Known for hunting, fishing and crabbing, Taylors Island claims a population of fewer than 200 people who live just 16 miles southwest of Cambridge, Maryland. Turning onto one of the side trips of the Chesapeake Country’s Scenic Byway from Highway 50, state route 16 takes travelers all the way to a bridge over Slaughter Creek and onto the island. Today’s bridge completed in 1999 replaced the wooden bridge from 1856. Prior to that, a ferry connected the island to the mainland.

On the island side of the bridge, you are greeted by an historical marker and a worthy stop to read about the history of The Battle of the Ice Mound, the last battle in the war of 1812 in the Chesapeake Bay. The event occurred on February 7, 1850 and a captured cannon is located on the site.

Reportedly, the island was originally called “Taylor’s Folly” in 1662 when the Taylors took ownership of 400 acres of land on the island. A short (but, perhaps dated) history of the island is found on the Taylors Island Facebook page.

“Taylor’s Island is about six miles long, lying parallel with Chesapeake Bay, on the western border of the county, and separated from the mainland by Slaughter Creek, and from Hooper’s Island by Punch Island Creek.

Colonists from St. Mary’s and Calvert Counties settled on this island ten years before the County of Dorchester was laid out. Thomas Taylor, after whom the island was named, Raymond Staplefort, Francis Armstrong and John Taylor, were among the early settlers, who cleared the land of timber and made fine farms there.

The cultivation of tobacco and corn was the principal employment and the chief products raised for support of the people during the first century of the colony. From the year 1700, timber and lumber trade increased for the next 150 years to the extent of a profitable industry. Soon thereafter catching oysters for sale in city markets rapidly became a paying business and is still a trade of much activity. The revenue derived from oysters has added valuable and attractive improvements to this section of the county.

On the island are three fine churches, large stores, canneries, and fine dwellings, the homes of well-to-do and cultured people.”

Traveling around the island brings beautiful panoramic views of a charming, wooded and quiet place.

There are beautiful churches on the island. Below is the Chapel of Ease Old Trinity Episcopal Church which dates to around 1707.

While there are clearly roads less traveled…

….you can round a point and come upon views of the Bay complete with snow geese!

Finally, either on the way to Taylors Island our on the way out, don’t miss a stop at the Woolford Country Store for a breakfast or lunch. 

Like so many of the miles of Scenic Byway, a trip to Taylors Island connects us all with a bit of the past as these small communities build their future.

Lions Club President Dave Dunham and Rotary Club President John Murray.

Approximately seventy Chestertown Lions and Rotary Clubs’ members, wives, and significant others met for the second consecutive year at the Chester River Yacht & Country Club the day before Valentine’s Day. This is the second time now the two largest service clubs in Kent County have met jointly to share stories of service to the community.

The meeting started with a social hour with background music provided by a string trio from Washington College. After dinner, the trio provided the group with a series of romantic melodies.

Lions Club President Dave Dunham shared the highpoints of the services the Lions Club provides to Kent County followed by a short video highlighting all the Club’s activities over the past year. Rotary President John Murray presented his Club’s highlights followed by a video displaying their Memorial Day Celebration for Kent County veterans.

This annual dinner meeting was an opportunity for Lions members whose motto is “We Serve” and Rotary members whose similar motto is “Service above Self” to exchange their ideas in the bonds of friendship, good fellowship and mutual understanding.

The evening ended with recitations of the Rotary Four-Way Test and the Lions Club Toast and a pledge to meet again next year.

Spring arrives in the Northern Hemisphere on March 20th at 5:58 pm EDT, as we will have shifted to Daylight Savings Time on March 10th, at 2:00 am. Astronomically, spring arrives with the Vernal (Spring) Equinox. This is when the Sun moving along it’s “apparent” path in the sky, known as the Ecliptic, crosses the Celestial Equator. Of course, this perceived motion of the Sun is really caused by the Earth orbiting the Sun. We cannot “feel” this motion, but we can see the result of it by watching the Sun appear to move annually.

The Ecliptic gets its name because only when the Moon, orbiting Earth, lines up right on the orbital plane of the Earth and Sun, can eclipses occur. We can track the path of the Ecliptic in the sky because it is marked by the 12 Zodiac constellations.

From now until June 21st the Sun will appear to be higher in the sky each day at noon and the weather in the northern hemisphere will warm gradually. Summer arrives in June with the Sun at its highest point in the southern sky for the year. So we can start looking forward to warm weather.

Meanwhile, the spring equinox is ushered in with a Full Moon occurring just 4 hours (9:43 pm) on March 20th EDT.

March continues the early morning planet show that start to impress us in February. Looking southeast, Jupiter rises by 2:30 am on March 1st and by 1:30 pm on the 31st. The waning gibbous Moon will appear just a few degrees away from Jupiter on the morning of March 27th, and will be Jupiter’s only real competition for brightness, as the giant planet brightens from –2.0 to –2.2 during the month. When twilight begins to show in the eastern sky, Jupiter will be 25 degrees above the horizon and will give telescope viewers a clear shot.

Saturn rises around 5:30 am EDT among the stars of Sagittarius and is brighter than all of its stars. On March 29th the waning crescent Moon will be seen just to the lower left of the ringed planet. Venus rises right around the same time as Saturn but easily outshines it and Jupiter. At magnitude –4.1, Venus will fade only to –3.9 by the end of the month. On the morning of March 13th look for all three planets in the southeastern sky, Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus about evenly spaced between themselves, about 45 minutes before sunrise. (Venus lowest and brightest; Saturn above and right; and Jupiter above and right of Saturn.

We can still catch a glimpse of Mercury in the first week of March (March 1 to 6) looking to the western horizon some 8 degrees up and 45 minutes after sunset. Binoculars will help pick it out in the twilight. Mars orbital motion now, relative to ours, keeps it moving eastward against the starry background, but from our vantage point on Earth, it will remain mostly as a fixed sight in our evening skies (in the southwest), not setting until around 11:30. Bright enough to be easily seen with the unaided eye, and even better in binoculars, Mars does not reveal surface details even through telescopes now. It is just too far away.

However, on the night of March 23rd a binocular view of Mars will show it in the same field of view with the Pleiades star cluster (M 45). Mars will remain in that vicinity of the sky until about April 4th. It is worth taking a look!

Looking due south on clear winter nights in February, sky-watchers can find 6 bright constellations and see 8 of the top 20 brightest stars, as seen from Earth. These include the brightest of all, SIRIUS, the “dog” star, in the constellation Canis Major. Also by 9:00 pm local time in mid-February, the first sign of approaching spring is heralded by the appearance of Leo the lion, rising above the eastern horizon.

Start half-way up to the zenith (top of the sky), looking south for the “hour glass” shape of Orion the hunter. Three equally bright stars in a neat line in the center of Orion mark the “belt” around the waist of this mighty hunter. Red giant star BETELGEUSE (upper left corner), and the blue giant star RIGEL (lower right corner), are two of the eight 1st magnitude stars of winter. Orion also boasts 5 bright 2nd magnitude stars, which include the three belt stars.

Moving one’s eyes through the belt stars, down and left, points us to SIRIUS, twinkling near the southern horizon. Using the belt stars of Orion again to point up and to the right brings us to red-orange ALDEBARAN, brightest star in Taurus the bull. The bull’s head is made of stars forming a distinct V-shape in this Zodiac constellation.

Above Sirius, and slightly to its left is Canis Minor, a constellation of only 3 stars, that represents the smaller or Orion’s two hunting dogs. Brightest of the 3 stars is PROCYON. Just above this is the Zodiac constellation GEMINI, the twins. The two stick men formed by Gemini’s stars are headed by two more of winter’s brightest stars, POLLUX and CASTOR.

Above Gemini and nearly at the zenith is Auriga, the goat herder constellation, which has a pentagon shape. The brightest star in Auriga is CAPELLA, a yellow star like our Sun, but much larger.

Leo the lion is also a part of the Zodiac and one of the brightest of the spring constellations, but in February Leo introduces itself as a sure sign that spring is coming by rising above the eastern horizon then. Leo reaches its peak in April and May. The bottom star at the front of Leo is yet another 1st magnitude star to be seen in February it is called REGULUS.

Mars, among the planets, remains easy to see in the evening southern sky, but it fades in magnitude from +0.9 to +1.2 through February. Is continues to move further away from us in its orbit. even telescopes will not bring in much surface detail now because of this distance.

Mercury will give us its best views of 2019 from February 15th to February 26th. On the 15th Mercury, at magnitude –1.1, may be seen left of where the Sun set 30 minutes afterwards. But it will only be 5 degrees above the western horizon then. However, Mercury rises higher each day until by the 26th it will be 18 degrees left of the Sun, which will translate to 11 degrees of altitude, 30 to 45 minutes after sunset.

The pre-dawn eastern sky features 3 planets this month. The first up (around 4:00 am) will be Jupiter (-2.0 magnitude). On the morning of the 27th, the waning crescent Moon will be just 2 degrees above Jupiter. Venus comes up some 30 minutes after Jupiter in the East, and be even brighter at –4.2. Venus will appear in almost the same spot in the sky as Saturn on the morning of the 18th. Venus then will be only one degree above the ringed planet Saturn, which will be at magnitude +0.6. Find a good clear view to the eastern pre-dawn horizon all month to watch all 3 of these planets in the one to two hours before sunup.

Full Moon for February is on February 19th.

Steve and Holly Isaacson from the Friends of Mt. Harmon (left) are receiving the Kent County Cup from last year’s winner, Chestertown horseman and this region’s fox hunting master Ed Fry

Attracting large numbers of horseback riders to historic Mount Harmon Museum Farm on the Sassafras River has drawn national attention to this rural tourism destination site and earned its owners the Kent County Cup from the Chestertown Horsemen’s Club.

Steve and Holly Isaacson from the Friends of Mount Harmon have been recognized for adding horse activities to the estate’s many tourist options. “At a time when museum farms face dramatically declining visits by younger Americans, the Isaacson’s have provided U.S. historic preservationists with a new “best practice” option, says Dave Turner, founder of Chestertown Horsemen’s Club in Kent County, Maryland. “Horseback riding definitely enlivens such sites. “It’s tragic when museum proprietors fail to promote horseback riding at their sites,” says Turner, “or, worse when they ban horses from properties where horses were a key feature for hundreds of years.”

In particular, the 269-year old estate hosts a wintertime “paperchase” event. More than 150 equestrians ride trails and jump obstacles along a path laid out by Mount Harmon organizers. In addition, Friends of Mt. Harmon offers special Equestrian Memberships to the public, which allow people to ride at the estate between May and October. “Such rides add to the spectacle for regular tourists,” says the group’s President Steve Isaacson. The Friends host regional and national military re-enactments that feature dragoons (Calvary units). “This year’s Paperchase raised $4,500 for the group,” says Isaacson, who is also a local farmer. “The Paperchase is my wife Holly’s brainchild.”

Friends of Mount Harmon, Inc., is 21 years old and is credited with restoring and maintaining the colonial Georgian home, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. The group has approximately 900 members, a number of whom participate in the unique Equestrian Membership option. The group depends on fundraising to keep the site available to the public. Like a growing number of other museum farm, Mt. Harmon provides river kayaking, nature trails for birders, and opportunities to help with locating Native American camps, slave cemetery sites, and slave dwelling footprints. Currently, Mt. Harmon has located one such locale and is in process of rebuilding the slave house. The effort is to show visitors a hands-on replication of an 18th century tobacco farm in the mid-Atlantic region. The Tockwogh Tribe inhabited the area when Captain John Smith visited in 1609.

Future equestrian projects for Chestertown Horsemen include assisting with the development of a full-scale equestrian park in the vicinity, a Heritage Horse Day Celebration in cooperation with the Historical Society of Kent County, and the establishment of a riding trail alongside Kent County’s railroad tracks. A course on Chestertown’s recreational horse activities was offered in this season’s WC-All curriculum. The group’s Kent County Cup is maintained in the council chambers at Chestertown Town Hall. Previous winners were Mr. Harry Sears and Master of the Foxhounds Ed Fry.

For information about joining Chestertown Horsemen contact Turner at dathistory@gmail.com.