Thomas J. Cropper
businessman · active 1901–1930s
Ocean City businessman of the pioneer Cropper family. Bought the Dorchester Street rooming house later famous as the Tarry-A-While Guest House at public auction in 1901 — it stayed in the family until 2004 — and owned the Ocean City Cold Storage Company ice plant on Philadelphia Avenue.
In the record (8)
1895 · 1895-09-07
The county paper's business directory lists all of Ocean City in three entries: a store that is also the post office, a boarding house opposite the Seaside, and a man who sells vegetables, ice, coal and wood.
Under the heading OCEAN CITY in the Democratic Messenger's classified business directory of 7 September 1895: 'W. W. BIGGER, dealer in General Merchandise. Will thank you for your patronage. Also Postmaster at Ocean City. MANSION HOUSE — Mrs. S. E. Tarr proprietress. Board by the meal, day or week at reasonable rates. Opposite Seaside Hotel. T. J. CROPPER, dealer in vegetables of all kinds in their season. Also Ice, Coal and Wood. Eggs and Poultry. Orders promptly attended to.' Three names, and two of the three facts about them are offices rather than trades. It is the smallest possible portrait of a town whose hotels that same month were holding several hundred people.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1904 · 1904-08-01
Two tickets, one warm but good-natured fight: Capt. Christopher Ludlam is re-elected mayor and the People's ticket loses.
'The election for Mayor and City Council of Ocean City was held Monday afternoon. Two tickets were in the field, and the fight was a warm but good natured one, resulting in a victory for the regulars who represent the faction already in power, over the people's ticket, which was headed by Wm. T. Taber. Capt. Christopher Ludlam was re-elected Mayor and the following councilmen were also elected: James Z. Powell, Reverdy J. Dennis, Thomas J. Cropper, John D. Showell and John L. Johnson.' The paper adds that the Mayor and City Council 'will enter upon their new terms on September 1st'; the charter as re-enacted the same spring (Ch. 457 of 1904) says the term runs from the second Monday in September, which in 1904 was 12 September.
This is the first Ocean City municipal election this campaign has been able to read as an election — two slates, a named challenger, and a full council. The town's own books had been stolen in 1896 and the eleven-year blank that followed is the reason a one-paragraph item in a Snow Hill weekly is the best surviving record of who governed the beach.
The Commissioners of Ocean CityChristopher LudlamJames Z. PowellReverdy J. DennisJohn D. ShowellJohn L. JohnsonWilliam T. Taber
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1905 · 1905-10-16
Pile-driving for the Ocean City pier starts on 16 October 1905 — 900 feet of hickory piles, a 120-by-70-foot convention and dancing hall at the shore end, and a pavilion at the far end.
"Building Ocean City Pier. Active operations began Monday, the 16th instant, on the construction of the pier at Ocean City, giving employment to a great number of workmen. The beach in the neighborhood of the [locality] where the pier is being constructed is strewn with stout timbers, including hickory piles for the structure. The builders claim that hickory trees cut at the season of the year when the bark will remain are more durable than iron or steel in salt water. The building of the pier will be continued throughout the winter … The plans call for a pier 900 feet long and 130 feet wide. At the shore end there will be a hall for conventions and dancing, 120 feet long by 70 feet wide. At the other end of the pier will be another pavilion. From the shore the pier will extend over the outer bar into deep water." Robert Lee Purnell was promoter and general manager. At the company's annual stockholders' meeting, reported 16 December, Capt. Christopher Ludlam was re-elected president, Calvin B. Taylor treasurer and R. Lee Purnell secretary, with Taylor and John W. Staton as counsel, and "the pier will be completed for the opening of the coming season."
Ocean City Pier and Improvement CompanyRobert Lee PurnellChristopher LudlamCalvin B. TaylorWilliam T. TaberJohn L. JohnsonJoseph SchaeferCapt. Joshua J. DuntonDavid J. AdkinsCol. L. L. Dirickson
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1908 · 1908-08-03
W. Lee Carey is elected mayor of Ocean City — nominated in the Atlantic Casino a week earlier, and elected without a contest.
The Democratic Messenger of 1 August 1908 reported that "at a meeting Monday night in the Atlantic Casino, Ocean City, W. Lee Carey was nominated for Mayor, and T. J. Cropper, James Z. Powell, Samuel J. Massey, William Taylor, of Ocean City, and John L. Johnson, of Frederick, Md., for Councilmen, to serve a term of two years each." The meeting was Monday 27 July; the election followed on the first Monday in August, 3 August 1908, as the charter required. The paper's Berlin column a week later: "The election at Ocean City passed quietly resulting in Mr. Lee Carey becoming Mayor. No one is more interested in the progress of the 'City by the Sea' than he, and we predict good government and a boom under his administration." No opposing ticket is mentioned — unlike 1904, when two tickets fought a "warm but good natured" contest. Carey was a Berlin man: he sat as an East Berlin District delegate in the county convention that June, and in July he was laid up at his parents' home in Berlin with inflammatory rheumatism, recovering only days before his nomination. Three weeks after the election the real-estate transfers column recorded "W. Lee Carey from Cornelius F. Coffin, parcel of land in Ocean City. Consideration, $10 etc." — the charter required the mayor and every councilman to be a real-estate owner in the town. This is the first contemporary confirmation of the Maryland Manual's 1908-1912 term for Carey, and the first time in this campaign the Manual has been corroborated rather than corrected.
Atlantic Casino CompanyW. Lee CareyJames Z. PowellJohn L. JohnsonCornelius F. Coffin
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1908 · 1908-08-12
Calvin T. Cropper, twenty-one, son of the newly elected councilman Thomas J. Cropper, shoots himself at home nine days after his father's election.
"Calvin Cropper, a young man twenty-one years of age, committed suicide at Ocean City Wednesday night by shooting himself with a 30-calibre revolver, the ball penetrating his brain and causing immediate death … During the evening he had been driving with the young lady, and returning to his home about eleven o'clock he retired to his room. Shortly afterwards the family were startled to hear a pistol shot ring out … He left a note explaining in part his act. The young man was the son of Mr. Thomas J. Cropper, of Ocean City." A longer dispatch datelined Ocean City, 14 August, ran the following week: he had gone driving with a young woman "who had been a chum of his since school days," told her he meant to kill himself, and "she only laughed at his threat"; his mother and brother were sitting on the porch when he passed them and locked himself in his room. Thomas J. Cropper had been elected to the City Council on Lee Carey's ticket nine days earlier. In November the Berlin column reported the little daughter of Samuel Massey — another of the new councilmen — ill with typhoid at Ocean City.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1909 · 1909-09-25
An exploding oil lamp at the town water works nearly takes the south end of Ocean City; the life-saving crew and a bucket brigade save it.
"Fire At Ocean City. Fire, caused by the explosion of an oil lamp at the Ocean City waterworks Saturday night, partially destroyed the building and seriously damaged the gasoline and steam pumping plants. A building belonging to Joseph Schaefer, adjoining the pumping station, was also destroyed. Several buildings, including the Sea Side Hotel, Glendale Hotel and the railroad station, were on fire, but with the water supply from the city tank and the work of a bucket brigade the flames were extinguished with little damage. The city will probably be without water for a few days while one of the pumps is being repaired. It looked for a while as if the entire south end of the city would be destroyed, and it was only through the hard work of the volunteer fire department, the bucket brigade and the Ocean City life-saving crew, headed by Capt. John B. Jones, that the city was saved. Everyone fought the fire, women and children joining the men in carrying buckets of water." Note that this report credits "the volunteer fire department" — the previous year's fire report had said flatly that "there is no regular organized fire company" — and that the accounts published the same week carry "T. J. Cropper, cleaning closets and Fire Co. rent 33.00" and $141.25 of ladders and hardware for the Fire Co.
Second fire in twelve months at the same end of town, and the second time it was put out by hand.
Capt. John JonesJoseph Schaefer
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1930
The census returns name the Black women who cooked and kept house for the resort: Sarah L. Bassitt, Alice Pitts, Mary Dennis.
Domestic work was one of the few trades open to Black women in Ocean City, and the census is where their names survive. Sarah L. Bassitt, 59, was recorded as a cook in 1900; Alice Pitts, 35, in 1910; Mary Dennis, 27, in 1930, cooking for a hotel. Clara Showell and her daughter Julia were washerwomen and Clara's daughter Sarah a cook. Others were live-in servants for private families — Roxy P. Ayres in Thomas J. Cropper's household in 1930, Roketta Scott and Chancil Whittington in John B. Lynch's in 1940, Edward Purnell a hired hand a few doors along. George Mills, listed as both a servant and a hotel worker, boarded with Lizzie R. Hearne, who is recorded in the same 1930 census as the owner and manager of a hotel. At the Monticello, George Henry Booth lived in and kept house; his 1942 draft card notes a withered leg.
The hotels are named all over this timeline. These are the people who made the beds and the breakfasts in them, and a census line is the only place most of their names got written down.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Sarah L. BassittAlice PittsMary DennisGeorge MillsLizzie R. Hearne
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1930
Samuel J. Dennis is recorded as an ice puller at a Philadelphia Avenue ice plant — work he holds for at least twelve years.
The 1930 census lists Samuel J. Dennis, a Black resident of Ocean City, as an ice puller at an ice plant on Philadelphia Avenue; his 1942 draft registration still gives the same trade. Ice was not a convenience in a resort with no refrigeration — it cooled the drinks, kept the commercial catch shippable, and held a marlin together until a taxidermist could reach it. Fester I. Lowe was pulling ice in 1950, by which year Dennis was no longer working; he died in 1954. The guide's other record of a Philadelphia Avenue ice plant is the Ocean City Cold Storage Company, owned by Thomas J. Cropper; whether it is the same plant is not established here.
Every hot-day story this town tells assumes the ice. Somebody pulled it, in August, indoors, and his name was Samuel J. Dennis.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-11