“A fascinating, sensitive, and well-researched book that enhances our understanding of the history of Shady Side, the history of Maryland, and the history of America. It’s a story that’s entertaining, educational, and important.” --Kenneth T. Walsh, journalist and author of “Family of Freedom: Presidents and African Americans in the White House” “A must-read, interesting book. Full of mores of yesterday and today.” -- Mohan Grover, unoffi cial Shady Side mayor; owner of Renno’s Market “When Ms. Widdifield first approached me about her book-writing project, I was skeptical. After all, what could a spit of a woman with dainty eyes and light blond hair who spends her winters in sunny Florida possibly know about the lives of African Americans? Yet she approached this project with a passion and confidence that I have not seen in many seasoned historians. The results of her efforts say it all. Widdifield has brought the lives and stories of this waterside community alive and, in the process, has filled avoid in the history books of southern Maryland.” -- Judith A. Cabral, Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation “Passing Through Shady Side is a rich, vivid account of a largely untold story: the history of African American families that have farmed and worked the waters surrounding the Shady Side peninsula for nearly two centuries. Ann Widdifield has brought to life the generations that have given Shady Side its special character, traditions and vitality.” -- Terence Smith, journalist and Shady Side resident

Passing Through Shady Side

By Ann Widdifield

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2013 Ann Widdifield
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-8441-4

Contents

Chapter 1: Location and Place..........................................1Chapter 2: A Celebration of Life.......................................25Chapter 3: Eliza Dennis, Miss Doll Baby................................32Chapter 4: Shady Side School Stories...................................49Chapter 5: Boarding Houses and Post Offices............................77Chapter 6: Nick Families...............................................94Chapter 7: Watermen and Water Stories..................................107Chapter 8: Chuck Gross.................................................138Chapter 9: Stores and Businesses.......................................146Chapter 10: Crowner Families...........................................160Chapter 11: Buddy Holland..............................................199Chapter 12: Hog Stories................................................219Chapter 13: Shady Side Neighborhoods...................................227Chapter 14: Athletics and Recreation in Shady Side.....................244Chapter 15: Matthews Families..........................................251Chapter 16: Thompson Families..........................................268Chapter 17: "The Little Church Beside the Road"........................285Chapter 18: Neighboring Methodist Churches.............................300Chapter 19: Serving in the Military....................................316Chapter 20: April 2011.................................................343

Chapter One

Location and Place

Today, after passing under the stoplight at the Churchton intersection of Routes 468 and 256, travelers head northeast along Shady Side Road to reach the village of Shady Side, Maryland, which sits on a peninsula. If it is an early morning in October, then chances are that school buses are already making their daily trek to Shady Side Elementary School. Small houses are spaced in clusters or dot either side of the road, and a bus stops at homes and lanes to pick up children headed for school. Traffic headed away from the peninsula is steady, too, because workers have been passing along since before sunup to get to jobs in Annapolis, Washington, DC, and Baltimore. A cloudless blue sky complements the oranges, yellows, browns, and reds of maples, sycamores, green pines, and the ubiquitous red poison oak.

Heading toward Shady Side, Brown's Way is on the right, Holly Lane on the left, Deep Cove Road appears on the right, and a sign welcomes visitors to the Shady Side Peninsula. As the first curve leads past Ira and Sugar Lanes, rumble strips send a slight shudder through the vehicle. There is no labeled sign to caution a driver that Dead Man's Curve is straight ahead, but any native, police officer, or fire or rescue driver knows where to go if they hear "Dead Man's Curve" on their radio. The road curves to the right, passing Dent Road and more houses on the right; Nick Road is on the left as posted signs on Route 468 announce the speed limit is now 30 miles per hour. Scott Town Road appears on the left, and to the right is Columbia Beach Road. Miss Eliza Dennis's bungalow faces Columbia Beach Road not too far down on the left and across from the woods. A little way back in those woods but further down the road on the right is the grave of Miss Eliza's great-grandmother, Elizabeth Dennis, and others.

Shady Side Road is the only road in and out of town. Fleeing bank robbers would have to think twice before a staging a holdup in Shady Side (except there is no bank). There are two grocery stores, a gas station, a mechanic's garage, four churches, three restaurants, a few local tradesmen, several boat yards, a fire station—and a few surprises for the uninformed.

Facing Shady Side Road are a framing business and a restaurant building, which sit on opposite corners of Cedarhurst Road. Two doctors and two dentists have offices further up on the right. The Shady Side post office pops up on the left, with West River Road just beyond it. Renno's Market, the gas station, and the mechanic's garage are next, with two United Methodist churches further up on the left and Lula G. Scott school across the road. Just beyond the churches is the fire station.

Roll up the road; remove modern transportation, and the fire engines disappear. Automobiles? Whisking cars and motorcycle roars could only be a made-up story to scare the children in the Shady Side of the past.

    Quietness shouts,
    Stillness expands.
    Across fields or

    In the village
    Living out life,
    Working each day.

    Lives passing through
    Lives passing through
    Lives passing through.

To understand the present Shady Side, one needs a perspective of the past and how the town fit into the wider world. The land and its inhabitants were shaped by historical events, and these measures helped define the heritage and story of blacks on the peninsula and the town eventually known as Shady Side.

The Setting

In the beginning it was so: water, marshes, fertile soil, vegetation, and living creatures—insects, shellfish, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals inhabiting the peninsula. Changing seasons, tides, weather, and climate influenced each species interacting with the natural resources, forms, and features of the peninsula. Shady Side's absolute location is 38° 83.7" N and 76° 51.1" W, and its relative location is often described as west of the Chesapeake Bay, wrapped by the West River to its north and northwest, south of Annapolis and Baltimore, east of Washington, DC, north of Calvert County.

The Chesapeake Bay and its rivers, creeks, and streams were formed during the last great ice melt, when the Susquehanna River flooded its valley over 12,000 years ago. The Bay, called an estuary because of the mixture of fresh water and saltwater, has tides falling and rising twice daily and is very shallow compared to the oceans. Teeming with life, the Bay was especially blessed by its oyster bars. Indians came and left behind oyster shell piles and scattered arrowheads as evidence of their presence on the peninsula.

Lying on Maryland's coastal plain, the Shady Side peninsula is about ten feet above sea level and flat. Over time the West River expanded and eroded shorelines, causing some land features, such as an island off Wagner's Point, the Three Islands near Curtis Point, and Columbia Beach sand, to disappear. During Capt. Salem Avery's lifetime, his home, now incorporated into the Captain Avery Museum, was physically moved back three times because of erosion and the spreading river, according to an unpublished script for museum house tours. A local tradesman reported that a flooded farm lies across the river from the Avery house at the mouth of the Rhode River. In earlier centuries the peninsula was practically cut off from the rest of the county; thus, water transportation was the best, most efficient way to travel.

The peninsula was known as "The Great Swamp," and maps and deeds of the peninsula labeled it as such. Shady Side's postal zone is about 2 miles wide at its widest point and about 4 miles long from Wagner's Point to Dent Road, where Churchton's postal zone begins. In 1860 it was known simply as "The Swamp" or "Sedgefield," because of a type of...