Phillips Lee Goldsborough
Governor of Maryland · 1865–1946
Republican governor of Maryland who spent the summer of 1913 at Ocean City and received callers there, prompting the Snow Hill paper to call the resort "the summer capital" and to note drily that "His Excellency is somewhat of a slick political article." He later served in the United States Senate. His summer residence is the first sustained gubernatorial presence at Ocean City in the campaign's record.
In the record (4)
1913
Ocean City is "the summer capital": Governor Phillips Lee Goldsborough spends the season there and receives Republican politicians on the beach.
"Governor Goldsborough will spend the summer at Ocean City. He went down this week," the Messenger reported on 5 July 1913. "We welcome the Governor to old Worcester and hope he will have a delightful vacation." A week later the Berlin correspondent was less reverent: "Governor Goldsborough has been receiving many callers at Ocean City, the summer capital, among the number being prominent Republican politicians from every section of the state. It must not be forgotten that His Excellency is somewhat of a slick political article, and all his Sunday School talk is understood by the knowing ones." Goldsborough, a Republican, was governor of Maryland 1912–1916. The phrase "the summer capital" is the earliest use of it for Ocean City the campaign has found.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1914 · 1914-04-01
Chapter 227 of 1914 puts $25,000 of state money and $2,000 of county money into a public school building at Ocean City — and makes the town condemn the ground for it.
The Maryland General Assembly sat in 1914 and passed exactly two acts touching Ocean City. The larger is Chapter 227, approved 1 April 1914, which recites that "the State of Maryland has not any available building on the Eastern Shore suitable for the accommodation of such assemblages" of public school teachers and that "Ocean City, Maryland's only seaside town, is an ideal place for such meetings." It creates an **Ocean City School Building Commission** — the President of the State Board of Education, the State Superintendent of Public Education, the president and county superintendent of the Worcester County school commissioners, and a fifth man of their choosing — appropriates $25,000 from the State Treasury and directs the Worcester County Commissioners to levy $2,000, and requires the **Mayor and City Council of Ocean City** to furnish and donate the site, arming them with the power to condemn it if they cannot agree a price. The finished building becomes the property of the State of Maryland, and from 1 September to 1 June each year is the Worcester County public school at Ocean City, rent-free. This is the first state money the campaign has found being spent on a building inside Ocean City. No charter legislation passed for the town in 1914, as none had in 1910 or 1912.
Ocean City School Building CommissionState Teachers' Association of MarylandE. W. McMaster
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1914 · 1914-07-26
The Governor of Maryland swims out through the breakers at Ocean City and saves a drowning Baltimore merchant in front of hundreds of people.
From Baltimore, 27 July 1914, in the Evening Star: "First to reach a struggling man, who had been swept from his feet by a giant breaker, after having ventured too far beyond the life line, Gov. Goldsborough, while bathing at Ocean City, Md., yesterday morning saved the life of **Harry L. Levine**, twenty-five years old, a local merchant. While hundreds of other bathers and as many persons on the beach cheered him, the state executive, with the aid of several other men, succeeded in carrying the young man to the beach in safety. While scores of spectators gathered about the victim, Gov. Goldsborough modestly left for the bathhouse and dressed. However, the news of his deed soon spread, and the governor was besieged with congratulations." The Democratic Messenger of 1 August tells it the same way. Phillips Lee Goldsborough had summered at Ocean City in 1913 as well — the county paper called it "the summer capital" — and in July 1914 the Cambridge Daily Banner watched him motor over from Cambridge for the week-end "in the automobile which the last Legislature presented the State's Executive," with Mrs. Goldsborough and their two sons.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1919 · 1919-07-04
Ten thousand people and 1,185 automobiles come to Ocean City for the formal opening of the bay bridge on the Fourth of July.
The Mayor and Council of Ocean City invited "all of the citizens of Maryland, Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Virginia" to the dedication. The Baltimore Sun's staff correspondent, reprinted in the Messenger of 12 July: "Dual celebration of the national holiday and of the formal opening of the new State highway bridge across Sinepuxent Bay caused the only seaside resort of Maryland to suddenly bound today from lethargy into as great summer activity as it has ever known. Governor Harrington and about 10,000 other residents of the State cooperated to make the day memorable in the city's history. By actual count, 1,185 automobiles had come into this city at 3 P. M., over the bridge, and 8,000 visitors, about 360 of whom were from Baltimore, by train." The Governor motored over from Cambridge with his family; the Pocomoke City Band announced his two-o'clock arrival with "Maryland, My Maryland" and then led the procession out to the drawkeeper's house, midway of the bridge, where the ceremonies took place. Small evergreen trees had been planted at intervals along the entire length of the bridge; they and a few flags on the drawkeeper's house "were the only decorations." John W. Ennis of Pocomoke called for order. Chief engineer Mackall said the bridge "was the last link in the chain of good roads from Ocean City to Western Maryland."
1,185 cars counted by three in the afternoon, against 8,000 people off the trains. The road had not beaten the railroad yet — but for the first time in Ocean City's history somebody thought the cars were worth counting.
Maryland State Roads CommissionOrlando HarrisonJohn Walter SmithF. H. Zouck
Source · checked 2026-08-06