History

Joseph B. Seth

railroad president, Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates

Talbot County lawyer and politician of Easton who, as Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1886, argued that a cross-peninsula railroad would put Salisbury three and a half hours from Baltimore 'and Ocean City four.' He then built it. As president of the Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad he arranged the July 1, 1890 consolidation of four companies into one 108-mile system from Annapolis to Ocean City, and was still president when the road was placed in receivership in 1891. The same year he was an incorporator and first-year director of both land companies formed on the beach the railroad reached — the Synepuxent Bay Land and Improvement Company in September 1890 and the Sinepuxent Beach Company in December.

The man who promised Baltimore a four-hour beach, and then owned both the railroad and the sand at the end of it.

In the record (1)

  1. 1906 · 1906-04-05

    A monorail from Baltimore to Ocean City is chartered, funded on paper by a $25,000,000 parent, and given a route through ten counties.

    Chapter 767 of the Acts of 1906, approved 5 April, extends the privileges of The Baltimore and Ocean City Railway Company, "a corporation duly incorporated in the year 1906" under Article 23, for the purpose of "building, equipping, maintaining and working a railroad from Ocean City, in Worcester county, Maryland, to Baltimore city, Maryland, through the counties of Wicomico, Worcester, Dorchester, Caroline, Queen Anne's, Kent, Talbot, Harford, Anne Arundel and Baltimore" — "such railroad being either surface, elevated or underground." The act grants perpetual existence, the use of "steam, electricity, or any other motive power," power to buy and improve lands for pleasure resorts along the line, to own steamboats and barges, to consolidate with or lease other railroads, and to cross other roads and enter any incorporated town by consent; it names fifteen first-year directors including William A. Mellen, Henry C. Turnbull, Jr., Olin Bryan, George F. Taylor, William S. Gordy, Jr., Samuel E. Wilson, Sidney R. Orem, B. Frank Wagamon, Charles L. Moore and John A. Henkus. The county paper filled in the rest on 21 April: Senator Joseph B. Seth of Talbot — once president of the Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad — elected president; Henry W. Williams and E. L. Tunis vice-presidents; J. A. Henkus secretary; capital stock $100,000; the whole thing "controlled" by the American Mono-rail Company, capital $25,000,000, of which "very little has been issued"; and every mile of the route from Baltimore to Ocean City and Fenwick Island already mapped, with the Ocean City-Fenwick section promised complete by 1 July 1906.

    The most ambitious railroad ever chartered to Ocean City, and it was a monorail. Not one foot of it was ever built.

    The Baltimore and Ocean City Railway CompanyBaltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad

    Source · checked 2026-08-06