Hunker, Cecil (1901-1996) |
Worcester County Library: Local History and Genealogy Collection, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, MD
|
Interviewee: |
Cecil Hunker (1901-1996) |
| Interviewer: |
Katherine Fisher |
| Date of interview: |
1979 March 30 |
| Length of interview: |
45 min |
| Transcribed by: |
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| Preferred Citation: |
“Name, Oral History Collection, Date of Interview, Worcester County Library, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, Maryland.” |
Topical Terms:
Worcester County (Md.)—Education
Worcester County (Md.)—History
Worcester County (Md.)—Social life and customs
Worcester County (Md.)—Women’s History
Location Terms:
Newark (Md.)
Ocean City (Md.)
Interview Begin
CECIL: I don’t know whether you’re interested in this or not. This was a hayride to a Sunday school picnic at Public Landing.
INTERVIEWER: Ahh, isn’t that sweet. Yes I am interested and ……..
CECIL: See eventually we went to picnics.
INTERVIEWER: That’s what I’d like to have, you know, pictures of the way it was.
CECIL: But I didn’t know if it was too personal.
INTERVIEWER: No, it gives people a real treat, sometimes when you show something like this, to wonder who they are.
CECIL: I know a good many of them.
INTERVIEWER: Do you really?
CECIL: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: If you can identify some of them, I will jot it down.
CECIL: Well let me get together with some of these people around Newark. Now that was me right there, and I think that was Miss Ella Dennis, I don’t know who that man is, this was Francis Collins, Francis………..that was Nettie Adkins…….I think I can get those. I think somebody here will……..I don’t know who that little boy is. I don’t know who the man is. The man might have been the minister at the time.
INTERVIEWER: Somebody is likely to remember them.
CECIL: This class is, Miss Melvin was teaching here. It was Ralph Mason, (are you from Worcester County?)
INTERVIEWER: Ya, I’m from Ocean City.
CECIL: You’re from Ocean City. Well you probably I don’t know if you knew Ralph or whether you didn’t………
INTERVIEWER: No, I know of him.
CECIL: Now that was probably in 19……maybe 1910.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
CECIL: Now that Ralph, and that was Otho Dennis, this was Wilmer Bowen who died recently, and he was principal of Pittsville High School, and that was his brother Elmer. That was Miss Melvin the teacher and that is Edna Mumford, she’s Edna Dennis, in Berlin now and this is, was Stella Trader, Stella Hudson, she lives, she come back from Philadelphia and she lives here, this was Edna Dennis, that was Molly Mason, Elsie Jackson, oh, Bernice Wilkerson, Ella Smith and Hazel Townsend, Hazel Taylor, and that was Richard Hayward.
INTERVIEWER: Now was this at Newark school?
CECIL: Yes, in front of the building.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
CECIL: This is one when I was teaching here. I was principal here for 3 years, and that was, Grace Raine was teaching here. And you know some of these, and I’m havin’ trouble with, but I can find out who they are. Do you know Jim Dryden?
INTERVIEWER: No.
CECIL: Well that’s Jim. And I think Jim’s about 60 now, and this is his sister Mary. Mary Twilley. But I can, I can get these, find out who they are.
INTERVIEWER: It really helps just to have it in the records.
CECIL: And this is still an earlier one.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my goodness.
CECIL: And there should be one earlier than this, because when I started to school, I had curls, and there’s one when I was in first grade, made with curls, and here I didn’t have curls, I had braids. There I am, because I hated curls so bad.
INTERVIEWER: So you braided them?
CECIL: Ya, I thought it was much more grown-up. Now this was Frances Collins class. That wasn’t a good one, and that was much later than the others. And this was the graduating class at Snow Hill High School in 1918.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sakes.
CECIL: And that was Gladys King, Olin Trader, Olin’s still living, and Sarah Hayward, George Dewitt, Fooks Truitt, he’s dead, Elizabeth Nock, George Mumford, he’s dead, Catherine Cordry, she’s dead, Marie Tilghman, she’s dead, Victor King, who was the baseball player.
INTERVIEWER: Oh that’s good, I’ve got the photograph of him in his uniform………..
CECIL: Oh you have. This is his sister. They both graduated the same class.
INTERVIEWER: They look alike too.
CECIL: She was ill and lost a year. And Gladys was a very good friend of mine. I used to stay down there, and she used to visit me, weekends. This is Elizabeth Powell, I don’t know what her married name is, she lives in Connecticut. And this is Ted Purnell, and he still lives in Salisbury, and Doris Northam was Otis Northam’s first wife, and Walton Chandler, he’s dead, and Emily Williams, who is Emily (what is the man’s name that has that appliance place, all farm machinery).
INTERVIEWER: Chapman.
CECIL: Emily Chapman, this is his mother.
INTERVIEWER: Yes it is, I know her.
CECIL: And this is Henrico Heagan, I don’t know whether he’s living or not. Eunice Bounds is dead, Milton Dennis is in Seaford nursing home, Elsie Dryden’s living in Snow Hill, Afton Dryden lives in Snow Hill and Dorothy Taylor, Dorothy Bedsworth Taylor who lives here in Newark.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, and she lives right across from the post office.
CECIL: Uhum. Right across from the post office.
INTERVIEWER: Oh goodness.
CECIL: I wasn’t in it and Mae Mason wasn’t in it. It was our class.
INTERVIEWER: I was getting ready to ask if it was your class.
CECIL: It was my class, but we had stayed down there 3 mornings waiting to have our pictures taken and somebody came along that morning, we were sitting out there and said do you, anybody want to go to Newark, and Mae and I said yes, so we came to Newark. What I had in here of the oldest house in Newark is, this is it, and I don’t know whether you’d be interested in it or not. I remember it and it didn’t have this “A” on it, it was this part, and this long part back here, but that’s my uncle and he came down from Philadelphia and put the porch on, put this “A” on, and opened up the second floor up there. There were 2 bedrooms up there.
INTERVIEWER: Alright where was it located?
CECIL: It’s located where Sid Cropper now where that brick house is. It was a cute thing.
INTERVIEWER: I bet so.
CECIL: It was cute.
INTERVIEWER: Now this is the one they moved, right?
CECIL: No they tore it down.
INTERVIEWER: They tore it down.
CECIL: They tore it down. So I, it isn’t like it was, it was like this I guess for 50 years, but he put the porch on and put that on.
INTERVIEWER: Well I still would like to take a copy of it, and then I could also explain.
CECIL: You would? Do you do your own refinishing and everything?
INTERVIEWER: Well now what I do, I have a photocopy stand and a camera with a close-up lens, and I just take this and put it on the stand and take a slide of it and then I just have a slide made.
CECIL: ‘Cause if you run into trouble we have an expert photograph right here in Newark. Jay Mason.
INTERVIEWER: Oh I rely on heavily………
CECIL: Anything you want done, Jay can do it. Now then this was threshing wheat, but you didn’t get much detail and you don’t much of the machinery.
INTERVIEWER: No, but there are not too many people around that remember when wheat was a crop here, and it would be useful for that.
CECIL: Well this is the wagon and their pitching it over, see, into the threshing, you can’t see, I wish, somebody around here must have some pictures of threshing. That was Gladys, Victor’s sister. That was the cutest……….here’s an engine.
INTERVIEWER: Oh yes, look at that. Oh that would be good to use. This one and then that one following it, you know would show.
CECIL: Would put it together.
INTERVIEWER: Yes it would.
CECIL: But that was the thing that they hauled around.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sakes. Look at those pulley things. That isn’t a pulley.
CECIL: It was a belt.
INTERVIEWER: Ya, is that it? Going that way?
CECIL: Yes, it was headed this way, I think, although that looks like the type where the straw came out back there, but this is the wagon where they just about have it unloaded. But which end the engine went on, I don’t know.
INTERVIEWER: Now those would be good.
CECIL: That little house in Sinepuxtent was still standing and that is an old house. The man whose daughter, what was that hotel? Coffee? I don’t know whether it was Kilpen’s Hotel Coffee, but anyway they lost their money, and he had one daughter, and she came down here and lived in that little house and ran an antique shop for 2 or 3 years.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sakes. Down in Sinepuxtent?
CECIL: Uhum.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, it’s not there now at all?
CECIL: Yes, I think it’s still there, the old Bowen house. That was the boat that went from Chincoteague, they had 2 boats, the gray boat and the black boat, that’s out of Maryland. That was some of our skating parties.
INTERVIEWER: Oh really. You know I would like one of those, because………..
CECIL: You would? Back in the woods, back of…..do you know where Ethel Townsend lives?
INTERVIEWER: No.
CECIL: It’s the first house on the other side of the railroad, on the left.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, now I know where she lives.
CECIL: Well this woods is in back of that. Of course the highway comes in between now, but there was a pond and a, it was called the “Henny Pond”. There was an old colored woman, a little cabin back there, and an old colored woman and they called her Henny. And in the snowstorm she tried to come out to Newark to the store and she got in that pond and she drowned. She died. So it was always called the “Henny Pond”, and my father owned it, and this, he used to send the colored man, John Collins, is John there, I don’t see John, oh there he is, back there. John always went down to see if we broke in the ice, you know, to sort of watch over us, and he built a fire for us to get warm. Dad didn’t trust us with a fire, and John took us, I don’t know whether there’s anymore pictures of us skating or not. That was the Chincoteague lighthouse. I think that’s gone, but that’s out of the county too. That was my cousin’s boat in Atlantic City. It was a lovely boat. Now that’s the same house.
INTERVIEWER: Oh yes it is.
CECIL: That’s my uncle, and this was Lillian Johnson, who was Alton Mason’s wife. Jay’s mother.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
CECIL: Jay’s mother and that was her brother, that was Marshall, and Marshall was killed in an automobile accident the year he was to graduate. And that is Doris Adkins who married Otis Northam. That was our graduating class in Snow Hill, part of it. This is another skating party.
INTERVIEWER: Oh yes.
CECIL: This was down at the Mill Pond, at Mitchell’s.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, now I know where that is. We went out there the other day.
CECIL: We were skating down there.
INTERVIEWER: Oh those will really be good.
CECIL: Now this was pullin’ in fish at Ocean City.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, now do you know I have one, but it does not show any fish coming in. It shows the nets.
CECIL: It shows their mighty little, don’t you think?
INTERVIEWER: Ya, I’d want more than that if I was doing all that work.
CECIL: I had taken so many out of here and given them away to people that I thought would enjoy them. My mother lived at Thorofare farm, in Captains Hill where the Purnells live now and when I was a child, this was a sheep and the little lambs and down at the barn. I love lambs to death.
INTERVIEWER: The other day I cut through Logtown Road, back in through there to go to Whalleyville, I think it’s Logtown Road, but anyway there’s a big farm full of sheep, there were little tiny baby lambs, just baaing.
CECIL: When we were in Haymarket I got to the point where I had engaged my sheep and had the, the little building partly made, had the rafters up, and we sold the farm, and came here and all my life I have wanted sheep. This is pictures from the Wilson parade when Woodrow Wilson was elected president. And they had a parade in Snow Hill, and that is Cleveland Bailey, now I don’t know who that is on the wheel, and this is Norwood Shockley, he’s dead. Now who that is, who they are I don’t know, but I know this is Nan Brimer, no this one, and I ought to know who that girl is, but I don’t. But this was a float.
INTERVIEWER: Now those would be an interesting series to have of Snow Hill.
CECIL: I don’t know when was Wilson elected the first time? He was president during 1918.
INTERVIEWER: Right he was elected in ’16.
CECIL: He was elected in ’16. Well this must have been in 1916.
INTERVIEWER: Yes indeed. Ya, I’m sure he was elected in ’16, because it wasn’t ’12, ‘cause he got us into, ya ’16.
CECIL: But he was president during the war. But you see this has Wilson on it. I mean on the side, and I don’t know what, there was things on these….
INTERVIEWER: This is Women for Wilson. Women for Wilson.
CECIL: I don’t know.
INTERVIEWER: That’s what it looks like.
CECIL: It does?
INTERVIEWER: W O M E N. Women for Wilson.
CECIL: Well that was Cleveland Bailey, and I don’t know who that is.
INTERVIEWER: Those are good.
CECIL: Now somebody down here will be able to tell……………..
CECIL: It seems to me this morning that I had found another one. Oh I think that’s Ted Purnell right there. And the one on the back looks like Julian Vincent. Now who it is up front with Norwood I don’t know, and I don’t know who that is with the hat on. Now that woman’s face, I know very well. I know she was from Snow Hill, she worked in the courthouse, but I don’t know what her name is. On the back seat, I don’t know any of them.
INTERVIEWER: That’s alright, somebody will.
CECIL: That was after a storm at Ocean City. Our cottage at West End.
INTERVIEWER: That must be one of the engine. Would you………….
CECIL: That’s in Wilmington, but that was my husband and Jay Richardson from Snow Hill. Jay was an engineer. My husband wasn’t, but see the number of the locomotive is right there. I doubt a locomotive that large ever came down here, because that’s a big one.
INTERVIEWER: Right, that’s big, that is, I don’t know.
CECIL: But if you want it, you can have it. I don’t know which pier that is at Ocean City. I think that’s the one before ’33.
INTERVIEWER: I think so because the pavilion after ’33……………..
CECIL: The pavilion went.
INTERVIEWER: Went, and there wasn’t one there.
CECIL: And all they had then was just this.
INTERVIEWER: The straight pier.
CECIL: Or what they put back up was that. But I think that was the pier, when the old pier out front where we bowled. Of course you don’t remember that.
INTERVIEWER: But I’ve got lots of pictures of it.
CECIL: I bowled there.
INTERVIEWER: And my mother did too.
CECIL: She did? What was your mother’s name?
INTERVIEWER: Taylor, Emma Jean Taylor.
CECIL: And she was from Ocean City?
INTERVIEWER: Right. Her parents had the Murview Hotel.
CECIL: Which one?
INTERVIEWER: Murview.
CECIL: They did?
INTERVIEWER: Which was a small, you know, just a small one, there.
CECIL: Let’s see what else I have. Now this is this house.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, it is, isn’t it?
CECIL: This old business on the front.
INTERVIEWER: Right, my. It looks so much nicer without that stuff on the front.
CECIL: That’s another one of the front.
INTERVIEWER: Now I’d like to have those. Because it’s good to have a before and an after.
CECIL: This is this side, see, but the tree. You can see part of that lovely tree that we had out front. That’s not good of the front, neither is this, but that was before our planting grew very much.
INTERVIEWER: Oh and plantings make such a difference.
CECIL: Now here’s the trees out.
INTERVIEWER: Ahh I look at that. Isn’t that pretty?
CECIL: Oh it was a beauty. Now that………..
INTERVIEWER: Is that the back?
CECIL: I think that was after the porch was torn off. No that’s the back, because here’s our back now.
INTERVIEWER: Oh there’s the little kitchen, isn’t it?
CECIL: That’s the old kitchen. That’s the back too. Now this is the garden out here. That’s another one of the front.
INTERVIEWER: And that’s your retaining wall.
CECIL: That’s my wall.
INTERVIEWER: From the garden side.
CECIL: Uhum. Now this was when it was in the process of being rebuilt, and that was one end.
INTERVIEWER: Right showing the kitchen there.
CECIL: This end. Yes the kitchen was in back, that’s this end, and that was the front.
INTERVIEWER: Oh boy, your garden looks nice. I wish mine looked like that right now.
CECIL: I’m tellin’ ya, we used to, my husband and I used to be gardeners, but last year I did pretty well until it got so hot, then my garden go beyond me.
INTERVIEWER: I’d like to take a few of those to show before and after. I think people, when your showing these to people they love to see what it looked like.
CECIL: Now this was our garden at Haymarket. That was our collie that we had then. She was a beauty. That was the back of the house. We built the sleeping porch and a sun porch on to that, and………..Well let me show ya……………..have ya got time?
INTERVIEWER: Yes indeed.
CECIL: I’ll show the before and afters of that. That is after that house was, after it was built on, and that was my husband with the dog. That is a pewter lavebo bowl that I have, 1750, and the back of it is Sussanah and the Brethen. It was made in Austria and it was made for the priest to wash their hands. This held water, and this was a bowl. That was taken in our dining room in Haymarket, and this was a little boy, I took a little welfare boy, and he was fishing in the pond. That was our living room. I thought I had more before and afters, I guess they’re in here. This was our driveway out front, our living room.
INTERVIEWER: Was a nice, is that a body, a little creek behind or pool?
CECIL: That was our pond, back of the house.
INTERVIEWER: Pond, okay. That’s beautiful.
CECIL: That was another view of our living room there, another one of the pond.
INTERVIEWER: Oh that’s good, look at the reflection.
CECIL: That was the back of the house after it was restored. I used to take her down there. She knew if we said anything about the pond, she ran where her leash was hanging, and she was ready to go, so if we weren’t going to take her, we had to spell pond. Oh she was a smart thing, smart thing. I’ve got more of the before’s of that house someplace. I don’t think I found near all the pictures, because I……this was after it was done.
INTERVIEWER: Oh isn’t that beautiful?
CECIL: That was the front. We had 50 trees from the house to the driveway. It was on 55 going from Washington to Front Royal.
INTERVIEWER: Oh you’re in beautiful country.
CECIL: The view of the mountains from three sides of the house.
INTERVIEWER: Oh how nice.
CECIL: The most beautiful country, out there. We were near Middleburg and Warrenton, the Plains.
INTERVIEWER: All I’ve ever done is drive through, you know. I just love to see mountains, and hills, even.
CECIL: Yes, I love to see them. But I lived by them for seven years and I don’t want any more mountain winters.
INTERVIEWER: Well I never lived in then, so I………..
CECIL: They’re wonderful spring, summer, fall through the summer storms are terrific. This was taken from the sunporch out, looking out over the garden.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that a beautiful view?
CECIL: I think that was taken from the sunporch too. We had a half door that opened out, so that we didn’t have to take them through the screen, and we had done the house over then, but the old barn, we hadn’t got that torn down.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
CECIL: That was the gallery. We had two big living rooms. It was a 10 room house, and that was my art gallery, on the front. And this was in a little study upstairs with my pewter collection. I had it all together there. It’s never been together since.
INTERVIEWER: You needed a big space for it, to display it properly.
CECIL: That was the back of the house. We had planting before we left there. That was in the dining room. That’s the lavebo, again.
INTERVIEWER: Oh with fruit.
CECIL: And that’s, that was my garden in spring, looking from the sunporch, down.
INTERVIEWER: That’s pretty.
CECIL: It was summer, because there are marigolds in bloom, peonies are gone, marigolds, yellow marigolds and white zinnias. A lot of other things. This was a sunroom that we built on there.
INTERVIEWER: And that’s your table.
CECIL: This table, chairs in the kitchen now.
INTERVIEWER: Well did you all restore that house, too?
CECIL: Yes, I’ve been anxious to find pictures of it before. This is the hall, looking through to the dining room. That’s almost the same thing. And that is the dining room, that’s looking through to the gallery, from the living room to the gallery. And this was from the kitchen through the dining room to the gallery, all the way through. And that was the hall. Wait a minute…….that’s all one picture. How she got that……….
INTERVIEWER: She got a new view. Now you were saying something the other day about some triple roofline houses that used to be here, just so we’ll have them on the record, tell me again where they used to be.
CECIL: There was one where Jay Mason lives now.
INTERVIEWER: Where Jay lives?
CECIL: Where Jay lives. Mr. Charlie Humford tore it down, and built that house, and there was one on Bay Street where the Freeman’s live.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, I know where that is.
CECIL: Mr. Dillworth owned that, and he tore that down.
INTERVIEWER: To build that.
CECIL: To build that house. My father bought the farm from Mr. Earl Bowen, who lived where Mrs. Lingo did live, and his mother and father, that was their home and that had a 3 roofline house. My father tore it down and moved the main part of it down in the field for a tenant house. And that was the story of that one, but when I was a child and I went down there, it had beautiful plaster and the plaster was as smooth as it could be and they had stenciled designs in purple, that were, I don’t know whether, it was like a raindrop.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
CECIL: I mean it wasn’t completely round, it came to a point, and they were close, spaced all over the walls and even as a child I thought I couldn’t stand all those purple spots on the wall. That’s the only house that I’ve ever seen it done in.
INTERVIEWER: True. I’ve seen stenciled walls, but never anything of that description.
CECIL: These were just as regular as they could be. I mean both ways. It was….they had done it to a frazzle. But that’s the only house I’ve seen it done in. Now in Washington I’ve seen floors stenciled, from old houses. But not down here, but I remember that distinctly.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sake. Now as the tenant house that has long since gone.
CECIL: That’s gone.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
CECIL: And the purple spots.
INTERVIEWER: And the purple spots have gone with it.
CECIL: And where, let me see who lives there now, where Miss Katherine Tull lived there was a 2 roof line. Jones lives there now, Chester Jones.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, alright.
CECIL: Square house. It was replaced with a square house. They were the 2 and 3 roofline houses that I remember as a child. Now there was probable a lot of them out in the country, but on the place where Mr. George Dryden lives was a manor house.
INTERVIEWER: Was there really?
CECIL: Oh simply beautiful………And where Lewis Bradford lives, there was a house exactly like it.
INTERVIEWER: My, well now his house is not too old? Lewis Bradford’s? Did they live in it at one time?
CECIL: Oh Lewis Bradford, oh yes they lived there, and I went in it after we came here. I saw it. Oh the huge rooms and high ceilings, beautiful cornices, lovely windows and doors. The Bradford house has only been built about 10 years.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, I…………
CECIL: They tore the manor house down. That house was exactly like the one on Mr. Dryden’s farm, and the 2 Hammonds lived there. The Doctor Hammonds. They were brothers and they moved to Berlin.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, now that…………..
CECIL: And Berlin Manor is where one of them lived. Now where the other one lived, I don’t know.
INTERVIEWER: My that’s a shame to have torn that down.
CECIL: I dreaded to see that go so badly.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, well now she should have some photographs of it.
CECIL: I would think she has. Of course they put shingles on it.
INTERVIEWER: Well at least you can get the shape.
CECIL: Now the Bradford’s didn’t. Wait a minute, I guess his father did. His father, but Lewis didn’t do it.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
INTERVIEWER: Now there was something else you had mentioned. I think from talking to a number of people, I’ve pretty much established where the old stores were in town, where the bank is, where the inn still is now.
CECIL: Yes, there was one right across from the bank.
INTERVIEWER: Across from the bank.
CECIL: Mr. Billy Bowen had that one, and then there was one that’s still standing on the corner, that the Purnell”s had, and he was from Public Landing.
INTERVIEWER: Oh he was?
CECIL: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: I hadn’t heard that.
CECIL: Oh yes. His, he had the farm that, Watermelon Point. That brick home, that’s where they were from. And he owned this store up here and then his grandson in Berlin had the old Purnell Company and it was he that loaned me the ledger from the store that had all the names in it. And the 10 and 15 cent drinks that were charged, where they had charged them.
INTERVIEWER: Now they still have that ledger?
CECIL: Mrs. Purnell should still have it, or her son would have it. They sold the building this past year.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Now the flour mill and the barrel stave mill were owned by the same person. And Adkins.
CECIL: They were owned by Mr. Adkins.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
CECIL: Mr. Gordon Adkins. And he lived where the Reddish’s live now. Do you know that house?
INTERVIEWER: No I don’t.
CECIL: Oh let’s see, 1, 2, it’s the fourth one from the corner going up. The house has a lot of porch around the front, and it’s up, it’s terraced from the street up.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, alright.
CECIL: Not, it’s before you get to the cemetery.
INTERVIEWER: Uhum, alright that’s on the left hand side.
CECIL: Yes, that was where Mr. Gordon Adkins lived.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, now next to him, or somewhere right in that same vicinity didn’t Holloway live there?
CECIL: Further up.
INTERVIEWER: Further up?
CECIL: Uhum. And that house burned, ‘cause the, the first Holloway house burned and then he rebuilt it. He built again and then Morris Jones had it and now people by the name of Age have it. Age, Mrs. Age is Lewis Bradford’s daughter.
INTERVIEWER: Well yes, Susan.
CECIL: Susan.
INTERVIEWER: Susan, alright. I taught her, so I know her.
CECIL: Oh you did?
INTERVIEWER: Let me see, now, you, you were, were you from Newark?
CECIL: I was born there.
INTERVIEWER: You were born here.
CECIL: In the house, the first on the avenue, when you go over the railroad, the first one on the left.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Now that’s out, is that the one in the field or is right next to the………….
CECIL: It’s not far from the road.
INTERVIEWER: Right, not far from the road.
CECIL: Not far from the road.
INTERVIEWER: I’ll look again when I go out.
CECIL: It’s before you get to Quenponco Road.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
CECIL: Before you get there. Sits back. I was born there. My father built it while he was living in Philadelphia. He bought it, I think before he went to Puerto Rico. He was in the Spanish American War. He was the first officer on the Slocum, and her had been the Socum and the government wanted to buy the boat to send it to Puerto Rico, but they didn’t want to buy it unless the crew would go with it. So he enlisted, and went, and he was gone for 22 months. And he bought the farm, I think before he went to Puerto Rico. Came back in 1898. Then he built the house and after he built the house and the barn, he and my mother were married.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sakes.
CECIL: And he moved there, and I was born there.
INTERVIEWER: Twenty-two months is a long time. It really was.
CECIL: And he was reported missing while he was there. Well they never heard from him for 6 months. The boat was shelled. I mean it came back with shell holes in it.
INTERVIEWER: Well now when he came, did he farm in this area?
CECIL: Yes, he had never farmed. He had gone to sea for years and years. He was 37 when he and my mother got married. They were both 37. And then he came down here and started farming.
INTERVIEWER: Farming, for goodness sakes.
CECIL: But he had lived in Philadelphia and he had gone out of New York and Boston and…..well he had traveled by water for 18 years, I believe.
INTERVIEWER: Well my he was a city boy.
CECIL: But Mother wouldn’t live in Philadelphia.
INTERVIEWER: Oh alright. Was she from a rural area?
CECIL: She was from Captain’s Hill.
INTERVIEWER: That’s right. You told me, she lived at Thoroughfare.
CECIL: Thoroughfare Farm.
INTERVIEWER: It takes a while for me to consolidate.
CECIL: That was a wonderful house when I was a child. Oh just out of this world. Big mulberry trees in the yard, and a picket fence, and there was a main house and then what grandmother called a long colonnade, was a long room, wasn’t much wider than this, but much longer, and then the kitchen. I think the kitchen had been an outside kitchen and they connected it, see with the main part of the house, and the big cooking fireplace was there when I was a child. And I used to go in back, mother, grandmother had a range, and I used to go in back of that, and I could peep in and all the cookin’ utensils and the crane were still there.
INTERVIEWER: Still there.
CECIL: They were still there, and there was a little corkscrew stairway that went up to the second floor. And the colored people slept up there.
INTERVIEWER: Above the kitchen.
CECIL: Uhum, over the kitchen, but oh it, I thought it was the most wonderful place. Of course they had everything. They had horses and mules and cows and sheep and ducks and geese and guineas and…..everything that you could think of. And you could right down the bay, walk down, you know and fish and crab, and…….
INTERVIEWER: Right, that must have been an ideal place.
CECIL: I thought it was the most wonderful place in the world when I went as a child.
INTERVIEWER: Now they were about the only people out in that area, weren’t they?
CECIL: Yes, it was a 450 acre farm.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, so that encompassed the whole of Captain’s Hill and this way.
CECIL: Mother knew when, Mother remembered the first building that was put up on Ocean City.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sakes.
CECIL: And a, when they put the Atlantic Hotel, they put all the framing up and it was a windy day, and she went out in the yard for something and she was looking across, she could see, they could see the framing, and all of a sudden it all went down. The wind blew it all down and they had it all to put up again. I’ve heard her tell that so many times.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sakes. Oh I hadn’t heard that. Well you know I guess she did, if there weren’t any houses there, you do have a clear view of it.
CECIL: Just a clear view of this streak of sand. The Showell’s were the first ones that built anything over there.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Now what did they build?
CECIL: Cottages.
INTERVIEWER: Just cottages?
CECIL: I think to live in. Uhum.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Maybe it would have been the Showell’s from Berlin.
CECIL: They were from Showell.
INTERVIEWER: From Showell. Right.
CECIL: I think some of them later lived in Berlin and then they kept right on building over there. They were either the owners or part-owners of the old pier. I think. The Showell’s were in that. And then in later years they had the movie theater.
INTERVIEWER: Right, and the bowling alley…………
CECIL: I think they had the bowling alley.
INTERVIEWER: And the swimming pool. Right? They did have the swimming pool?
CECIL: Uhum.
INTERVIEWER: Right, and he built, Showell built the first railroad into Ocean City. Was built by a Showell.
CECIL: Was that private?
INTERVIEWER: No, the first railroad that came from Berlin to Ocean City said it was built by Colonel Lemuel D. Showell.
CECIL: It was?
INTERVIEWER: Uhum.
CECIL: I didn’t know that, but Mother was a small child when the railroad came down to Berlin, because Grandfather took her and her sister and she said, her sister was a little older. She was only about this high, and he took them out to Berlin to see the train.
INTERVIEWER: Ahhh, that must have been…………..
CECIL: That was something. And isn’t it a shame that children today don’t know anything about trains?
INTERVIEWER: You’re right.
CECIL: Because it was a wonderful way to travel.
INTERVIEWER: I never traveled on a train until I went to college.
CECIL: You didn’t?
INTERVIEWER: No, ‘cause you know we didn’t have a passenger train here.
CECIL: Uhum. Where did you go to college?
INTERVIEWER: I went to graduate school out at Bowling Green in Ohio, so I took the train from Baltimore up through West Virginia. I’m sure there are better routes to travel. Oh dear. Okay, now you taught school? Did you teach here?
CECIL: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Alright I’m asking this because I really don’t, you know I’m trying to associate here. Did you teach in Snow Hill or Newark?
CECIL: Newark, where the firehouse is now.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, where the firehouse is now.
CECIL: Uhum. You see my pictures in with one of these groups that was my class, and Grace Raine’s class. This is it.
INTERVIEWER: Oh that’s right.
CECIL: And they were my children. Now Grace Raine is Mrs. William Cropper, who lives down here.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, right.
CECIL: Where the columns are.
INTERVIEWER: Right, right where the…….and the little addition.
CECIL: That was her mother. Mary Ellen wouldn’t appreciate that a bit. It was her mother, Grace Raine, that taught with me. Ya, she lives in Showell, Mes. She married a Wells, Grace Wells. Her husband had the hardware store for a long time in Berlin. He’s retired.
INTERVIEWER: Were the two of you it? For the school?
CECIL: Yes. When I started teaching here there were three teachers. First year, and the second year. They took all above the 6th grade to Snow Hill. And then I was made principal and there were just the 6 grades.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Now did they bus the children to Snow Hill or……….
CECIL: No, we paid our way.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sakes.
CECIL: We paid our way. That was the way I went. I mean there was a man that had a big car. There were 2 people that took children. Of course they piled us in, you know, like sardines, I think there were eight of us went in this 7 passenger car, and that was the way we went.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, I wondered about that.
CECIL: I don’t know what year the buses started. I was married and gone by that time.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, did that. So you went to elementary school here/
CECIL: And then to Snow Hill.
INTERVIEWER: And then to Snow Hill for the rest. Okay. Did you board in Snow Hill or day, each day?
CECIL: When I went there?
INTERVIEWER: Uhum.
CECIL: Oh I came back and forth.
INTERVIEWER: Back and forth, good.