Saturday, December 8, 2018
Friday, December 7, 2018
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
December 4th left a dark mark on Salisbury's history.
Various news media this week have reported on a 1931 mob lynching that occurred in Salisbury (i.e. http://www.wboc.com/story/39588284/memorial-marks-87th-anniversary-of-williams-lynching-in-salisbury). The local news media of 1931 perceived metropolitan newspaper coverage of the event as unfairly connecting all Eastern Shore citizens to the ilk of mob rule. What follows is the text of first-hand recollections by the late Charles J. Truitt who was editor of The Salisbury Times in 1931.
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"On Friday, December 4, 1931, Daniel J. Elliott, a highly respected Salisbury lumber dealer, was talking over the telephone in his office about mid-afternoon when Matthew Williams, a negro he had employed for eight years walked in from behind shot Elliott in the head. Death was instantaneous.
Williams, wounded when arrested, was taken by city police to the hospital where he was questioned by State's Attorney Levin Claude Bailey.
A report was spread around Salisbury that Williams had told the state's attorney a dozen or more Salisbury business men had been marked for death, that each had been assigned to a black for assassination and that 'I've done my job and I was the only one that did.'
About 8:30 that night a group said to number 12 to 15 appeared outside the ground floor hospital ward where Williams was lying in bed. He was smuggled out through a window and walked three blocks to the courthouse lawn. There he was hanged from a tree.
My wife and I had planned to see a movie at the Arcade Theater after dinner. As we walked along the block of Main Street toward the theater I was told of the alleged conspiracy against certain community leaders, which I completely discounted. After sitting in the theater for a time, I decided I should, as a newsman, investigate what may be happening outside. As I walked the half block to the office a passerby, replying to my inquiry about a gathering at the Main and Division Street intersections, said Williams was being hanged. Upon reaching the office door I thought I could discern in the darkness a shadowy figure dangling from a tree on the south side of the courthouse lawn. I hastened back to the theater to tell my wife, who was expecting soon, not to leave her seat until I returned.
I then went to the street intersection across from the courthouse lawn. With only street lights for illumination, I estimated the crowd to be about 100. Someone said Williams body was being taken away. There was no mob shouting as reported in some newspapers. Rather, the gathering appeared to be one of awe-struck spectators, rendered silent by the nature of the spectacle some of them had just witnessed.
As expected, for the next several days the Eastern Shore was the object of editorial page lingual gymnastics in a sizable sector of the metropolitan press. The most volative vituperation appeared in The Evening Sun, which then author, Henry L. Mencken, titled 'The Eastern Shore Kulture' :
Not many observant Marylanders, I take it, were surprised by the news of last Friday's extraordinarily savage and revolting lynching in Salisbury. Something of the sort has been plainly hatching down in that forlorn corner of the State for a long while. The whole area is a lush stamping ground for knavish politicians, prehensile professional patriots, and whooping soul-savers. It is quite naturally, a stronghold of prohibition (and of the rot-gut liquors that go therewith), and within its bounds tin-poy revivalism is making its last stand in Maryland.
Another vitrolic blurb appeared by Mencken in the same newspaper a week later. His statement that every schoolboy knew the identity of those who had participated in the hanging of Williams, brought an immediate chorus that he be summoned before the grand jury to testify. His response was that he would not voluntarily appear and the matter was dropped there.
Meanwhile Eastern Shore newspapers, editorially asserting mob action was not to be condoned, took issue with Mencken. The Cambridge Daily Banner recalled that Mencken himself had advocated lynching when he once proposed to take Williams Jennings Bryan 'to the top of the Washington Monument, in Washington, disembowel him and hurl his remains into the Potomac.' A somewhat similar charge was leveled by the Worcester Democrat, of Pocomoke, edited by a retired college professor. The Maryland & Herald, Princess Anne, referred to Mencken and aids as being affiliated with 'anarchists and communist groups, composed for the most part of men and women from the lowest strata of the mongrel breeds of European gutters.'
Attorney General William Preston Lane came to Salisbury and was closeted for four days with State's Attorney Bailey, and his law partner Hooper S. Miles, questioning a queue who might establish identity of the leaders. No clues were found that could justify convictions. The calibre of those three may be considered reflection of the seriousness of the inquiry. Mr. Bailey became chief judge of the state Court of Appeals, Miles later was president of Maryland National Bank, largest financial institution in the state. Mr. Lane became state governor."
Visit Santa And Mrs. Claus Downtown
SATURDAY DECEMBER 8TH & 15TH
12:00 - 2:00 P.M.
DOWNTOWN POCOMOKE AT CORNER OF MARKET AND CLARKE
BRING YOUR CAMERA AND TAKE A PICTURE WITH MR. & MRS. CLAUS!
IT'S FREE
Sunday, December 2, 2018
TIME MACHINE 1966, 1922, 2013
December, 1966
(Above items- Pocomoke City Messenger)
December, 1922
Democratic Messenger
December, 2013
Chincoteague Beacon
Do you have a local memory to share with PPE readers or something of interest your parents or grandparents told you about? Please send to tkforppe@yahoo.com .
When you're clicking around the Internet remember to check in with The Pocomoke Public Eye. We strive to be a worthwhile supplement to your choices.
Saturday, December 1, 2018
Friday, November 30, 2018
Old Ocean City Building Coming Down
(WBOC)
The building is more than a century old and can not be restored but the owner has an interesting plan for the location's future.
See more at http://www.wboc.com/story/39569892/a-historical-building-in-ocean-city-has-out-lived-its-time
The building is more than a century old and can not be restored but the owner has an interesting plan for the location's future.
See more at http://www.wboc.com/story/39569892/a-historical-building-in-ocean-city-has-out-lived-its-time
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Sunday, November 25, 2018
TIME MACHINE: 1952, 1968, 1922.
December, 1952
Baltimore Sun
Daily Times (Salisbury)
Footnote: 1968 was the last year for the Fruitland holly auction.
December, 1922
(It was in April of 1922 that a conflagration swept many dozens of buildings in Pocomoke City including residence and business structures, and understandably left citizens on edge when subsequent fires occurred.)
Worcester Democrat
(Pocomoke Fire Department picture)
Do you have a local memory to share with PPE readers or something of interest your parents or grandparents told you about? Please send to tkforppe@yahoo.com .
When you're clicking around the Internet remember to check in with The Pocomoke Public Eye. We strive to be a worthwhile supplement to your choices.
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Late November..then and now.
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November 22, 1963
55 Years Later.. November 22, 2018
*AND ALWAYS OUR USA DEMOCRACY*
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Monday, November 19, 2018
High Fives for TV Performance!
Paper Poppy Flowers Tradition
We heard from a former Pocomoke City resident who mentioned that reading recently about the World War I hundred year anniversary triggered his recollections of poppy day here in the 1950's and early 1960's. The paper poppy observance started nationwide after the war and was widely observed for many decades. In many instances the paper poppies, honoring our veterans, were made by disabled veterans who would benefit from their sale.
"There were of course many articles and stories about the 100th anniversary of the end of WW1. They talked about how hundreds of millions of red poppies - both real and artificial - are being distributed across the UK and in fact all of Europe. The article said that tradition is now fading in America but is still very strong in Europe. Remember when they used to give those out in Pocomoke? I think it was the VFW - the poppies were red paper with a wire "stem." Every year before Armistice Day - as we then called it - someone would bring a big basket of them to (my parents') store and they could give them to anyone who came in. I wonder if any of these VFW posts are still doing that.
One of the articles I read explained the origin of the tradition. Apparently the seeds of the corn poppy flower are virtually indestructible. They can lie dormant underground for many years. As the battle raged across Europe, many entire villages were destroyed. Bombs and artillery excavated massive amounts of soil replacing what had been homes, farms and commercial buildings. As armies moved in to pick up the wounded and remove the dead, they often found the fields overrun with these red poppies which had sprouted from the unearthed seeds."
Pocomoke City's Worcester Democrat
May, 1956
Sunday, November 18, 2018
TIME MACHINE: 1962, 1973, 1941, 1898.
January 19, 1962
Salisbury Times
December, 1973
Worcester County Messenger
January, 1941
Footnote: This was the original English Grill located on East Main Street in Salisbury about a block from the Rt. 13 Boulevard. Later English Grills/English's Family Restaurants populated numerous Delmarva locations as well as on the western shore but none remain today.
A bit of early English Grill history at below link:
November, 1898
Peninsula Enterprise
Do you have a local memory to share with PPE readers or something of interest your parents or grandparents told you about? Please send to tkforppe@yahoo.com .
When you're clicking around the Internet remember to check in with The Pocomoke Public Eye. We strive to be a worthwhile supplement to your choices.
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