... on Maryland's Eastern Shore. One building at a time.
HISTORY OF THE STILL POND MARKET – COVINGTON STORE
October 2, 2008 / Kent County News / Used by permission
STILL POND – This village was once a hub of commerce. By the late 1860s and 1870s, Kent County’s peach industry was starting to roll.
For example, a June 1869 newspaper ad offered nearby Bloomfield Farm for sale, 212 acres with 6,000 peach trees and 1,000 apple trees.
By 1877, both George Washington Covington and George W. Harper had stores at the crossroads that prospered over the next 50 years.
They’re both there today. Harper’s (or Medders’) became a boatbuilding shop and gallery. Restored by the late Frank Huggins, it’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
What's the store's situation right now? See www.stillpondmd.com.
Now the store could come back, maybe not as a country store and deli, but as a vibrant focal point in the village.
About a year after this brief history appeared, the store had a minor backroom fire which caused smoke damage on the first floor. The new owners called it quits and said they'd be just as happy to tear it down.
The US Postal Service moved the tiny post office -- a fixture for more than 150 years in one of the buildings or another at the crossroads -- out and "discontinued"
it. On June 30 the village learned (no one was surprised, and the large turnout of local residents at several USPS meetings made zero difference) that USPS plans to balance its $4-billion deficit in part by closing a one-woman post office. Apparently they calculate the savings at $30,000 per year. Whether they've factored in additional travel by the rural mail carrier -- something USPS lackeys call "a rolling post office" -- burning more fuel to reach roadside mailboxes is unknown. The USPS was completely unresponsive to FOIA requests during its "investigation."
There's even the rare but not unheard-of death. People do get hit by cars when they're out on the side of the road getting mail or crossing the street to their box.
The 2009 article continues:
Covington’s original mercantile venture is still in business as the Still Pond Market, in a building at least 130 years old. Covington started his village business about 20 years earlier than that.
Larry and Gerry Penn bought it in 1990, and named it Still Pond Market.
The Penns’ place still has the look of the perfect Eastern Shore crossroads store, with an awning out front and a closet-sized space rented out for the Still Pond Post Office.
The gravel parking lot next door is shaded by an enormous ginkgo tree. “Tom Speakman told me it’s well over 100 years old,” Larry Penn said.
“Don’t forget to mention our famous ginkgo. It’s a male … I’m not sure what that means.”
(It means Still Pond might otherwise smell pretty bad sometimes. Ginkgo trees come in male and female, and the female’s seeds, which look like fruit, have a distinctive aroma that, in polite company, could be called “stinky.” As a species, they’ve been around for about 70 million years and are relatively primitive trees.)
Sooner or later everyone in the village comes over to the veranda, where locals sit, teens sometimes sell corn and tomatoes, and George Bowie’s chicken wanders by. People chat with other people leaning from the windows of their pickup trucks.
You can get gasoline and kerosene – cash only, and the price won’t give Valero anxiety attacks – but when it’s five gallons for the mower, it’s nice to support a truly local crossroads business.
When the market was constructed is not clear, but Covington bought the property in 1862. A mortgage for $3,000 recorded in 1877 on the land, “Store House, dwelling, stock in trade …” might have been the loan he needed to put up the building that’s there now. It’s much the same as it must have been when new, but covered with white aluminum siding.
Update: July 7, 2011
A brand new nonprofit called Still Pond Preservation Inc. has stepped up and has a signed contract on the building. The five officers, one ex-officio board member and the attorney are all village residents. So's our real estate agent.
We are the first community-based preservation group in unincorporated Kent County, Maryland, and while everyone has some useful expertise, we're not people who've raised significant funds in a short time before.
We plan to start by buying and stabilizing the building; making the outside presentable; cleaning the inside. At that point, we will apply for rehabilitation grants and simultaneously look for an owner who can bring a new business of some sort into the village -- it doesn't have to be a country store.
Can you visit www.stillpondmd.com and make a donation through PayPal?
We plan on tracking the number of donors and the percentage toward the goal for everyone to see.
As it stands, the existing board and several helpful local residents have put together 10% of the contract price.
More History:
In 1917, Covington died, leaving the store to his two daughters. They sold the property to Carl Norris, and Norris’ widow sold it to Elmer Kennard Jones in 1934. Hope Jones, his widow, sold the store in 1969 to Elmer and Grace Price and Louis and Nancy Grahamer. It became the P&G Market.
After 18 years, Penn said that they expect to turn the business over to new owners in mid-October. And so the business that Covington started as a “druggist” will soon turn a new page after 150 years.
Penn said they moved to property on Lloyds Creek from Royal Oak to build a house. “We had an old store in Trappe. We were coming in here for six or eight months.
“There was a ‘for sale’ sign in the window, and we decided to buy it.”
He said they expanded the existing country store grocery with gas pumps by adding sandwiches. “We put the deli in.”
Inside, there are chairs to sit in a swap tales and a relaxed atmosphere.
“Saturday’s the busiest,” he said, “We have a lot of regulars who come in, but we’re busy seven days a week.” And on the Friday morning when we talked, every few minutes another local resident or two came in. The talk ran to the black bear that was on the front of the Star Democrat that day, and fishing.
He said hunting season typically brings a boost in the day-to-day business. There’s food, soda, beer, cigarettes, canned goods, ice cream, milk, candy, wine, soap, cat food, motor oil … it’s a general store. It may be the last place in the county that sells pipe cleaners. If you need ’em, Larry has them.
The walls are covered with store-related artifacts, local maps, post cards and pictures that Penn said will stay.
There’s a framed century-old “Wm. Medders & Co.” full-page ad announcing a “War On Prices!”
The finest artifact, of many, is above the register. “Buy Lucas’ Pure Liquid Paints. For Sale By G.W. Covington, Still Pond Md.”
Some of the things, like turkey trophies maybe, they’ll clear out, he said, “but the store-related stuff will stay.”
At the back of the store there’s “a real old cooler” from the store’s days as a meat market. A window, now covered, let the customers look into the walk-in icebox.
And it was an ice box. A door about six feet from the floor is located so the iceman could slide large blocks of ice into a loftlike area to chill the meat. Now it’s used for dry storage.
Various cleavers came with the store, along with “lots of old medicine bottles,” since the store was also a pharmacy for a long time.
Under the store, among other things, he found a roll of grocery flyers from June 1943: “National Brand Stores. E.K. Jones. Still Pond.” An 11-oz. Package of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes was 10 cents. Twelve pounds of Pillsbury flour set you back 72 cents.
The upstairs, Penn said, isn’t used. “There’s no electric, no plumbing … no heat,” he said. “There are lines for gas lanterns.” It probably hasn't been lived in since the 1960s.
But it’s a five-room, two-fireplace apartment waiting for a makeover. It may well have been where George Washington Covington lived during his years in the village.
Covington Connections
The records show two prominent, Eastern Shore George Washington Covingtons. They were born within four years, and died within six years, of each other.
Who would have thought it?
The better-known G.W. stakes his claim on being elected twice to Congress from Maryland’s 1st District.
Born in September 1838 in Berlin in Worcester County, he was schooled at Buckingham Academy and Harvard University law school, and began practicing in Worcester County in 1861. He was a delegate to Maryland’s 1867 constitutional convention. In the 1880 census, he was living in Snow Hill with his wife Sallie B. Soon after he was in Congress, from March 4, 1881 to March 3, 1885. A Democrat, he went back to life as a country lawyer in Snow Hill, and died in New York City April 6, 1911.
The other is “Kent’s” George Washington Covington.
Born in Middletown, Del., in 1834, he became a Kent County storekeeper by way of Baltimore, and lived in Still Pond most of his long life.
According to his obituary in The Enterprise, Feb. 7, 1917, “Geo. W. Covington, a prominent druggist of Still Pond, died on Wednesday (Jan. 31) afternoon age 83 years. He was born at Middletown, Del., in 1834 and was the son of Nathaniel and Maria Covington. He came to Still Pond in 1851 and entered the store of Daniel Haines. A few years later he opened one of the best drug stores in the county. About 1861 he married Miss Helen Busick. Mr. Covington leaves three children, Miss Helen of this county; Mrs. W.L. Barnard of New York; Careton [sic] Covington, of Phila.; two children Mrs. J. Cougill Alston and Lester Covington are deceased.
“Funeral services were held Saturday at 11 a.m., interment in Still Pond Cemetery. He was a member of the M.E. Church. Bearers were Judge J. Harry Covington, Dr. W.E. Barnard, J. Congill [sic] Alston, Harry Busick, Howard Turner, H.C. Cacy.”
How Covington, merchant and druggist, got here is still murky. Covington is a Quaker name, and Still Pond in its early years was heavily associated with Quaker families like the Lambs and Turners.
The 1830 census shows a Nathaniel Covington, head of family in St. Georges Hundred, Del. He apparently moved here by 1840, since a Nathaniel Covington pops up in the census that year.
By 1850, George W. Covington, 16, and James H. Covington, 14, were living in Baltimore’s 15th Ward.
The head of household was Daniel Haines, 34, and his wife Sarah Haines, 35, both born in Delaware. Their daughter Hilda was 3.
It was a large household. Esther Haines, 21; Jane Lee, 40, black and probably a servant; and Boris (?) Lecompte, 1 year old, all born in Maryland, lived there.
So did Maryland-born Henry J. Strandberg, 34, “sea captain,” and a woman who may have been a wife or sister, Susannah Strandberg, 38, born in Delaware.
Strandberg had Chestertown ties.
His father, Carl Strandberg was a prominent Chestertown resident, a baker and businessman, who in 1828 had his name changed from Charles Stanley. At the same time, Charles Stanley Jr. became Charles Strandberg. Henry, Maria Charlotte and Eliza Stanley all became Strandbergs.
In that 1850 census, in Chestertown, elderly Carl Strandberg was living with Maria (28), Daniel (9) and Ann (5) Haines. So far the connection remains mysterious.
By 1860, the census shows George and Helen Covington in Still Pond. He is a Merchant worth $2,500, with no real estate. (The 1880 census gives 1859 as the year they married).
Living there was 18-year-old clerk Daniel Haines, the same Daniel who had been in the Strandberg Chestertown household in 1850.
Where the establishment he started in the 1850s might have been is not clear, since the 1860 Martenet’s map has little detail at Still Pond X Roads.
However, it shows N.T. Hynson living in what is now McDanold’s farmhouse just west of the village. It was a one-acre slice of Hynson’s land at the “cross roads” that Covington bought in March, 1862. The cost for “land and premises” was $400. From the deed it appears there was some kind of structure already.
Typical of the time, the property description reads, “Beginning at a stone set opposite the back door of the black Smith’s Shop …” There were easements on two sides for public roads.
The same deed description has carried down the years in each sale, but the Smith’s Shop and stone are long gone.
Looking into Covington’s mark on history raises another question. One of the witnesses to his 1912 will was “Hilda Hesse.” Could this be the same little Hilda who was 3 years old, living in the same house in Baltimore in 1850?
In the next installment we'll look at the Covingtons' family connections.