Col. Lemuel Showell
railroad president · 1823–1902
Berlin, Md. planter and businessman; largest original investor and first president of the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad (Salisbury–Berlin, opened 1868), which he later pushed to the coast — he was among the founders of the Atlantic Hotel (1875) and built the first wooden railroad bridge into Ocean City. The community of Showell, Md. carries the family name.
In the record (20)
1868 · 1868-02-18
The Atlantic Hotel Company is chartered in 1868 — seven years before Ocean City — by Lemuel Showell, James C. Dirickson, Henry B. Johnson and B. Jones Taylor.
Maryland Laws of 1868, chapter 29, "An Act to incorporate the Atlantic Hotel Company, of Berlin, Worcester County," approved February 18, 1868. Section 1 names Lemuel Showell, James C. Dirickson, Henry B. Johnson and B. Jones Taylor as incorporators and empowers the company to erect "a first-class Hotel near to or in the town of Berlin; and also a first-class Hotel at some suitable point on the sea shore, to be hereafter decided by the President and Directors; provided the point selected be not over eight miles from the town of Berlin." Capital stock was authorized in shares of twenty dollars each up to five thousand shares ($100,000), with power (sec. 5) to issue bonds of not less than $25 each up to $50,000 and convert them into stock. The bill was reported favorably in the House on January 22, 1868 by the Worcester delegation and passed February 20; the charter was amended again at the 1886 session. The eight-mile clause is decisive: the sea-shore point eventually chosen, seven miles east of Berlin, is Ocean City. This corrects the 1873 research pass's working hypothesis that the company's charter would be found in the 1874 General Assembly session; it is not there. The dataset's existing founding year for org:atlantic-hotel-company (1875, the hotel's opening) and this charter year are recorded as a conflict rather than resolved.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1869
The Delaware Railroad's annual report records the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad, Salisbury to Berlin, as completed.
Summarizing the Delaware Railroad's annual report, the Middletown Transcript of January 16, 1869 reported: "The Wicomico and Pocomoke Rail Road connecting Berlin with Salisbury has been completed during the past year." The 23-mile line put Berlin — eight miles from the empty barrier beach — on the peninsula rail network for the first time. It would not reach the beach until the town existed; the first train crossed Sinepuxent Bay to Ocean City in 1876.
Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1870
The Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad's fourth annual report: $24,715.18 gross, $7,474.71 net — a country line that "demonstrates the feasibility of running branch railroads here to profit."
The Middletown Transcript of August 6, 1870 summarized the report of the president and directors: total gross earnings $24,715.18, expenses $17,241.46, net earnings $7,474.71, all earned "under adverse conditions, in consequence of the repeated failure of crops." This is the road — Col. Lemuel Showell of Berlin its founding president — that already ran the 23 miles from Salisbury to Berlin, and whose extension to the Wicomico River had been broken ground in October 1869. It is also the only reason anyone would later think a beach eight miles east of Berlin could be a resort. Set beside the fiscal-1871 figures ($23,059.01 gross, $8,847.77 net), 1870 was the better gross year and the worse net one: the railroad's traffic was falling while its economy improved.
Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1871
The Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad — the future lifeline to Ocean City — nets $8,847.77 for the fiscal year ending April 20, 1871.
The Cecil Whig of September 30, 1871 prints the little railroad's books: gross earnings of $23,059.01 for the fiscal year ending April 20, 1871, operating expenses of $14,203.92, 'making the net earnings, $8,847.77.' The W&P then ran only the 23 miles from Salisbury to Berlin (opened May 1868); its founding president and largest investor was Col. Lemuel Showell of Berlin. Construction toward the beach did not begin until 1874, and the first train crossed to Ocean City on a pivot bridge in 1876 — but this modest, profitable line is the company that would carry the resort into existence.
Source · checked 2026-08-05
1871 · 1871-07-08
The Wicomico & Pocomoke agrees to run the Worcester Railroad — the operating deal that puts one company's trains on the whole road toward the beach.
The Cecil Whig of July 8, 1871 reports from Worcester County: "The Worcester Railroad Company commenced on Monday laying its track from Berlin toward Snow Hill, which should be reached in about fourteen weeks. A meeting of the directors was held, and arrangements consummated with the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad Company to run the Worcester railroad temporarily." The W&P already ran the 23 miles from Salisbury to Berlin. Handing it the Worcester Railroad put a single operator on the rails from the main line through Berlin — the company and the corridor that would carry the first train to Ocean City in 1876.
Worcester RailroadWicomico and Pocomoke Railroad
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1871 · 1871-07-26
Worcester County casts its four votes for Lemuel Showell of Berlin for Governor of Maryland — the man who would build the railroad to the beach.
The Maryland Democratic State Convention met at Baltimore in July 1871 and nominated William Pinkney Whyte of Baltimore for Governor. The Smyrna Times of July 26 reports the Eastern Shore's failed claim on the nomination: the Western Shore voted solidly for Whyte, most of the Eastern Shore for Judge Carmichael of Easton, "Somerset voted for Dr. Dennis, of Princess Anne, and Worcester for Lemuel Showell of Berlin, each receiving four votes, Wicomico giving them one vote each." Showell was the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad's founding president and its largest investor; four years later his line would be extended to the Sinepuxent shore and across it to the new town of Ocean City.
Four votes, in a convention that had already decided. But the record shows Worcester County's men putting up the Berlin railroad man as their candidate for Governor in 1871 — before he had a resort to be famous for.
Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1872 · 1872-03-28
Maryland re-charters the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad with power to extend its line "to such point or points on Synepuxent bay, in Worcester county, as may by them be deemed expedient."
Chapter 102 of the Acts of 1872, approved March 28, 1872, repeals and re-enacts with amendments the supplement to the W&P's charter. Section 2 authorizes the company's president and directors "to construct any lateral branches from the said railroad, or to extend the main stem of the same to any point or points in the counties of Worcester or Wicomico, and to extend the same to such point or points on Synepuxent bay, in Worcester county aforesaid, as may by them be deemed expedient," with the power of condemnation; Section 3 lets it connect with any other railroad in the two counties; Sections 4–5 cap freight at six cents a ton-mile (ten cents under twelve miles). In 1872 the W&P still ran only Salisbury to Berlin. The legal power to push the last eight miles to the bay — and the bridge and town on the far side of it — dates from this act.
The founding of Ocean City needed a hotel, a name, and a bridge. It also needed a sentence in the 1872 session laws letting a country railroad aim itself at Sinepuxent Bay.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1875 · 1875-07-04
The Atlantic Hotel opens on July 4, 1875 — the day Ocean City dates its birth to.
Every modern account of Ocean City's founding turns on one date: the Atlantic Hotel, built by the Atlantic Hotel Company on the newly platted beach opposite Berlin, opened its doors on July 4, 1875, and the town has counted its age from that summer ever since. The 1875 newspaper record confirms the surrounding facts beyond argument — the plan of the town was published in April, the place was open and full by late July, and a Delaware editor wrote in July that Ocean City had "opened this year for the first" — but this pass found no contemporary notice of the opening itself, and the traditional July 4 date rests on later accounts. Sources also disagree on the building's size: some say more than 400 rooms, others that it accommodated 400 guests. Both disagreements are recorded here rather than resolved.
The birthday is real, the birth certificate is missing. Everything around July 4, 1875 checks out in the contemporary press; July 4 itself doesn't — yet.
traditionally 4 July 1875 — but no contemporary notice of an opening has ever been found, and the hotel was demonstrably holding three hundred guests on 20 June
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1875 · 1875-08-31
August 31, 1875: a blindfolded boy pulls names from a hat and Ocean City's first 111 lots are handed out to the Atlantic Hotel Company's stockholders.
On Tuesday, August 31, 1875, excursion trains brought about two hundred people over to Ocean City and the directors of the Atlantic Hotel Company arranged the drawing for lots. "It was decided that each stockholder was entitled to a lot, those having the greater number of shares having the first choice. The names of each stockholder having an equal amount of stock were put into the hat at a time, and the names drawn out by a boy who was blindfolded." Hon. James U. Dennis's name came out first; he was absent, and his brother U. S. Senator George R. Dennis chose Lot No. 11 for him. Hon. William T. Hamilton's name came next, and Col. Lemuel Showell chose Lot No. 10 for him. Subscribers were sorted into nine classes by the size of their holding — $500 down to $50 — and among them were Governor W. Pinkney Whyte, Comptroller Levin Woolford, E. K. Wilson, E. E. Jackson & Co., Harrison Bro., the Barnum's Hotel Co. of Baltimore, and Wilmington's Wm. Lea & Sons. "One hundred and eleven lots in all" were taken. Afterwards the Wicomico & Pocomoke directors held a meeting, the Salisbury Brass Band played, and the day "wound up by a grand hop at night."
Ocean City's first property transfer was a raffle. The lots weren't sold to the public — they were dealt out to the men who had subscribed the hotel, in order of how much they'd put in.
Atlantic Hotel CompanyWicomico and Pocomoke RailroadGeorge R. DennisWilliam T. HamiltonLevin WoolfordEphraim King Wilson II
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1881
Col. Lemuel Showell brings a new sloop, the Racquet, to Ocean City in May, and spends the season taking parties down the bay on the Bredell.
"Sprays from Ocean City", 28 May 1881: "Col. Lemuel Showell's new boat arrived here late last Friday night, with the jolly Col. on board... judging from what others said, the *Racquet* will prove a fast sailer, and will no doubt cause a racket when racing. She is a staunch, well-built boat of [ ] feet length and 14 feet beam, sloop rigged, finely painted, nicely fitted up, and reflects much credit on her owner." In September the Messenger's Berlin column reported the Colonel taking "about one hundred persons from Berlin and Ocean City down the bay on the *Bredell*", his daughter Lemeta making her debut in society aboard; and at the end of the season he took a whole Berlin excursion party out after lunch at the Excursion House. A boat called the *Dolphin* was launched at Berlin in September and caught ten drum fish in two trips, and in December another new boat, built by Dilworth and Tutts, was standing at the Worcester Railroad depot waiting to be taken to Ocean City to be launched.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1881
The Wicomico & Pocomoke's 1881 summer timetable: Salisbury to Ocean City in 90 minutes, three trains a day each way, plus Berlin–Ocean City locals.
Standing in the Democratic Messenger through the summer of 1881: "TIME TABLE OF THE WICOMICO AND POCOMOKE R. R. Summer Arrangement... Leave Salisbury 8.00 / 2.00 / 5.45; Pittsville; Whaleyville; St. Martin's; Berlin 9.10 / 3.50 / 6.15; Arrive Ocean City 9.30 / 4.15 / 6.30. Trains moving west: Leave Ocean City 6.00 / 3.10... Arrive Salisbury 7.40 / 11.10 / 4.45. Besides the above through trains, Local Trains between Berlin and Ocean City will run as follows: Leave Berlin for Ocean City 5.15 A.M. and 1.30 P.M. Leave Ocean City for Berlin 10.50 A.M. and 5.30 and 7 P.M. L. Showell, President." Ninety minutes from Salisbury; twenty from Berlin.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1882 · 1882-08-03
The Atlantic Hotel Company reports its first mortgage paid off and property worth twice what the stockholders put in.
At the stockholders' meeting at Ocean City on Thursday, August 3, 1882, the Board of Directors reported: "The first mortgage of $3,000 is paid in full, leaving the second mortgage of $6,500 to be paid out of the rents. This is expected to be extinguished in the next two or three years. The company now has property worth from $25,000 to $30,000 that cost the stockholders $15,000." The directors elected were Dr. H. R. Pitts, B. Jones Taylor, R. J. Henry, Col. Lemuel Showell, Dr. Geo. R. Dennis, Dr. S. P. Dennis and E. Stanley Toadvine — six of the seven from the circle of Berlin, Snow Hill and Somerset men who conceived the resort on the beach in July 1873 and bought the land in 1875.
Seven years after the founding syndicate spent $15,000 on a sandbar, the sandbar was appraised at twice the money and the first mortgage was gone. The resort had stopped being a gamble.
Atlantic HotelAtlantic Hotel CompanyDr. Hilary R. PittsB. Jones TaylorGeorge R. Dennis
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1886
Col. Lemuel Showell thinks about putting a steamer on the bay to haul Chincoteague oysters up to the Ocean City railhead.
"A correspondent of the Baltimore Sun at Salisbury, Md., says that Col. Lemuel Showell, president of the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad, is thinking seriously of placing a steamer on the bay to make trips from Chincoteague Island up to Ocean City. The oystermen in the bay now have to carry their oysters a long distance to a railroad, and he thinks if a steamer is placed on the route hundreds of barrels of oysters would be carried each trip to Ocean City, where they would be placed on cars and carried over the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad to Salisbury." Earlier in the year the Cecil Whig had reported the other end of the trade: "The oyster farmers on the Synepuxent Bay are complaining of the low price of oysters in Philadelphia."
Ocean City as a freight depot, not a resort — the president of the railroad looking at forty miles of oyster bottom and seeing a shipping point.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1887 · 1887-10-04
Col. Lemuel Showell — first president of the railroad that made Ocean City — fails, with $70,000 of liabilities against five thousand acres of Worcester County.
On October 4, 1887 a Wilmington special to the New-York Tribune reported that "Colonel Lemuel Showell, living at Showell's Station, Md.," had made an assignment that morning: liabilities $70,000; assets five thousand acres of land in Worcester County. The paper described him as a large vessel-owner in the coastwise trades who had inherited $250,000 from his father. Showell was the largest original investor in and first president of the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad, a founder of the Atlantic Hotel, and the man whose family name the village of Showell still carries.
The resort survived 1887. The man who built the railroad to it did not — not financially.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Wicomico and Pocomoke RailroadAtlantic Hotel Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1888 · 1888-06-27
Col. Lemuel Showell's five thousand acres go under the hammer at Berlin — and his Ocean City lots with them.
On the morning of June 27, 1888, immediately before the railroad sale and in the same place, the real estate of Col. Lemuel Showell was sold at trustee's sale in front of the Atlantic Hotel in Berlin. "A very large crowd of people were present, mostly well-to-do farmers who had come to buy farms" — Showell was one of the largest landowners in this section and the sale drew buyers from the adjacent counties. About five thousand acres in some twenty-six farms changed hands. The Hell farm, three hundred acres and the most valuable, went to Thomas Tingle for $3,000; the home farm four miles north of Berlin, "noted as being one of the prettiest places in the country," went to Ben Selby for $3,000. Hon. E. Stanley Toadvine of Salisbury bought the cottage and two vacant lots at Ocean City. The aggregate of the real estate was $44,874, the personal property brought a further sum, and it was thought a settlement of about forty cents on the dollar would be effected for the creditors.
Showell chartered the railroad that made this town possible. Thirteen seasons later the county came to Berlin in its Sunday clothes and bought his farms at forty cents on the dollar.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1889
Two surfmen named Carey right a capsized fishing boat and save five — and Col. Lemuel Showell hands them a fifty-dollar purse in the Atlantic's pavilion.
A letter datelined "Ocean City, Aug. 6th, 1889" and printed in the Democratic Messenger of August 10 praised the station crews at length — "men who are men in the true sense of the word... Not afraid of danger, but courting it, they face death willingly if there be, in the [risk], a human life" — and then gave the occasion: "It is due to the bravery of two of these men — the Carey brothers — that which might have been a dreadful calamity was diverted into nothing more than an exciting adventure. A boat with a fishing party of five was capsized and all hands would have probably been drowned, had not these men rendered assistance by [swimming] out to the boat and righting it. All were saved, though in an exhausted condition. Those who admire true pluck when they see it made up a purse of fifty dollars, which was publicly presented to the two brothers by Col. Lemuel Showell in the pavilion at the Atlantic Hotel."
Fifty dollars was nearly a month's pay for a surfman. The town raised it in an afternoon and handed it over on the hotel pavilion, in front of the guests — the earliest recorded public honouring of Ocean City lifesavers.
Atlantic HotelOcean City Life-Saving Station MuseumUnited States Life-Saving Service
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1893 · 1893-08-03
R. J. Henry dies at Berlin, and his obituary credits him with Col. Lemuel Showell as the man who got Ocean City started.
The Westminster Democratic Advocate of 12 August 1893, in its Maryland column: 'R. J. Henry, a prominent citizen of Wicomico county, residing in Berlin, died on August 3, aged about 70 years. He had a large circle of acquaintances throughout Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. He served as superintendent of the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad from the time of its commencing operation until it changed hands, about three years ago. He was one of the first persons to advocate the establishment of a watering place on the beach, and out of his efforts and those of Col. Lemuel Showell, then president of the railroad, Ocean City was given a start.' The campaign has always told the founding through Showell, Taber and the 1875 excursion. This is a contemporary obituary naming a second man beside Showell, and placing him in the operating end of the railroad rather than the boardroom.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1894 · 1894-04-23
Col. Lemuel Showell falls off the board walk in the dark and drops "a considerable distance to the ground below."
The Democratic Messenger of April 28, 1894, Ocean City column: "Col. Lemuel Showell met with a severe accident on the night of the 23rd inst. by falling from the board walk along the beach, a considerable distance to the ground below. No bones were broken however and we hope soon to see the genial colonel out again." Showell, the Berlin businessman who had driven the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad to the coast, was in his seventies. The item is incidental evidence of substance: in April 1894, before the season opened, there was a board walk running along the beach at Ocean City, raised well above the sand, and it was unlit. — 1894 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Re-read on the portal scan and confirmed: 'Col. Lemuel Showell met with a severe accident on the night of the 23rd inst. by falling from the board walk along the beach, a considerable distance to the ground below. No bones were broken however and we hope soon to see the genial colonel out again.' It stands at the head of the OCEAN CITY column on page 3 of the issue of 28 April 1894, which dates the fall to the night of 23 April 1894. The phrase is 'the board walk along the beach' — definite article, no explanation — and 'a considerable distance to the ground below' is the only measurement of the walk's height anywhere in this decade of the record.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1894 · 1894-11-03
Col. Lemuel Showell is described as "proprietor of the leading hotel of Ocean City, Md." while touring Chincoteague oyster grounds with the editor of the Baltimore American.
The Peninsula Enterprise of 3 November 1894, in its Chincoteague notes: "Gen. Felix Agnus, editor of the Baltimore American, and Jeremiah Smith, the largest oyster planter in the East, and Col. Lemuel Showell, proprietor of the leading hotel of Ocean City, Md., was here last week and made a prospecting tour to our oyster planting grounds." Showell — the man who spent thirty years pushing a railroad to this beach, and who fell off the board walk in the dark in April of the same year [fact:1894-showell-falls-from-the-board-walk] — is here in his seventies, described as running Ocean City's leading house and prospecting oyster bottom with a Baltimore newspaper proprietor. Which house is not stated, and the phrase should not be hardened: the Atlantic Hotel was the Sinepuxent Beach Company's and was under the management of T. P. Page that season [fact:1894-atlantic-hotel-under-t-p-page], so either the Virginia paper is describing a different house, or Showell held a proprietary interest the Baltimore Sun's letter did not mention.
A Virginia paper called Showell proprietor of Ocean City's leading hotel in 1894; a Baltimore letter of the same season put the Atlantic Hotel under T. P. Page for the Sinepuxent Beach Company. Which house, and in what capacity, is unsettled.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1901
Mrs. A. B. Showell, wife of Col. Lemuel Showell, takes over a second Ocean City house - and the Delaware papers cannot agree which.
On 29 May 1901 the Smyrna Times reported that "it is reported that Mrs. Lemuel Showell will operate the Colonade Hotel at Ocean City"; on 14 August the same paper stated flatly that "Mrs. A. B. Showell, wife of Col. Lemuel Showell, is now proprietress of the Isle of Wight Hotel, at Ocean City, Md." She had kept the Isle of Wight Cottage in 1896 and the 88-room Seaside Hotel by 1898 - and the Seaside was sold out from under the family in January 1901 to become an annex of the Atlantic. The Showells' hotel interest at Ocean City in 1901 is therefore real, but which house it was is not settled: "Colonade" is most likely the OCR or the reporter's version of the Colonial, which was advertised all season by W. J. Warrington.
Sources disagree on this.
Mrs. A. B. ShowellWilliam J. Warrington
Source · checked 2026-08-11