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/.

ley’s Neck and get gallons of whiskey for island people who wanted whiskey. Austin’s father used to make bootleg whiskey back there in the woods.”

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During Prohibition, the Hurley’s Necker with the still profited from a cash crop of moonshine, but Miss Leila was simply doing her delivery duty.

Market gunning had also become prohibited, but the message hadn’t caught on along Miss Leila’s route. Gunners sent contraband wildfowl via the mail carrier, tying tags around the feathery necks.

Commercial moonshining didn’t catch on among the islanders themselves. Barney described how some islanders did experiment with brewing for home consumption, which would have been legal within reason.

“Reese and Gus made beer here on the stove in the house,” said Barney. “They put it in Coca-Cola bottles and had one of those capping machines. My uncle was in on it, too.

“Beer has to work, and some of the people here on the island couldn’t wait for it to work. So when they’d open a bottle up, they’d lose about half of it. Then they went and got a big tub and set it in the middle of the floor. When they opened one up, beer went down in the tub and they took and dipped it out.”

On Death and Dying

In older times, the Messicks from Bivalve sailed over to the island with a coffin to bury islanders. Along with a full-sized hearse, they kept a small white hearse in a wooded shed to accommodate a child.

Barney’s memory didn’t reach quite back to the Messicks. He remembered a local man preparing the deceased, then an undertaker coming across the marsh from “up on land”:

“Fairfield Hughes shaved a man when he died. Not everybody would do that. They didn’t embalm in those days. They laid a man out in the house, and different people sat up all night with him. Then Mr. Willoughby came down from East New Market with a coffin and they buried him. Fairfield dug the grave; he got a dollar for doing that. Nobody charged for nothing else.

“When my mother died, they

sat up three nights with her.” [The road wasn’t passable every day.]

“Herman Moore drove the hearse, pulled her with horses. Mr. Wes Jones was the last one who rode into it. They broke off pine shats and put them in the springs so she’d quit squeaking.

“They kept the hearse down here in a shed. The shed’s boards ran up and down, had wide cracks. When we were little kids, we’d go there and peep in them cracks and run as hard as we could run, scared to death.”

Remembering an old horse that wasn’t earning his keep, Phillip said, “I don’t know what Herman Jones had that red horse for. . . . I bet it used to pull that hearse.”

On Halloween, older youngsters were known to raid the crumbling shed that housed the hearse. They pulled it, racing up and down a network of wooded paths called Five Crossings, squealing springs protesting.

One may be surprised that a community of boatbuilders would hire an undertaker to come all the way from East New Market with a casket. Undoubtedly, not all could afford this arrangement, but engaging Mr. Willoughby would have been an extra sign of respect when possible.

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Fairfield Hughes, one of several island barbers, was remembered with dread by men whose remaining hair had long since turned white.

Dick Shorter: “Saturday nights, Fairfield’d set his barbering stool in the middle of the store. His old handclippers were so dull they wouldn’t cut, so he’d just pinch up a lock of your hair and yank.”

Elderly men cringed remembering when Fairfield got to trimming around their temples.

Everyday Hospitality

As one came over the bridge onto the island, Cap’n Sol Ewell’s family lived just to the right, in a typically modest two-story frame house.

“I guess there were eight or nine people lived in that house at one time,” said Barney, who often played nearby around the creek. “I’d come up from the creek and Miss Mary Wes’d say, ‘Have you had anything to eat?’ I’d say no.

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