Daniels - Ghosts of Chestertown and Kent County

Published by Haunted America

A Division of The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2015 by D.S. Daniels

All rights reserved

Front cover: The Geddes Piper House, circa 1783, served as the headquarters of the Historical Society of Kent County folowing its purchase in 1956 and subsequent restoration.

Unless otherwise noted, all images appear courtesy of the Historical Society of Kent County.

First published 2015

ebook edition 2015

ISBN 978.1.62585.489.6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015942277

print edition ISBN 978.1.62619.969.9

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To Karen Emerson

Friend, colleague and comrade-in-arms Thank you for everything

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to Karen Emerson and Joan Andersen, the most competent, hard-working and fun-to-be-with staff a director could desire. I appreciate all the help you gave to me in the preparation of this book as well. My appreciation also to Robert L. Bryan, Steve Frohock, Roger Brown, Ann Charles, officers; and all the members of the board of directors of the Historical Society of Kent County for their continual support.

Unless noted, all images in this book are from the marvelous collection in the Historical Society of Kent Countys library, which is open to the public on a regular basis.

I thank all the people who helped me gather tales for this book, including Tracy Stone, John Carroll, Teddi Zia, Jeanette Sherbondy, Tony Hurley, Mary Woodland Gould Tan, Margaret Gould Cummings, Clarence Hawkins, Milford Murray, Cynthia Sanders, Joan Horsey, Davy McCall, Michael Bourne, Mark Newsome, Jack Bigelow, Larry Slagle, Cheryl Harris and all the owners and staff of homes and properties included in this book. My special thanks to Jim Maitland and Stephen Edwards of LightSeekers Paranormal Resolutions; Rodney Whitaker of the Maryland Society of Ghost Hunters; to Bryan Talbott and You Know Youre From Kent County When...Facebook Friends; and to Kevin Hemstock for being such a good resource for everything historic.

My thanks to all those who helped me put together the ghost walks, including Rachel Field for helping me collect stories; Deborah Lane for helping me organize the first walk; Anna Striegl, Bill Seidleck and all the other talented ghost walk guides; members of Phi Alpha Theta of Washington College for being great ticket takers; and wonderful interns Emily Broderick, Kasey Jones and Erin Benz.

Thank you to all the people of Chestertown and Kent County whom I had the pleasure of knowing and working with through the years. And thanks to the many whom, when I went from talking about local history to asking about ghosts, treated my inquiries with good sport and great interest.

And my greatest appreciation always to my family: my late husband, Bill Daniels, and my wonderful daughter and son-in-law, Anne and Joe McLaughlin, for their love, support and faith in me and all my endeavors.

INTRODUCTION

In writing this book, there were times that I wondered if I was writing a book about history or a book about ghosts. The simple answer to that question is that it is about both.

Even if I had wanted to write a book just about ghosts, I would find it difficult to talk about anything regarding Kent County without talking about its history. This lovely little county on the Chesapeake is unique in that an extraordinary portion of its landscape and built environment continues to reflect the centuries of history played out on its fields and shores and in its towns and villages.

Tucked on to a peninsula bordered by the Chesapeake, the Chester and the Sassafras Rivers, Kent County is the tiniest of Maryland counties both in geography and population, with only 413 square miles, 136 of that in water, and around twenty thousand residents, only seven thousand more than in the 1790 census. Yet it has ten Century Farms, three National Register Historic Districts and over seven hundred sites on the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties. Chestertown, the county seat, with only around 5,270 residents, boasts more eighteenth-century homes still in use than any Maryland community other than Annapolis. Its riverfront promenade of grand houses, some built by planter merchants whose enterprise and industry led Chestertown to become a center of colonial economic and cultural activity, has cast much the same reflection in the Chester River for over three centuries.

The wharf at Turners Creek has been used since the eighteenth century, and the Granary has stood since the nineteenth century.

Rock Hall, Galena and Millington began as villages that served as stopping points for travelers since English-speaking people first arrived. The first settlers of what is now Betterton were supposedly helped by Native Americans, and Captain John Smith embarked on its shores.

Colonial estate houses, some still lived in by the same families who settled there in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, can be found throughout the county. Kent County has the highest percentage of acreage devoted to agriculture of any Maryland county, and soil tilled centuries ago still remains as farmland. The still active wharf at the public park of Turners Creek was a distribution point for grain to supply the Revolution.

The windswept marshes of Eastern Neck Wildlife Preserve look much as they might have when English settlers first took up land grants there in the 1650s. And at the churchyard of old St. Pauls, perhaps the oldest remaining religious structure on the Eastern Shore, souls lie buried who died long before America became a country. Washington College is the tenth-oldest college in America and the first to be founded after we became a country. Caulks Field is still a cornfield, as it was two hundred years ago, and is among the most pristine battlefields in the United States. One of only two African American GAR Halls left in the country is a center of community activity today.

But history isnt just about historic sites and structures. History tells us a story about the intertwining of people, land and events that shape us. And what makes a story better than a ghost?

Entertainment isnt the only reason I share the ghost stories of Kent County along with its history, although I confess when I wrote a script for a ghost walk for the Historical Society of Kent County, it was. But in the search for ghostly tales related to historic properties, I began to accept that people were sharing experiences with me that were every bit as real as the fact that George Washington did, indeed, sleep in Kent County.

Certainly some of the tales contained here are simply the stuff of legend. Some are anecdotes of magical practices brought from across the seas, and some are just unusual incidents. But for most of the stories shared in this volume, there seems to be no explanation other than to say that some echos of the past can exist side by side with the present.