Interview with James Chapman
Center St., Port Deposit, MD 21904
Conducted by Fred Kelso
Oxford, PA
10/18/96

James is 64 years young (born 1932).

Dr. France paid a bounty for copperheads at Mt. Ararat 1916-1936.

Mrs. Wagner had an ice cream parlor in Port Deposit which James and his friends would visit after going to the movies.  She had hot roasted peanuts in a big drum.

Before people had water in their homes, there were many public hand pumps in town.  James and his companions would stop at each one as they walked down the street.  One was known as “Paxton’s Pump.”

James worked for Ed Rowland on Liberty Grove Road at special harvesting jobs - corn, wheat.  Mr. Rowland had mules to pull his combine to cut the wheat, which was laid on a cradle and tied.  James was paid $2 per day to shock wheat in the 1940’s.  Donaldson Brown approached James and his co-workers to ask if they would come to work for him at $3 per day.  They told him they would have to ask Mr. Rowland, since he had been very good to them.  Rowland (who was the County Commissioner) gave the okay to work for Brown, but asked for them to come back when they were done.

Corn was planted four kernels to a hill, and then thinned out to plants per hill.

James also worked for Mr. Ragan, of Conowingo, picking tomatoes for his cannery.  Ragan would drive to Port to pick up the workers.

James remembers pulling corn, picking green beans (2 cents per pound picked) and tomatoes, and placing them in a “rag bag.”

James’ grandfather John Chapman (buried at Cokesbury U.M.) built a house called “Home Place.”  He signed a 100-yr. lease with Paul Honore’s father for the land in the late 1930’s.

James’ grandmother Sarah Chapman is buried in the small cemetery by old Doc Richard’s house.

James’ mother’s parents were George and Blanche Young.  George died in the quarry.

James’ mother, Alice, was born in Culpepper, Virginia.

James’ father, Albert Chapman, worked on the Pennsylvania Railroad in Port Deposit, but never in the quarry.  He was from New York City.

Albert Chapman and Alice Young were married in New York City.

Albert died in 1944.  He was 45 years old.  James was 11 at the time.

When Albert died, his brothers and sisters wanted James and his siblings to be put in Father Flannigan’s Home, but his mother wouldn’t break up the family.

Ed Barnes was the local truant officer - lived at Barnes’ Corner.  He came around to see why James wasn’t in school.  When he found out the reason was that James didn’t have any shoes, he bought him a pair.

Kerosene was sold at the Old Mill.

The Howard Chapel (M.E.), Bethel A.M.E., and the Paw-Paw (M.E. Church) were all local stations on the Underground Railroad.  The Paw-Paw had no stairway to the second floor - there was a side door for blacks to enter to get to their pews in the balcony.

James’ Aunt Marcella from Milwaukee was white, her husband George was very light-skinned.

Miss Annie Raleigh came to Port from Italy.  There were four houses next to Mary Blackburn’s where Italian families lived.

In the 1940’s James worked for Rube Whisler (straw boss hired to run the quarry) as a stonecutter.  He also helped to blast huge boulders from the hill.

Water would be poured on stones to find seams, then holes would be drilled, and cutters and wedges would be used to widen the seam.  Eventually the stone would “sing” and you just had to tap the wedges to get the stone to part.

Albert Chapman was one of the few blacks not to work in the quarry.

James started at the quarry as a waterboy.

Joe Stewart worked for the railroad.

Bobby Jones and the Griffins worked at the quarry.

A “Donkey” steam engine was used to drive the cranes at the quarry.

The Gaylords had a planing mill at the south side of Wiley’s shipyard.

Families in Heckarttown in James’ parents’ time were George and Daisy Owens and their daughter Agnes Boddy, Marie Bond, and Gail Gaylord.

James also helped to pick up and deliver coal.  He got $1 per ton to carry coal (by hand) for Mr. Waibel.  They would take a truck to the mines in Pennsylvania on an overnight trip to pick up hard coal.  Back in Port, a smaller load would be put a pickup truck, and James would deliver coal to homes in a canvas bag.  There were 22 bags to the ton.

Mr. Fately was the railroad cop before Blackburn.  His job was to ensure that people didn’t steal coal from the railroad cars during the Depression.

James was the water treatment plant operator at Bainbridge.  He started working for Eugene Spencer, after having been on unemployment at $26 per week.  James retired from the Plant after 40 years.

James graduated from Carver High School in Elkton at sixteen.  It was the only black high school in Cecil County.

After graduation he went into the Air Force and was stationed in San Antonio, Texas.

James was in a black Boy Scout troop in Port as a child.

There is a cemetery in the field at Bivens property off of Liberty Grove Road.  Take the lane to the right just past Port Heights, then the road past a 3 or 4-house cluster.

There were black morticians in Havre de Grace and Bel Air, but James’ family always used Patterson.

James’ wife was Joanne Webster. Her mother and father were Anne Webster and James Clark.

James’ mother was baptized at the First Baptist Church of Port Deposit.

George Benjamin’s mother and father farmed at the Canal Railroad Station.

There used to be a black school where the Cokesbury Baptist Church is now.

Philip Cameron died Thanksgiving week in 1930, 31, or 32.

When James worked there, the quarry was the “Port Deposit Granite Company.”

Dynamite was used to set off the black powder in the quarry.

The churches in town were built from stone taken from the hills behind them.

James and his father were both ordained in the Baptist Church.  His mother was baptized in the river.  She went to Bethel A.M.E.