mayor, that somebody should be running the place full time. It gave the job to the man who already knew where everything was.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1934 · 1934-12-24
The town secretary sat down and wrote out every mayor Ocean City had ever had — 1892 to 1934, on one page
On 24 December 1934, on Mayor and Council letterhead, secretary and treasurer J. M. Mumford typed a circular beginning: 'I occasionly have an inquiry as to who had served our city as Mayor and their election. So thinking probally others might be interested I have carefully gone over our old records and listed the names and years each served.' What follows is the town's own succession list: three commissioners elected 2 May 1892 — John F. Waggamon, William C. Franklin and William B. Wilson, with Wilson president of the board and Franklin secretary-treasurer; then Wilson elected mayor 7 May 1894; George M. Upshur 1 May 1896; James Z. Powell 1 August 1898; Clayton J. Purnell 6 August 1900; John F. Waggamon 1902, 'Resigned Oct. 20th 1903 remainder of term filled by Capt. Cristropher Ludlam'; Ludlam 1904 and 1906; W. Lee Carey 3 August 1908 and 1 August 1910; William B. S. Powell 1912 and 3 August 1914; Capt. John B. Jones 7 August 1916; Edward M. Scott 5 August 1918; E. E. Collins 2 August 1920; 'William C. McCabe served to Sept 1934'; and 'Aug. 6th 1934 William T. Elliott, 2 years.' The document survives because Mumford filed a copy in the minute book, where it sits as the last item of the 1934 record.
The most useful thing in the 1934 minute book is not a decision at all. It is a clerk answering the same question often enough that he finally wrote the answer down — and in doing so he left the campaign a primary-source succession list for forty-two years of a town whose own books were supposed to have been mutilated in 1896.
William W. McCabeClayton J. PurnellW. Lee CareyWilliam B. S. PowellEdward M. ScottElbridge E. CollinsJames Z. PowellJohn F. Waggaman
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1936 · 1936-02-18
Twenty-four meetings, four elected men and a clerk - and no meeting at all in January or April
The Mayor and City Council of Ocean City met twenty-four times in 1936: twice in February, once in March, once in May, five times in June, once in July, four times in August, three in September, twice in October, four in November and once in December. There is no January meeting and no April meeting on the record. The year opens on Tuesday 18 February with the reading of the minutes of 27 December 1935, the night the sewer contract was let, and closes at nine o'clock on 29 December. The whole government was Mayor W. Thomas Elliott; Councilmen William H. Scott, president of the council, W. Preston Laws and Dr. F. J. Townsend; J. M. Mumford as clerk, secretary and treasurer; and Edmond Johnson as solicitor - the four names printed on the town's letterhead of 1 September 1936. Ten of the twenty-four meetings turned on the sewer or the boardwalk. The first meeting of the year lasted fifty minutes and decided two things: to wait for better weather before repairing the boardwalk, and that the peddlers' ordinance the town already had was sufficient.
W. Thomas ElliottWilliam H. ScottW. Preston Laws
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1936 · 1936-06-09
The sewer contractor got thirty extra days and a waiver of damages because January and February 1936 were too cold to dig
A typed resolution pasted into the minute book records that on 9 June 1936, 'by reason of the unusally arduous winter and inclement weather prevailing during the past months of January and February, the contractor, A. Stanley Mundy & Co., Inc., under Contract No. 1, dated January 15, 1936, P. W. A. Docket No. Md. 1065-R for installing Intercepting Sewers and appurtenances at Ocean City, Maryland, was prevented from proceeding with said contract before March first' and would therefore be prevented from finishing within the five calendar months the contract allowed, 'to-wit, June 15th'. The Mayor and City Council unanimously extended the time by thirty days, waived the liquidated damages, and resolved that the P.W. Administrator be advised. It is signed W. Thomas Elliott, Mayor, and certified by J. M. Mumford as Clerk.
A. Stanley Mundy & Co., Inc.Federal Emergency Administration of Public WorksW. Thomas Elliott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-01-19
Seven weeks after Ordinance No. 55 the council put a figure on every ocean-front lot: $369.57 for fifty feet of twenty-four-foot boardwalk
On Tuesday evening 19 January 1937 Councilman W. H. Scott offered a resolution 'that Atlantic Ave. properties be assessed for Cost of Board walk as follows' and then read the town, lot by lot, down the whole ocean front. Two rates ran through the list, and they are the width of the walk in front of the door. Where the new walk was twenty-four feet wide the charge was $369.57 for a fifty-foot lot - $7.3914 a running foot; where it was sixteen feet the charge was $257.83 for fifty feet, $5.1566 a foot. Ernest E. Purnell, the Lizzie R. Hearn estate, Mollie E. Bassett, Frank Nikirk, the H. C. Spitzler estate and E. K. Wilson each paid $369.57 on fifty feet; the Del-Mar-Va Mortgage Company $739.14 on a hundred; Mrs. Layfette Johnson $1,108.71 on a hundred and fifty; the largest single charge on the roll, $1,546.98, fell on three hundred feet held by what the clerk wrote as the 'Dominican School'. Dr. F. J. Townsend, who was sitting as a councilman, was assessed twice on his own account. Dr. Townsend seconded, 'vote was unanimous', and the secretary was 'instructed to send bills for walk fronts as it was completed.' On 19 March the council went further and authorised the Mayor 'to borrow enough money to settle for Board walk when needed' - the town would front the cash and collect from the owners afterwards.
The 1936 pass left the boardwalk story on a promise: $7 a foot on 7,700 feet, owners who had organised to refuse, and no way to know whether anyone was ever billed. This is the bill. It is $7.39 a foot, not $7, it is itemised by name, and the vote to send it out was unanimous.
Ocean City BoardwalkWilliam H. ScottFrancis J. TownsendW. Thomas Elliott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-02-08
Ocean City borrowed its own $8,250 share of the sewer by issuing eight more thousand-dollar bonds at 4 per cent
'Whereas, in addition to funds granted and loaned to Mayor and City Council of Ocean City by the United States for the construction of sewers and disposal plant at Ocean City under P.W.A. Project No. Md. 1065-R, the municipality must furnish the sum of eight thousand two hundred fifty dollars ($8250.00)' - so on 8 February 1937 the council resolved to borrow $8,000 on the full faith and credit of the town and to issue 'eight negotiable interest bearing coupon bonds ... said bonds to be Nos. 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68 and 69 of the issue known as "Sewerage Bonds", to be in the denomination of one thousand dollars ($1,000.00) each, to be dated November 1, 1935, to bear interest at the rate of 4% per annum payable semi-annually on May 1st and November 1st of each year until maturity.' They were to be 'sold privately at par plus accrued interest.' W. Preston Laws moved it; the vote was unanimous and the Mayor approved it.
Federal Emergency Administration of Public WorksW. Preston LawsW. Thomas ElliottFrancis J. TownsendWilliam H. Scott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-02-08
Ocean City granted at least twenty building permits in 1937, and the first seven of them came in February
On 8 February 1937 the council granted permits to Curtis W. Long (Block 24, dwelling, 30 by 42), Ethel Kelly (addition to hotel, 34 by 62), Chas. S. Powell (apartment, 28 by 40), Sam Ayers (two buildings, 13 by 27), E. H. Benson (apartment, 36 by 42), Ed Lee Carey (dwelling) and Ada Cox (addition, 18 by 28). More followed through the year: Ella E. Dennis's two apartments and a 46-by-96 three-storey Curtis property with a restaurant on the ground floor taken under consideration on 31 March; J. M. Mumford, John H. Price, the C & D Garage and Rudolph Dolle in March; Violet C. Davis, Mrs. P. C. Dennis and Mrs. Bedowick in May; Herman Parsons and E. E. Dennis in April; and on 9 November Wm. Gibbs (apartment on Philadelphia Avenue between Second and Third), C. S. Powell (two apartments at the corner of Third), Calvin Pruitt (apartment and rooming house on Ninth Street) and John B. Lynch (a dwelling back of his hotel in Block 54). Two applications were refused or withdrawn - B. D. Mason's on 16 June, after his neighbours objected, and J. D. Showell's application to close a porch at the Oceanic on 7 September.
Ethel KelleyRudolph DolleJohn B. LynchWilliam E. GibbsCurtis W. Long
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-04-26
The sewage plant ran eight months late because the contractor could not get cinders and brick, and because the Board of Health made him keep sewage out of the water mains
A typed resolution of 26 April 1937 sets out the whole history of the delay in the contractor's favour. 'M. J. McDermott under contract NO.2 started work on August 26th 1936 Docket Md.1065-2R Sewerage Treatment Plant and on Jan 4th 1937 time extended to April 26th 1937.' Two reasons are given for a further extension: '#1 Inability to obtain certain materials to meet specifications (cinders, brick, etc.)'; and '#2 - It became necessary, because of stipulation by the State Board of Health, to have the Roberts Filter Mfg. Co., Sub Contractor, design and submit for approval certain mechanical equipment to prevent the backing up of sewerage into the city water lines.' The council extended the time to 26 May 1937 and 'waive[d] the liquidated damages specified in said contract relative to failure to complete the work in time', directing that 'the State Director be advised of this action'. It was signed by Mayor W. Thomas Elliott, by William H. Scott as President of the City Council, and certified by J. M. Mumford.
A resort that had just voted 104 to 1 to put sewers in the sand was, eighteen months later, still waiting on a delivery of cinders - and on a Philadelphia filter company to invent a way of stopping the sewage getting into the drinking water.
M. J. McDermottRoberts Filter Manufacturing CompanyMaryland State Board of HealthFederal Emergency Administration of Public WorksM. J. McDermottW. Thomas ElliottWilliam H. Scott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-04-30
Ocean City accepted its intercepting sewers from A. Stanley Mundy & Co. on 30 April 1937
At a meeting in the Municipal Building on 30 April 1937 the Mayor and City Council unanimously adopted a Resolution of Acceptance declaring that they had 'accepted as satisfactory - subject to prior acceptance by the Consulting Engineer - a system of Intercepting Sewers and Appurtenances recently constructed at Ocean City, Maryland, by the A. Stanley Mundy Company, Inc., of Woodbridge, New Jersey, under Contract No. 1, PWA Docket No. Md.1065-R', and directed the Clerk to notify the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. W. H. Scott moved it, Dr. F. J. Townsend seconded, and the motion carried. The council had signed Mundy's contract on 27 December 1935 and had given him a thirty-day extension in 1936 for 'the unusually arduous winter'; sixteen months later the pipe was in the ground and signed off.
A. Stanley Mundy & Co., Inc.Federal Emergency Administration of Public WorksW. Thomas ElliottWilliam H. ScottFrancis J. TownsendClark Gardner
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-06-08
On 8 June 1937 Ocean City accepted its sewage treatment plant, and the two-year job the town had voted 104 to 1 for was finished
Dr. F. J. Townsend offered the resolution and W. Preston Laws seconded it, and it passed unanimously: the Mayor and City Council 'have accepted as satisfactory - Subject to prior acceptance by the Consulting Engineer - Sewerage Treatment Plant, Force mains, and Appurtenances recently Constructed at Ocean City, Maryland, by M. J. McDermott, of Georgetown, Delaware, under Contract #2 PWA Docket NO Md. 1065-2R.' The clerk was again to notify the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. McDermott had bid $74,510.48 as the low bidder on 26 June 1936 and started work on 26 August 1936; the plant was in the ground in ten months and had been running long enough by 15 April 1937 for the council to decide it did not need the manufacturer's man to stay on and give instruction. The system had cost the town $61,000 of federal bonds, an $8,250 cash contribution of its own and a federal grant that had been raised to $56,659.
The 1936 pass closed with the sewer '70 per cent complete' and a hole where the answer should be. This is the answer, in the town's own hand: accepted, 8 June 1937, from the low bidder of the previous June.
M. J. McDermottFederal Emergency Administration of Public WorksM. J. McDermottFrancis J. TownsendW. Preston LawsW. Thomas ElliottClark Gardner
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-06-24
The rebuilt boardwalk cost $38,945.63 — and the ocean-front owners paid $17,377.92 of it, less than half
The Messenger's annual survey of Ocean City's assessable basis, 24 June 1937, printed the settled account: 'the new Ocean City boardwalk, which cost a total of $38,945.63. The boardwalk cost was divided between city taxpayers whose properties lie adjacent to the walk and the administration. Taxpayers paid $17,377.92 while the city paid the remaining cost of $21,567.71.' That is 44.6 per cent to the assessed owners and 55.4 per cent to the town. Three figures had been in the air: the paper's own $100,000 in March for the whole repair bill; $23,000 from an unnamed source; and Mayor Elliott's revised $50,000, published on 18 March after he had 'figur[ed] detailed costs of the project, including discounts on material saved'. The final number is well under all of them, and it is a long way under what Ordinance No. 55 contemplated: $7 a running foot on about 7,700 feet is roughly $54,000, and the assessment roll of 19 January charged $7.39 a foot. The same article gives the town's assessable basis as $2,961,494, up $150,000 in the year and up from $800,000 in 1922, with the tax rate at $1 per $100.
Ordinance No. 55 was written to make the owners pay for the boardwalk. In the event the owners paid for a bit under half of it and the town quietly picked up the rest — which is the oldest arrangement in Ocean City and the one the town has never stopped renegotiating.
Ocean City BoardwalkW. Thomas ElliottWilliam H. ScottW. Preston LawsFrancis J. Townsend
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-06-28
Ocean City ran its 1937 season on short notes from a Berlin bank - $3,000 in May and $3,000 in June
On 25 May 1937 the council resolved 'that the city under the signature of its Clerk and Mayor be and hereby is authorized to borrow from The Exchange and Savings Bank of Berlin Maryland the sum of Three Thousand ($3,000) dollars binding the full faith and credit of the City therefor by promissory note in appropiate form', and on 28 May the clerk sent the bank a note for 120 days with a cheque for the interest. On 28 June the council passed the identical resolution again, and on 29 June sent the bank a second note, this one for ninety days. A resort whose whole income arrived between June and September borrowed its way to the season twice in five weeks, on the town's letterhead and over the mayor's signature.
Exchange and Savings Bank of BerlinW. Thomas ElliottFrancis J. TownsendW. Preston Laws
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-09-07
On 7 September 1937 the council granted Chas. Henry a permit to build an addition to his property at Baltimore Avenue and South Division Street
The whole entry reads: 'Permit was granted Chas Henry to build addition to his property on Balto Ave and South Division street.' It is one line in a Tuesday evening minute between a rejected porch and a motion to buy six hundred feet of fire hose, and it is the first contemporary document of the Henry Hotel the campaign has found in any year. Baltimore Avenue and South Division Street is the hotel's address; the building had been open since 1895 and Charles and Louisa Henry had been running it under their own name since 1926. Eleven days earlier the same council had put the location of the new State Highway Bridge to a referendum in which South Division Street was one of the four choices on the ballot - the street the Henrys' hotel stands on - and it drew six votes out of 372.
Two thousand facts about this town, a POI with an address and an opening year, and not one line of evidence that the Henry Hotel existed. Here it is: the man is named, the corner is named, and he is building on.
The Henry HotelCharles & Louisa HenryW. Thomas Elliott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-09-09
Ocean City voted 275 to 97 for Worcester Street as the landing of its new highway bridge, and Congress had already written the choice into federal law
By an Act of the first session of the 75th Congress the State Roads Commission of Maryland was authorised 'to construct, maintain and operate a free highway bridge and approaches thereto across Sinepuxent Bay, at Worcester Street, or South Division Street or Wicomico Street, in Worcester County, Maryland, at Ocean City' - and the Act further provided that if the town's voters designated a preference for some other point, 'then such designation shall be the point fixed for the building of said bridge.' The council called a special meeting on 30 August 1937 and, on F. J. Townsend's motion seconded by W. Preston Laws, resolved 3-0 to put the question to the voters on 9 September, polls at the Municipal Building from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., ballot listing Worcester, Wicomico, South Division and North Division Streets with a blank line for a write-in. The judges of election were Wm. G. Rounds, Edwin P. Calhoun and Edward Kurtz, and the result the clerk entered was: Worcester 275, North Division 83, Wicomico 7, South Division 6, North 1st Street 1. Worcester Street is where the bridge was built and where the causeway still lands.
A town of a few hundred voters was handed, by federal statute, the power to overrule Congress on where its own bridge would touch the island - and used it to confirm the obvious.
Maryland State Roads CommissionW. Thomas ElliottFrancis J. TownsendW. Preston LawsWilliam H. ScottWilliam G. RoundsEdwin P. CalhounEdward Kurtz
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-12-14
The town's own online minute archive lists 21 Ocean City council meetings for 1937; the minute pages themselves record 24
The IQM2 calendar returns 21 meetings for 1 January to 31 December 1937, each with exactly one document, all of them Type=15 summary minutes, 21 PDFs carrying 32 scanned page images between them. Reading those 32 images turns up three sittings that have no calendar entry at all: a regular meeting on 25 May 1937, known only from a letter to the Exchange and Savings Bank quoting a resolution 'passed at our regular meeting of May 25th 1937'; a meeting on 13 September 1937 that awarded the winter garbage contract, written into the same page as the 9 September election result; and a meeting on 23 November 1937 that awarded the comfort station contracts, written in behind the minute of 16 November. The council did not meet at all between 13 July and 30 August, or in October, or in December before the 14th. Ocean City's councillors through 1937 were W. Preston Laws, Dr. F. J. Townsend and William H. Scott, with W. Thomas Elliott as mayor, J. M. Mumford as clerk and Edmond Johnson as solicitor - the same five men, unchanged, as in 1936.
The archive is an index to the minute book, not a copy of it. Three meetings out of twenty-four are invisible to anyone who trusts the calendar - which is a nine per cent error rate on a source this campaign is about to run through ninety more years.
W. Thomas ElliottW. Preston LawsFrancis J. TownsendWilliam H. ScottEdmond H. Johnson
Source · checked 2026-08-11