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St. Michaels Map and History
© John Norton
On the broad Miles River, with its picturesque tree-lined streets and beautiful harbor, St. Michaels has been a haven for boats plying the Chesapeake and its inlets since the earliest days. Here, some of the handsomest models of the Bay craft, such as canoes, bugeyes, pungys and some famous Baltimore Clippers, were designed and built. The Church, named “St. Michael’s,” was the first building erected (about 1677) and around it clustered the town that took its name.
For a walking tour and more history of the St. Michaels area visit https://tidewatertimes.com/travel-tourism/st-michaels-maryland/.
had suffered years before, at fourteen. After visiting New York with her brother, Tom, young Katharine had been unable to rouse him when they were to catch the morning train for home. Forcing open the door to his room (locked from the inside), she found her beloved older brother had hanged himself during the night. Their father had been grooming his oldest son for a medical career. Afterward, he hoped Katharine, his oldest surviving child, would take up medicine in Tom’s place.
Just before graduating, Katharine had been accepted into Baltimore’s Auditorium Theater Group, probably abetted by family connections. She was staying with Aunt Edith and husband Dr. Donald Hooker at their home, Upland, in Roland Park. The couple was well known and well regarded in Baltimore for charitable projects. For years Katharine had heard glamorous tales of a young Aunt Edith leaving Johns Hopkins to study theatrics in Paris under Richard Mansfield.
After a brief stint in bit parts, Katharine left Baltimore for New York with a letter of introduction from producer Edwin Knopf to a
Young Katharine with husband Luddy. 102
DelMarVa Diva New York voice and drama coach. A stereotypical struggle as an understudy and bit player followed before Katharine became discouraged and agreed to retire from the stage and marry a wealthy Philadelphian she’d known since student days. The Reverend Hepburn, at eighty-three, journeyed from the Eastern Shore to West Hartford to officiate on December 12, 1928. He reportedly gave the groom his stock admonition: “The levelheadedness needed to buy a horse is even more critical to the prudent selection of a woman.” It was said that, even in bed, his wife respectfully addressed him as “Reverend Hepburn,” so the groom must have puzzled Grandfather. To
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win Katharine, her besotted husband had agreed to change his name from Ludlow Ogden Smith to S. Ogden Ludlow because she had balked at being addressed as “Mrs. Smith.” Nominally, Katharine’s marriage lasted to 1934, years longer than her retirement from acting. Meanwhile, the Hepburns had grown fond of “Luddy,” who visited often, ever hoping to reunite with Katharine.
Katharine’s breakthrough on film came as Jo in Little Women, a portrayal she patterned on her beloved, opinionated tomboy Aunt Edith. Subsequently miscast in films, she came to be labeled as “box office poison.” Retreating east in 1938 to the sprawling family cottage at Fenwick on Long Island Sound, she was visited by playwright Philip Barry, his career also in the doldrums. With her consent and occasional collaboration, he set to work on a play tailored for her, including family-inspired elements: well-to-do, publicity-averse heroine with an ex-husband lurk-
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