Cecil County: A new look at an historic place!
Geographically Cecil County is nestled in rolling countryside east of the Appalachian Mountains, and close to the famous Amish country near Lancaster, Pa., and the breathtaking Gettysburg, Pa., and Antietam Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Md. Cecil, population 100,000, is a quiet area of small towns, farms, light to high tech industry and friendly people.
The entire region is well-served with navigable waters, with Cecil boasting over 200 miles of shoreline and more than 4,000 boat slips at its perch at the head of the Chesapeake Bay. Cecil is traversed by the Chesapeake & Delaware, or C&D Canal, and many navigable miles of rivers including the Elk, Bohemia, Sassafras, North East and Susquehanna. Necessarily, water sports including swimming, fishing, water skiing, diving and boating are popular past times.
Heavily wooded areas and corn fields afford tremendous hunting grounds for deer and other upland game.
Cecil County is located in the center of one of the most historically interesting areas in the United States. Within a few miles lie the rich farmlands of the Amish or Pennsylvania Dutch, farmers whose industriousness couples with strict religious beliefs have brought them national fame. Allowing no frivolous pastimes and no machinery on their farms, nor electricity to their houses, they use horse drawn buggies and plows in their everyday life. Cecil County, in recent years, has welcomed more and more Amish families and farms to it’s borders as well and Amish markets are no longer uncommon along Cecil’s back roads and lanes.
The State of Maryland, Cecil County and surrounding states preserve many landmarks that keep historical events, customs and traditions alive. Driving through the countryside gives visitors a chance to relive the past through covered bridges, water wheels, old forts and Civil War memorials. For the more agile, a climb over the rocky Susquehanna River bed may divulge many beautiful Indian relics.
Back in the 15th and 16th Centuries this area was inhabited by a tribe of Native Americans called the Susquehannocks – who were known as the Conestoga by Pennsylvania residents. A fierce, warlike people, traveled the length of the Susquehanna River through Pennsylvania and Maryland hunting and fishing and raiding.
Captain John Smith, the first known European to visit Cecil County, ascended the Susquehanna River in 1608, leaving from Jamestown, Va., to do so. He found the Susquehannocks friendly and numbered the tribe at about 600 able men of unbelievable stature. His journal gives an account of the size of the Chief saying the “calves of his legs were three-quarters of a yard about, and all the rest of his limbs so answerable to that proportion, that he seemed the goodliest man I ever saw.” Discoveries of human skeletons of extraordinary size made by workmen while digging the foundations of a bridge for the old Columbia & Port Deposit Railroad across Octoraro Creek at Port Deposit, many years ago, seem to confirm the Captain’s account.
The Susquehannocks raised some disturbances with the European settlers but a peace treaty eventually took. Although they built grass and timber forts and traded peaceably with the newcomers, the Susquehannocks were at continuous war with the tribes of the Five Nations. All the tribes in the area of Cecil County are believed to have been of Iroquois stock and of great physical prowess. With the banding together of five tribes to create the Five Nations, and European influence and fighting, the Susquehannocks were eventually annihilated save a few who banded together near Conestoga Creek in Lancaster County, Pa. But even this small peaceful band who had become skilled basket weavers for income, were eradicated during a vicious slaughter known as the Paxton’s Boys Raid.
Historians are of the opinion that the first settlement of the English in the present limits of Cecil was on Palmer’s Island, now known as Garrett Island, between Perryville and Havre de Grace in the Susquehanna River, which carries Route 40 across the River. This settlement was a trading post, the residence of Edward Palmer, a gentleman and scholar as evidenced by the books he left on the island when Captain William Claiborne took possession of it about 1637.
George Calvert the first Baron of Baltimore, or Lord Baltimore, was the founder of Maryland and drew up its Charter with his own hand. Before it was finally accepted, Lord Baltimore died and his eldest son Cecilius, or Cecil, for whom Cecil County was named, succeeded him, inheriting his father’s title as Second Lord Baltimore. The Charter of Maryland as the original Lord Baltimore drew it up was published in June 1632 investing Cecil with all the rights and privileges the King had intended to confer upon his father.
The famous Mason Dixon line established in the years 1764-1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two English astronomers and mathematicians, marks the Cecil boundaries on the north and east.
Cecil County has, since it’s beginning, been agriculturally oriented. In recent decades it has taken on a more suburban community and light to heavy industrial, technology and research and development facilities have been established throughout the county.
The Conowingo Dam Power Station, just seven miles from Port Deposit on the Susquehanna River is a major hydro-electric power producer and flood control dam. Until it was built Port Deposit and Havre de Grace were flooded by eight to ten feet of water nearly every decade backed up by gorges of ice, which is now controlled by the Dam.
