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Readers: Think you know your Baltimore? Try answering our weekly trivia question. Some weeks will be ridiculously easy, some weeks a bit more challenging. There will be a small prize each week for the first right answer. Put your best guess in the “comments” field. Here’s today’s trivia:
QUESTION: Students from what Maryland university are the subject of Augusta Tucker’s novels “Miss Susie Slagle’s” and “The Man Miss Susie Loved”?
Readers: Think you know your Baltimore? Try answering our weekly trivia question. Some weeks will be ridiculously easy, some weeks a bit more challenging. There will be a small prize each week for the first right answer. Put your best guess in the “comments” field. Here’s today’s trivia:
QUESTION: What generous men's fraternal order was founded in Baltimore on April 26, 1819?
Before Bay Bridge was pathway to beaches, steamboat resorts offered retreat
Betterton was a popular destination for vacationers and day-trippers from the 1890s to the 1940s. (Baltimore Sun files, 1941)
Kent County once boasted two popular steamboat resorts — Betterton and Tolchester Beach — where Baltimoreans boarded bay steamers to flee from the dreadful heat and humidity of the city.
Betterton, which was known as “Maryland’s Foremost Bay-side Resort” or “The Jewel of the Chesapeake,” was a popular destination for vacationers and day-trippers from the 1890s to the 1940s.
The heyday of its cousin, Tolchester Beach, just north of Rock Hall, was from 1877 until its closing in 1962.
For African-Americans, the bay’s resorts remained segregated until the 1960s. Brown’s Grove, on Rock Creek in Anne Arundel County, operated by Capt. George W. Brown and J. Langley, drew the state’s African-Americans from 1900 until the 1920s.
Brown’s Grove advertised itself as the “only park in the State of Maryland run exclusively for Colored People and by Colored People.”
African-Americans walked up the gangway of the Avalon and Starlight, which could be identified at night “by the electric star mounted atop her walking beam which rocked to and fro when she was in motion,” according to H. Graham Wood and Robert H. Burgess, authors of “Steamboats Out of Baltimore.”
The Port Welcome in 1967. (Baltimore Sun files, 1967)
The opening of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1952 sounded the death knell for the bay’s resorts. Now, motorists could easily strike out for the Atlantic beaches of Ocean City, Rehoboth, Bethany, Cape May, Stone Harbor or Atlantic City.
The passenger excursion steamer Port Welcome still made occasional calls at the old resorts until the 1980s when it was withdrawn from service.
Readers: Think you know your Baltimore? Try answering our weekly trivia question. Some weeks will be ridiculously easy, some weeks a bit more challenging. There will be a small prize each week for the first right answer. Put your best guess in the “comments” field. Here’s today’s trivia:
QUESTION: What Maryland Olympian, a graduate of Garrison Forest School, won gold (twice) at the age of 15?
A hint as to the Olympian in question. Who is she? (Baltimore Sun files)
When the Hopkins lacrosse team went to the Olympics
In 1928, the Johns Hopkins University lacrosse squad sailed to the Olympics in Amsterdam aboard the SS President Roosevelt. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who represented the American Olympics Committee, was also on board, and is pictured above in center, wearing a hat. (Baltimore Sun files, 1928)
When a steamship departed the New York harbor in the summer of 1928 with all the U.S. Olympics competitors aboard, her passenger list included a large Baltimore contingent — the Johns Hopkins lacrosse team. Baltimoreans and Hopkins alumni filled the dock as the ocean liner sailed.
Lacrosse was not a well-known sport then and the Olympic committee allowed lacrosse as a demonstration sport, a trial balloon to test whether the sport would catch on. That spring, lacrosse teams competed for the honor to represent the U.S. overseas at the Ninth Olympiad.
On a wet June 23 afternoon at the old Baltimore Stadium, Hopkins beat the University of Maryland at a game called the largest patronized lacrosse contest to date.
The Hopkins team sailed July 10 for the Ninth Olympiad aboard the SS President Roosevelt, which had been chartered for the summer. The ship docked at Amsterdam and was the live-in quarters for all the teams throughout the Olympic games. Swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, who would later appear as Tarzan in films, and General Douglas MacArthur, who represented the American Olympics Committee, were also aboard.
Lacrosse was so little known that the American team had only two competitors — Canada and Great Britain. On Aug. 5, 1928, Hopkins beat Canada, 6-3 at the Amsterdam Olympics Stadium before a crowd of 40,000. “Amazed laughter arose from the spectators at what they considered undue roughness,” The Sun reported. The next day the American-Hopkins team lost to the British, who were then defeated by Canada. “All three were about where they started,” said The New York Times.
