Page 32 - December 2023 Issue.indd

O Little Town of Chambers said his daughter helped believed named by one of the fi rst Meth-
spread the name of the little village odist circuit riders on the Delmarva
Bethlehem when she did a short story about the Peninsula, Francis Asbury. The first
cachet as a teenager, and the Associated Methodist bishop of Maryland, Asbury
(this story originally appeared in the Press picked it up and reprinted it on came through the area about 1800 and
December 1983 Caroline Review) the wire service. visited homes.

For a few days of each December the After that, the post offi ce began getting He does not have documented evidence,

little town of Bethlehem in southern mail from all over the country at Christ- but believes Asbury probably stayed
Caroline County becomes a stamp mas time to be stamped and mailed with a family here over Christmas in
collector’s haven. out with the Bethlehem postmark and the late 1700’s and decided Bethlehem
cachet. would be a nice name for a quiet little
The postmaster with the Biblical name country village.

of Aaron Carroll says he will hand- The first cachet stamp showed three
stamp several thousand Christmas wise men on camels with a star over- There are only 55 general delivery
cards prior to the holiday for people head. Today, Carroll still uses that boxes in the little wooden cubbyhole
who send in cards just to have the stamp, along with one scene of the stable at one side of the general store, recently
special hand-stamp shown on the enve- manger and another of the Madonna’s purchased by Wayne Chance from Judy
lope. head cradling the Christ child. and James Whitby. It is now known as
Bethlehem General Store.
But he admitted early this month that Chambers, the unoffi cial historian of
the flood that reached as many as Caroline County, said the town was (continued on page 63)
40,000 in years past has slowed some-
what, “probably because of the cost of
the postage,” he said.

His biggest customer remains the Tide-
water Inn at Easton that will bring over
500 or 600 cards to be mailed out from
the tiny post office, a cubicle in the
Bethlehem General Store at the cross-
roads of MD 331 and 578.

Carroll is not the first in his family to

keep up the time-honored tradition for
the Yule season.
His late mother, with the Christmassy
name of Mary Carroll, handled the
postal chores from 1946 to 1961. She
died in 1969.
In between the two Carrolls, the
community’s postmaster was Leonard
Legates, who did the stamping from
1961 to 1971. He died in 1972.
Carroll started work in the post offi ce
as a helper for Legates in 1963, and was
named postmaster in 1971.
The practice of hand-stamping an
original Christmas scene cachet on the
envelope began in 1939 when Marjorie
Ann Chambers Lake, daughter of long-
time weekly newspaper publisher Max
Chambers, in nearby Preston, designed
the scene on a rubber stamp about two
inches square.

32