As "June- rose, by May- dew" was being "impearled" that spring of 1909, the Ellicott City natives were restless. According to the personal section of the Ellicott City Times:

"Mrs. B.J. Byrne is making a sojourn at Atlantic City. Everybody's friend Phelps Wilson, of Hanover, spent Tuesday in Ellicott City. Maryland Line chapter D.A.R. was entertained last Thursday by its Regent, Mrs. A. Marshall Ellicott. Miss Catherine Iddings, of Sandy Spring, is visiting the home of her grand-father Mr. Alfred G. Matthews, of Glenwood."

You have to wonder what made ol' Phelps Wilson, "everybody's friend." I was also curious about the history of the D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Revolution).

The D.A.R. was begun in 1890 when women with ties to the Revolutionary War wanted to ban together. At that time women did not yet have the vote. The patriotic section of the D.A.R. creed reads: "to cherish, maintain, and extend the institutions of American freedom, to foster true patriotism and love of country, and to aid in securing for mankind all the blessings of liberty." Since its inception, the D.A.R. as enrolled 800,000 members.

The general criteria for membership is having a bloodline to a descendent who aided the American fight for independence, along with documentation.

I guess that's one less meeting for me to attend. My roots don't quite fit that niche, being at once both deeper and shallower than the D.A.R. criteria. My father's Irish-Scots folks on one side came over after the Revolution. And as he would say, "the other side of my family met the boats." In other words, they were American Indians. That was a fact he liked lording over my mom, that his people were here before her's. She just barely managed to be born in America, less than a decade after her parents emigrated from Europe, a few years before World War I.

But I like the fact that some can document their roots to our nation's beginnings.

Meeting people who are related to our founding fathers are connections to the past that make history a bit less abstract and a lot more tangible.

75 Years Ago -- Down-y Ocean?

"State Firemen at Convention Meeting on Eastern Shore" was the headline in the Times the week of June 21. "All Maryland is being represented this week at the annual convention of the Maryland State's Volunteer firemen's Association meeting at Cambridge. It is the fifty-second conclave of the volunteer smoke-eaters." The Howard County contingent was elected at their April meeting.

That convention is still held on the Eastern shore every June, but in Ocean City. The article goes on to say that many of the men made the trip in private automobiles. So even if Ocean City was just a village then, in 1934, some fireman may have nevertheless chosen to ditch a seminar and take a ride to the ocean to get in some fishing.

Lovely, Lovely Lane

"Almost 200 Methodist ministers, members of the Baltimore annual Conference attended the first business session of their sesquicentennial in Baltimore yesterday at the First Methodist Episcopal church, St. Paul and Twenty-second streets the successor to the Lovely Lane Meeting house, where the church was organized in America in 1784." This was the first sentence of an article in the Times announcing the pastor's celebrating the June Sesquicentennial celebration.

Today, Lovely Lane Church on St. Paul St. is 116 years old. The original meeting house was built in 1774.And as some of you in the dance circuit may know, while there are hymns on Sundays, there's also a variety of music on Wednesday nights as the Baltimore Folk Music Society holds dances there in lovely, Lovely Lane's social hall.

50 Years Ago -- Entree France

According to an article in the Times, plans were being made for Ellicott City Elementary School to offer foreign language classes in the fall. "French conversation will be instituted in "after-school" classes tentatively planned for Monday and Thursday afternoons. The program will cost students about $20 to $25 a year or $10 for a semester."

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