A Small Town On Maryland's Eastern Shore

The town of Perryville in Cecil County, Maryland is on the Susquehanna River about 35 miles northeast of Baltimore. Alan Fox, a long time resident of Perryville, amateur historian, and a town commissioner selected the photographs and wrote the text of this short history of Perryville (2011) for the "Images of America" series of Arcadia Publishers. The series includes many photographic volumes preserving local American history. It offers an excellent opportunity to explore details of America and its geography and people.

The book offers a rare portrait of an American town and of the factors which make it unique. The focus of the book is on Perryville as a transportation hub on water and on rail. Readers who are fascinated by bridges will enjoy this book as it includes rare photographs of the many bridges built from Perryville across the Susquehanna River beginning with a bridge constructed by the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad in 1866. Many subsequent bridges followed over the years. The book also shows the extensive use residents of Perryville made of the river through fishing, logging, and waterfowl hunting through the early years of the 20th Century.

Perryville also served as a railroad hub, and readers with a fascination for trains will enjoy these rare photographs. The railroad bridges receive the most attention, but Fox also presents many photos of engines, roundhouses, coaling stations, freight yards, passenger terminals and other accoutrements of the age of steam. The photos are clear, unusual, and well annotated.

Subsequent sections of the book show the development of commerce and trade in the town during its busiest years before the building of a large new highway bypassed Perryville and brought about a commercial decline. Perryville was home to foundries and iron works as well as to the general stores, barber shops, drug stores, and small restaurants characteristic of a small American town. Fox also shows the community aspects of Perryville by his photographs of churches, schools, and social activities such as baseball and bands which have been part of the life of the town for many years.

With its character as a transportation hub, the military has had an important presence in Perryville. As Fox shows,during WW I, the army operated a large munitions plant at Perry Point on the outskirts of the town and built a development including over 300 homes for the workers. After WW I, the plant became a Public Health Department Facility and subsequently became a Veterans Administration Hospital which continues to function and to play a large role in the town's economy.

This little book will be of most interest to people with a connection to Perryville, which is where the book is primarily marketed. Fortunately, the book has broader distribution through Amazon, for example, and in my local public library where I found it. The book taught me about a fascinating small part of American life and history that I hadn't known before.