Lemuel Wyatt
boardwalk contractor · active 1910
The man to whom the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City paid $150 as 'part payment on boardwalk' in the town year ending 13 September 1910. His is the only contractor-shaped name in the boardwalk entries of the town's published accounts — the rest are day labourers paid by the hour — which makes him the campaign's best candidate for whoever answered the town's November 1908 call for bids to build the walk across Somerset, Dorchester, Talbot and Caroline Streets.
In the record (1)
1910 · 1910-09-17
The boardwalk the town advertised for in 1908 appears in its accounts at last — $150 'part payment on boardwalk' to Lemuel Wyatt, and day labour by the hour.
No award was ever printed after bids closed at noon on 18 November 1908, so the town's own published accounts for 1909-10 are the first hard evidence of what happened next. Among the year's expenses: 'Lemuel Wyatt, part payment on boardwalk 150.00'; 'Jesse Truitt working on boardwalk 3.00'; 'W. H. Steelman, working on boardwalk 1.60' and again '1.60'; 'I. Crampfitl, seven hours work on boardwalk 1.05' — fifteen cents an hour; and 'Elsey Ayers hauling lumber 4.25'. Two things follow. The corporation was paying for boardwalk out of its own treasury, not billing abutting owners as the 1894 charter and the 1903 renewal order had done. And it was doing so partly by contract (a part payment to Wyatt) and partly by hiring men off the street by the hour. In June the county paper reported the season preparations plainly: 'The boardwalks are being repaired and several new cement sidewalks are being put in.'
Source · checked 2026-08-06