John S. Whaley
attorney, receiver in bankruptcy · active 1922
Of the Snow Hill firm Staton & Whaley, appointed by the United States District Court for Maryland in June 1922 as receiver in bankruptcy for Christopher Ludlam, individually and as a partner of Ansley Ludlam trading as the Ocean City Fish Company, on a $2,000 bond. He conducted the receiver's sale of the company's pound boat, seines, anchors and camp equipment on Philadelphia Avenue, Ocean City, on 5 August 1922, under an order of Judge John C. Rose. — 1944 FULL PASS, 2026-08-12: ON 14 NOVEMBER 1944 THE OCEAN CITY COUNCIL REQUESTED HIM TO PREPARE A BUILDING & ZONING ORDINANCE 'that would aid the City in restricting kind of Business and buildings that would be erected in future' - the origin of Ocean City zoning. He was also asked in September 1944 to trace the rights of way on the town's proposed dump. He fell sick in January 1945 and Attorney Wm. Price appeared in his place on 23 January to advise the council on the law needed before it could zone, and Price carried the work from there; Whaley was nevertheless present at the joint meeting of 5 April 1945 on the zoning ordinance as passed by the legislature, and again on 20 November 1945 when the 38-page document was signed over. — 1946 FULL PASS, 2026-08-15: HE WAS APPOINTED CITY ATTORNEY OF OCEAN CITY ON 9 SEPTEMBER 1946, having acted for the town all year as a partner in Staton, Whaley & Price of Snow Hill. He first appears in the 1946 book on 25 March, telling the council he would have to study the surveyors' findings before giving an opinion on the two-foot error; on 2 April he cited two deeds on record long before the city was surveyed and the council resolved to hold to the 1924 survey and have him prepare the papers; he circulated a first rough draft of the resolution on the northerly line of North Division Street about 10 April to the three surveyors and the council; he corrected its 977-foot typographical error to 927 on 4 May with the admission 'Apparently I inadvertently added fifty feet'; and the resolution he drew passed unanimously on 28 May. On 24 May he wrote that under 'the present transportation situation' he would not risk mailing the rewritten Ordinance and would have it delivered in person. His initials on the firm's correspondence are JSW/m, and he addresses the town's surveyor as 'Dear Bert'.
In the record (8)
1944 · 1944-11-14
On 14 November 1944 Ocean City asked its attorney to draft a building and zoning ordinance - the beginning of the town's zoning, four years after it first discussed the idea.
Attorney John S. Whaley was requested to prepare a Building & Zoning Ordinance that could be passed, 'that would aid the City in restricting kind of Business and buildings that would be erected in future'. Ocean City had first talked about zoning in October 1940 and done nothing. This request runs unbroken into 1945: on 23 January Attorney Wm. Price was asked to draft an enabling bill for the Legislature, by 5 April the act had passed, a Zoning Commission was organised on 10 May, and a 38-page ordinance was signed over to the council on 20 November 1945. The same 14 November 1944 meeting had Engineer Hall and Wallace Spring before it on getting all inhabited properties connected to water and sewer, with a lengthy discussion of how to get rid of the several house boats.
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1945 · 1945-04-05
Maryland passed Ocean City's zoning enabling act in the 1945 session, and by 5 April the town was meeting its engineer and lawyers about 'the Zoning ordinance as passed by the Legislature'.
On 23 January 1945 Attorney Wm. Price, standing in for John S. Whaley who was sick, went over the law the City would need and was requested to prepare a bill to send to the Legislature so the enabling law could be passed. On 5 April the council held a special meeting for the purpose of meeting Clark Gardner, Engineer, and Price & Whaley 'on the Zoning ordinance as passed by the Legislature', with Gardner, Geo. Purnell, Wm. Price and John Whaley present. After much discussion on how to organise and what was required to set up the proper organisation to zone the City, it was moved and passed that Mr. Gardner order two sets of insurance maps for use in preparing the ordinance. The same meeting awarded the job of painting the town's tanks to Geo. S. Elliott for $700.00 and instructed Whaley to write up the licence ordinance passed on 20 March.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
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.J. M. MumfordRudolph Dolle
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1945 · 1945-11-20
Ocean City's first zoning ordinance ran to thirty-eight pages, was read aloud in a single afternoon, and was signed over to the council after a steak dinner at City Lunch.
The council met the Zoning Commission at 3 PM on Tuesday 20 November: Mayor Trimper with Dolle, Lynch and Savage; Frank Waller, Harland Huston, Walter Jarman, J. P. Whaley and C. W. Purnell for the commission, with Clark Gardner, Purnell, Wm. Price and John Whaley. Chairman Frank Waller called the meeting to order and Wm. Price read and commented on the 38-page document, finishing at 6:30, at which point the meeting adjourned to go to City Lunch for a steak dinner. Afterwards the members returned to the council office, had further discussion, and the document was signed by the Zoning members and turned over to the City Council. The mayor and council then arranged for a public hearing and its advertising, to be held on the afternoon of Wednesday 19 December and the morning of Saturday 22 December 1945. On 26 November the council resolved unanimously, John B. Lynch moving and R. Dolle seconding, that the report be accepted.
Ocean City Zoning CommissionClark GardnerDr. Charles Washington PurnellJohn P. WhaleyDaniel W. Trimper, Jr.
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1946 · 1946-04-02
Ocean City spent five meetings in March 1946 relitigating the physical basis of every property line north of North Division Street, and settled it by adopting a survey made in 1924.
On 2 April the full board met with three surveyors - Robert C. Walker, William D. Pitts and George B. Cropper - and city attorney John S. Whaley, 'for purpose of discussing means to correct error in Survey from N. Div. Street to North 15th Street'. Walker gave an account of his findings since 1917 as recorded in his field notes, up to the time he helped Schoolfield survey the city in 1924, and all three surveyors agreed that the 25 1/2 inches in question were caused by the width of North Division Street and 'was an error in the map and not in Survey'. Whaley cited two deeds on record long before the city was surveyed, giving distances to North First and North Second Streets, and 'it was decided by the Council that the measurements by Surveyors should hold to the ones as made in 1924', with Whaley to prepare whatever legal papers were necessary to establish the lines permanently. It is the ground being cleared five weeks before the zoning map was adopted: the town fixed its coordinate system first, and zoned on it. On 19 March it had already resolved that Cropper place markers at the proper place on Baltimore Avenue and that the boundary 'be recognized as the proper starting point for all future Surveys'.
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-04
Ocean City's whole boundary fight came down to two feet between a deed and a plat - and the lawyer drafting the fix put 977 feet in his own resolution because, as he wrote, he had inadvertently added fifty.
Two letters of 4 May 1946 from John S. Whaley of Staton, Whaley & Price, both under the firm's file number 16,724, are filed with the minutes. To George B. Cropper - 'Dear Bert' - he reports that Robert C. Walker has called his attention to a typographical error on the ninth line of page 4 of the tentative resolution circulated about 10 April: the distance of 977 feet should have been 927 feet, and 'I did not check the resolution carefully before it left my office as to distances, etc., as I was confident that there would be some changes to be made before the resolution was finally drawn'. To Walker at Bronxville he sets out the arithmetic: 'An attempt is, of course, being made to show that there is a difference of two feet in the distance along Atlantic Avenue, as shown on said Plat, and as shown in the description of the deed prior to the Plat... Apparently I inadvertently added fifty feet. I have checked the deed, and the distance given in the deed is 925 feet. Unless I have made another error in addition, what is supposed to be the corresponding distance as shown on the Plat is 927 feet.' The two-foot gap between the deed and the Sinepuxent Beach Company plat is the same error Pitts measured in the field on 13 March, and it is what the 28 May resolution was drawn to settle.
The deed says 925 feet and the plat says 927 - the two-foot difference Ocean City spent the spring of 1946 arguing about.
Staton, Whaley & PriceSinepuxent Beach CompanyG. Bertrand Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-24
Ocean City's lawyer would not put the town's rewritten ordinance in the post in May 1946 - 'under the present transportation situation' he had it carried by hand instead.
Writing to George B. Cropper on 24 May 1946 - 'Dear Bert' - John S. Whaley thanked him for his letter of 11 May, told him 'I have rewritten the Ordinance, and enclose herewith a copy of the Ordinance as rewritten, embracing your suggestions', and then: 'Under the present transportation situation I shall not risk mailing the rewritten Ordinance to Mayor and City Council of Ocean City, but shall see that it is in some way delivered in person. I shall send at least two copies thereof to the Mayor and City Council, so that the Mayor and City Council can give Mr. Walker one copy. I shall also send a copy of the rewritten Ordinance to Bill Pitts.' The date is the height of the national railroad strike. It is the only trace in the whole 1946 minute book of the post-war disruption reaching Ocean City's paperwork - and it puts at least four copies of a rewritten ordinance into circulation by hand, which is four chances that one of them survives.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Staton, Whaley & PriceG. Bertrand Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-09-09
Ocean City organised its new government on 9 September 1946 two councilmen strong, made Rudolph Dolle President and Cranford Savage Secretary-Treasurer, and hired the lawyer who had written its zoning ordinance as City Attorney.
Judge Jones Robins was called in and swore in Daniel Trimper as Mayor for a two-year term and R. Dolle and C. D. Savage as councilmen for two years; Lynch's seat stayed empty. The council elected Rudolph Dolle President and Cranford D. Savage Secretary and Treasurer, appointed Joe Savage Police Chief, and appointed John S. Whaley City Attorney - the Snow Hill partner who had cited the deeds in the boundary fight in April and rewritten an ordinance in May. The same meeting was told that the busses had quit and ordered the secretary to write Mr. Colonell asking why he quit before 1 October, and decided to have Geo. Bert Cropper present at the next meeting to settle about the price for charging for permits. It also read and approved the minutes of 'Aug. 5, Aug 10th & August 27th'.
Daniel W. Trimper, Jr.Rudolph DolleCranford O. SavageG. Bertrand Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-15