In honor of the last day of the school year yesterday, we share a school photo for this week’s Flashback. This undated photo is labeled “Hibernia School.” Dozens of small schools like this one educated children from many communities around Kent County in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Students walked to school, often learning in multi-grade classes.

Happy summer to Kent County schools students! Don’t forget to visit the Historical Society during your vacation. You can take a children’s walking tour, learn about ship building and ship captains in Kent County, find books for kids about local history, and ask friendly docents any questions you have about Kent County history.

If you have any information about this school or the people pictured, please share it in the comments or by emailing [email protected].

Congratulations to Steve Meehan for being the first to correctly identify last week’s Flashback Photo as the demolition of the Voshell House, now the site of People’s Bank. Honorable mentions go to Pete Heck, Ann Bourne, Jack Stenger, Mark Blyman, Muffy Caputo and Charles Gloyd, all of whom submitted the correct answer within hours of publication. The Flashback Fairies are going to have to come up with some harder quizzes!

This week, we share a photo of a highly exciting, if possibly leisurely, Turtle Race. In this undated photo, adults and children gather on the road in front of a house, watching 12 turtles, some with numbers painted on their shells, who appear to be heading in many different directions. We do not have a record of the race’s winner. If anyone remembers this high-stakes athletic event or can identify any of the people (or the turtles), please comment below or contact us at [email protected].

The onset of beautiful spring weather this week has many dogs blissfully hanging their heads out of car and truck windows on Kent County roads. With that inspiration, we share an undated Flashback Photo depicting an unidentified boy and his dog. Both appear a bit glum in this image, but here’s hoping they’re impatiently awaiting the start of an exciting adventure, maybe taking a ride on the back roads on a perfect spring day.

If you know who this boy, or this dog, are, please let us know in the comments below, or by emailing [email protected]. Image courtesy of Historical Society of Kent County.

For this Easter weekend, we share a Flashback Photo from the Chesapeake Heartland Digital Archive. The image, taken on Prospect Street in Chestertown, shows nine children decked out in their holiday outfits on Easter in 1967. From left to right, the children are Kim Briscoe Moody, Lisa Lomax, Yancie Brooks, Karen Graves, Charles Freeman, Donita Ringgold, Tammy Lomax, and Monica Graves Bently. Ethel Hamilton kneels down, holding out a bottle next to the baby Marcus Freeman.

If you have any additional information about this photograph, or Easter in Kent County in 1967, please  share it in the comments here, or by emailing [email protected]. Image courtesy of Chesapeake Heartland.

 

Before the Tea Party Festival, Chestertown had the Chautauqua. In this undated photograph, a parade of children dressed in matching white follows a group of young men in military fatigues carrying a large American flag. The children carry a banner reading Chestertown MD. Chautauqua.

While we don’t know what year this photo was taken, we do know that the Chestertown Chautauqua was an week-long annual summer event in the early 20^th century. The Saturday, August 15, 1925 edition of The Chestertown Transcript includes two separate items referring to that year’s Chautauqua. The first reads:

Sunday services will be held in the Chautauqua tent as usual, this year. Dr. Robert Mac Gowen, who will deliver “The Creed of Democracy” as the open lecture of Chautauqua on Saturday evening will also preach at the community Sunday service in the Chautauqua tent. Dr. Mac Gowen is pastor of the Bellevue Avenue Presbytreian [sic] Church of Pittsburgh. The Royal Welsh male quarette will sing also at the Sunday service.

The second, headlined “Chautauqua Begins Today” provides all the details and persuasive arguments needed to spark interest in attending the event:

The 1925 chautauqua said to be the best series of entertainments yet given here since it was organized, will begin this evening at 3 p.m. Everyone should see the Chautauqua. It is the biggest intellectual treat served here during the year. To duplicate it, as a whole, would require days of travel and much money. Tickets are $2.50 and $1.00. The price of each performance is 21 cents. Every lover of Chautauqua could buy their season ticket before the first entertainment begins. After that the proceeds go to the company, while the guarantors are compelled to make up any deficit.

In the September 6, 1919 edition of The Chestertown Transcript, an accounting of that year’s Chautauqua program includes speeches entitled The League of Nations, Sun-Crowned Manhood, Dollars and Sense for Your Town, and others. Entertainment included performances by the Overseas Quartet, “consisting of four young men who saw active service in Europe, assisted by Miss Alice Price;” The Victory Concert Party; popular drama Poly of the Circus, and the opera Robinhood, with “a full cast, chorus, and orchestra.”

On the final day of the 1919 Chautauqua, the Transcript touts a pageant presented by Junior Chautauqua, for which “the childern [sic] of Chestertown are being drilled … every morning by competent instructors and the event will be a big event this year as it always is.” It would seem to be a reasonable assumption that the parade in today’s photo is part of such a pageant. If you have any information about this photograph or about Chestertown’s Chautauqua traditions, we invite you to share it in the comments here, or by emailing [email protected].