Page 34 - December 2023 Issue.indd

Shining a Spotlight lacked railroad access. So dwellers liter-
ally picked up structures they had built
on the Bridgetown there and plopped them a few miles west

Area at what was evolving into Victorian-era
Ridgely. Score one for the maroon team.
by Chad Dean The history of Bridgetown actually well-

predates Ridgely but is not so, ahem,
glamorous. If we ignore county lines
I have heard some whoppers in my day,
for a moment, or acknowledge that the
but in my five-plus years of setting the

top third of Caroline used to be part of
local historical record straight via a one-
Queen Anne's County (a fact that seems
man research mission, this takes the

to be left out of every formal or public
cake: I was informed that the reason
commemoration of Colonel William
the main street of Ridgely is so wide is
Richardson as our legislative founder),
because it was built to accommodate the
then we can gloss over the fact that the
shipbuilding industry of the town. I fell
oldest building in Bridgetown is actually
off my dinosaur when I heard this, got

on the Ruthsburg side of the ditch. On
up, re-saddled my trusty stegosaurus
that portion of Maryland Route 304 sits
steed, and fell off again when others then

the Bridgetown Church. It dates back to
shared they "learned" this "fact" while
at least 1773, with a congregation possi-
attending the local public schools. I
bly meeting in the vicinity as early as
guess someone with an overactive imag-
1640. Even though it is in QAC, it is still
ination concocted this tale daydreaming
part of the Ridgely Charge, along with
while gazing out the classroom window

Thawley's Chapel near Tuckahoe Neck.
at the banks of the mighty Ridgely River.
So why the name Bridgetown? Verily
Come on, people. There were no sailing verily, I say unto thee, there were bridges.

ships in Ridgely. There is no river. Heck, Nine over the creeks and streams that
most local farmers surrounded by wilted flow into the Tuckahoe River to be exact.

corn and soybeans will readily confi rm Up until 1841, the settlement was known
that most of the time it doesn't even as Nine Bridges as a result -- which is I have no clue how that originated, or if
rain in that zip code. Anyone who can when the one sturdy one you are likely it was borrowed from something else,
eat their weight in strawberries around familiar with was placed on the border but I remember hearing that all the time
here should know that Ridgely was a as you cross into Queen Anne's County, growing up and especially at the village
planned community but investors ran perhaps to attend a Christian service store that was still operational well into
out of money well before their dreams of in an historical setting. The afore- the 1980s.
an epicurean Eastern Shore utopia could mentioned church was at one point I do, however, know how Baltimore
be realized; Central Avenue through the accompanied in the area by a tobacco Corner got its name. Don't know where
middle of town is a broad and lasting warehouse, a cannery, a post offi ce, and that is? It's right down Maryland Route
tribute to the long-faded optimism of other commercial enterprises plus a 312 from Bridgetown, as a matter of
the 1860s. fact, and it too requires some fallacious
neighborhood school building. So why
Why am I bringing up Ridgely? Th is is didn't Nine Bridges aka Bridgetown take Ridgely folklore to transition into a more

supposed to be a column about the far off? For precisely the same reason why fact-laden paragraph. About fi ve years
northwestern hinterlands of Caroline Ridgely made it as a town: witchcraft . ago, several people in a county history
County. There is an eventual connection Check that. Actually, in this case, it was group emphatically argued, despite

I guarantee, and it is not just that some not a Faustian pact with the devil in the having no skin in the game whatsoever,
students in the Bridgetown-Baltimore style of Damn Yankees but an antici- that the original name for Ridgely was
Corner megalopolis attend elementary pated railroad never came through -- so intended to be some derivation of Balti-
school in the ironically-nicknamed no boost in population or commerce more. Not so; more 1950s schoolhouse
Dream City. The segue I need to get as was seen by Ridgely in its glory days marm fiction I presume. Ridgely was

this article finished revolves around well over a century ago. They did have from the start named for local land-

railroads, actually. There are train tracks a community baseball team, though.... owner Reverend Greenbury Ridgely,
in Ridgely and have been since its incor- and a rhyme. It is said that the people a former law partner of antebellum
poration; there used to be a village on of Bridgetown: Congressional icon Henry Clay -- the
the way to Greensboro where an inter- Chew tobacco thin town was never meant to be known as
section with Maryland Route 480 is Spit it on their chin Baltimore or named after Lord Balti-
today. It was called Boonsboro, but it And lick it up again. more in any way, shape, or form. At
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