Excerpts from 25 of the History Articles
PROVIDENCE ON THE SEVERN: BROADNECK’S FIRST COLONIAL SETTLEMENT, 1649 - from Broadneck: Maryland’s Historic Peninsula, 1976 by Charles Bichy.
Excerpt: When the firing was over, the Puritans had six dead and fifty of the force from St. Mary’s were killed or wounded. The victorious Puritans recrossed the Severn to Providence, taking with them their prisoners, who spent the night in the stockade fort awaiting their trial. The Council convened in the Meeting House and condemned to death most of the enemy force, but only three were actually executed: a Captain Lewis, Mr. Eltonhead and John Leggot. At the pleas of the Puritan women the others were saved and held in the fort for approximately one month.
BROADNECK IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES - from Broadneck: Maryland’s Historic Peninsula, 1976 by Orlando Ridout IV.
Excerpt: As the Whitehall farm prospered, the lack of a mill came to vex Governor Sharpe. The old mill at Deep Creek washed away, and John Brice’s was out of order more often than it ran. Sharpe ventured a thousand pounds for a new mill, an undertaking that would cause unending problems.
MOM NOVOSEL: CAPE ST. CLAIRE A HALF CENTURY AGO (NOW A HUNDRED YEARS AGO) - from the Annapolitan, October 1974 by Bob Johnson.
Excerpt: “Listen Honey, when I first came here there were only five houses – two belonged to the Farnen’s down on the Magothy, there was the Stinchcomb plantation house by the Little Magothy River where the Howard family lives now, the Brice’s place up on the hill near the entrance to the Cape, and Aunt Jenny’s farmhouse where the ball field is now. The rest was woods, cornfields, peach orchards, watermelon, cantaloupe, and tomato patches. On the top of the hill where Hampton Road is now was all strawberry patches as far as you could see.”
COUNTRY LIFE IN THE 1940s – from Broadneck: Maryland’s Historic Peninsula, 1976 by Dr. Morris T. Radoff, then owner of Goshen Farm, and retired chief archivist for the state of Maryland.
Excerpt: Garfield Brice took in boarders. They were usually hillbillies. One, a West Virginian, had an oversexed wife who had borne him ten children whom he had with him, and it was said that he had given two or three away. This poor fellow was so plagued with children and the insatiability of his wife that he spent many nights in his boat consorting with the mosquitoes of the Magothy, and they were fierce, but that was the only form of contraception he could practice.
WHERE OUR HERITAGE SPEAKS SOFTLY – An interview with Dr. and Mrs. Morris T. Radoff in their home on Goshen Farm, from the Annapolitan, November 1974 by Bob Johnson
Excerpt: In 1935, Roland Edgar Bell, grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, bought Goshen and Leonard’s Neck (Cape St. Claire) so that he might watch out for the welfare of his mother. Mrs. Radoff explains: “It so happened that four penniless White Russians, all grown men, ran out of gas in an old boat right in front of Mrs. Bell’s home on the Bay as they motored toward Baltimore. Mrs. Bell, 80-years-old, partially paralyzed and very rich, was captivated by them, so much in fact that she married one of them, a man 30 or 40 years her junior. Oh, they had quite a time. They dressed up for dinner and everything.”
LIGHTNING - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Spring 1977, by Orlando Ridout IV.
Excerpt: Among country people there is a healthy respect for lightning. Out in Broadneck, stories persist and are repeated from grandsire to grandson, relating down through time some vivid accounts of an encounter with a violent bolt of lightning or a particularly fractious fireball. Down on Whitehall Creek . . .
MAGO VISTA BEACH: BROADNECK’S BYGONE TOURIST ATTRACTION - from The Severna Park Voice, 2013, by Peter Crispino
Excerpt: Today, the tranquil tract of land known as Mago Vista Beach houses a forest of upscale town homes that sit within the confines of a gated community known as The Moorings. But in its past life, during its bygone heyday, the quiet community nestled along the Magothy was a lively tourist destination where visitors from miles around would come to gawk at live alligators, ride the rickety roller coaster over the river and dance the night away in jitterbug contests in the grand ballroom.
BLACK RESIDENTS’ CONTRIBUTIONS – from Broadneck: Maryland’s Historic Peninsula, 1976 by William Calderhead.
Excerpt: By 1860 and the eve of the American Civil War, the most dramatic change in the Broadneck area was the marked expansion in the number of free blacks. Grants of manumission plus the births of black children into freedom triggered a growth of that class until it contained 878 people in 1860. Most maintained their own homes and 45% of the households in the peninsula were residences of free black families. An additional 37 households lived in facilities still under the jurisdiction of whites—in some cases their former masters. Importantly, the class of free blacks was self-sustaining.
GIL PUMPHREY: CHARTER BOAT CAPTAIN - from the Annapolitan, September 1974 by Bob Johnson
Excerpt: Another hit! One of the party, trying to help 13-year-old first mate Johnny Sindorf, awkwardly grabs the net from the top of the cabin. “Don’t flash that net!” the captain politely bellows. “My God, you’ll have every would-be fisherman in the bay following us.”
SECRETS OF THE CHARTER BOAT CAPTAIN - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Summer 1976 by Gil Pumphrey.
Excerpt: If you fish the Bay Bridge pilings, pencil eels make good bait. The best way to attach your hook to the eel is through the eyes. Slide the hook through one eye and out the other. This allows the eel to swim naturally and live longer. To make an eel easy to handle, put him in a bucket of water with ice. He will become sluggish and stop wiggling, then liven up again as soon as he’s back in the warmer water.
THE DAY IN 1919 THE TRAIN JUMPED INTO THE SEVERN RIVER – from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Spring 1976 by Nelson J. Molter, Director of the Maryland State Library.
Excerpt: As the center span swung open to its full ninety degrees to accommodate a two-masted schooner which had called for clearance, suddenly there was the whistle from Number 5, leaving Winchester ahead of time on the long downgrade to the bridge. Now came the locomotive and six cars at a fair speed around the curve and out onto the trestle. Old George, the keeper of the draw, remained heroically at his post, clutching frantically at the lever which controlled the draw mechanism, but the ponderous workings of multiple gears would grind only so fast, until the span closed to within a scant 24 inches from the locking could be seen above the water.
GHOSTS ALONG THE SEVERN - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Summer 1976, by Charles Mogensen.
Excerpt: Mrs. Sams heard the sound of horses’ hooves galloping rapidly behind her on Mill Bottom Road. Alarmed, she turned around towards the unexpected sound, but she could see no horse. Suddenly, out of the dusk, a snow-white headless horse appeared, a fierce phantom figure that thundered past the terror-stricken woman.
BOOK REVIEW OF PROVIDENCE: YE LOST TOWNE AT SEVERN IN MARYLAND - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Summer 1976, by Orlando Ridout IV.
Excerpt: The author of this important book, James E. Moss, was born on the Severn River in Anne Arundel County. He has had an impressive career in the petroleum and steel industries. Unlike those other industrialists who played on the golf course or hybridized irises for their fun, Mr. Moss transported himself back to seventeenth-century Maryland, his magic carpet being the brittle, ancient documents which are the artifacts that record the era.
THE CHESAPEAKE BAY FERRY SYSTEM 1919 - 1952 - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Winter 1975 - 76, by George W. Phillips, assistant general manager of ferry operations.
Excerpt: The Chesapeake Bay was a formidable problem for the ferry boat captains when blanketed with dense fog or snow. Many times a captain could not see the bow of his own boat, and his compass, because of the variation created by the different loads on each trip, was not dependable; but each captain continued to “smell” his way to each difficult terminus, crossing broadside the main ship channel to Baltimore, while hoping there would not be the wail of a fog horn on another ship approaching his in the darkness.
DEEP CREEK - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Winter 1975 – 76 by Bob Johnson.
Excerpt: Rudy Lerp, Jr. tells the best stories. If you’re going over to Captain Clyde’s [now Deep Creek Restaurant] for a draft and some crab soup, and Rudy is there, ask him about Mary’s nickname, and ask him about the woman who used to sober up by jumping drunk into the water and floating on her back in the creek unconscious all night. “You never could be sure,” Rudy says, “You might find her floating asleep under your pier Sunday morning.”
CRABBING WITH JOHN HAAS - from the Annapolitan, August 1974 by Bob Johnson.
Excerpt: As a customer interrupted my living history conversation with 76-year old John Haas, Sr., he ambled into the screened shed on his pier on Deep Creek and picked six peelers from the live box, effortlessly cracking the joint of their teeth claws. “I do that so the customers don’t get bit when they’re baitin’ the hooks. Some don’t. These peelers make the best bait on the Bay. You crack the hard shell off and use the soft crab inside. You can catch anything from perch to rock. One of my customers, Doris Bowen, caught forty perch with the pieces of one peeler.”
A VISIT ACROSS THE HIGHWAY TO SPEAK WITH MARY ARCHER MCKINSEY RIDOUT - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Winter 1975 – 76 by Bob Johnson.
Excerpt: Mrs. Ridout’s father, Folger McKinsey, became known as the Bentztown Bard, named for a spot in Frederick, Maryland, where he lived with his wife for a time after eloping. He was a protégé of Walt Whitman. It was Whitman who convinced him to make the transition from prose to poetry. But Walt Whitman was before Mrs. Ridout’s time. But she does recall the great journalist and friend of her father, H. L. Mencken, and the Saturday Night Club.
A ROSE OF THE OLD REGIME - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Winter 1975 – 76 poetry by Folger McKinsey, the Bentztown Bard.
SUNSET ON THE SEVERN from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Winter 1975 – 76 poetry by Folger McKinsey, the Bentztown Bard.
WILLIAM PROCTOR’S BURIED TREASURE ON BROADNECK - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Spring 1977 by Edward R. Long.
Excerpt: During the depression one Saturday night, my brother and I had walked down to Gaylord’s Tavern in Shore Acres, and while there, someone told us that old William had passed on a few days before. That night as my brother and I walked home, we discussed what we could remember about William, especially the way he held us spellbound with his talk of buried money. All of a sudden a thought hit me: his talk of hidden money, his animal bone collection and the way he had of changing all his money into half dollars. Perhaps he was hiding money himself and where but under those piles of bones!
MOONSHINE ON BROADNECK - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Summer 1977 by Edward R. Long.
Excerpt: During the Prohibition years, many of these whiskey-making plants came and went on Broadneck. I have known of at least three or four of them operating at the same time within an hours walk from my home. There is hardly a stream of water that has not had one or more along its banks at one time or another. At times, one would set up where another had been raided just a few months before. In the four or five years I worked at these plants, I was only present on three occasions when they were raided and was lucky enough not to be caught.
MEREDITH CREEK – from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Spring 1976, reprinted with permission from Yachting Magazine, October 1949, by Carlton Mitchell.
Excerpt: I was aground on Meredith Creek just last night. I suppose you could call Meredith typical of the creeks that make the shores of the Chesapeake a lacy pattern, until it is hard to decide whether it is land bounded by water or water bounded by land. By standing up straight, Meredith could well be over a mile long, but it is content to slouch down across the green fields and through the woods in a series of aimless arcs. Water stirred by the ebb and flow of the tide must travel a somewhat devious route, a matter of little moment as nothing about Meredith Creek is in a hurry.
A FISHING PARTY UP THE SEVERN IN AUGUST 1887 – from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Winter 1975 – 76, taken from a family scrapbook in the possession of James E. Moss.
Excerpt: On Saturday afternoon there was a little party who determined to spend Sunday fishing and to this end, they hired a boat and laid in supplies. These supplies consisted of some coffee and some whiskey, some sugar and some beer, some bacon with which to fry the fish and some more whiskey, some bread and some beer, some cigars and some more whiskey, some salt and some pepper and some beer.
A RAMBLE THROUGH THE PEACH ORCHARDS OF BROADNECK IN 1885 - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Winter 1975 – 76, taken from a family scrapbook then in the possession of James E. Moss.
Broadneck families mentioned in the “ramble”: Robinson, Brice, Ridout, Spencer, Duvall, Macey, Stewart, Iglehart, Richardson, Mullican, Boone, Anderson, Tydings, Howes, Stallings, Ireland, Davison, Tilghman, Pettibone, and Winchester.
BROADNECK RECIPES AND HOUSEHOLD HINTS FROM THE 1880s - from Broad Neck Hundred Magazine, Winter 1975 – 76, taken from a family scrapbook then in the possession of James E. Moss.
Some of the recipes: fried oysters, oyster fritters, cabbage with white sauce, pork chops Spanish style, cheese sandwiches, Indian griddle cakes, plum duff, coffee cake, oatmeal muffins, smothered chicken, prune pudding, dried apple pudding, delicious cider cake, and pumpkin marmalade.
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