Fall 2008 - Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

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18 Photo by David Harp Mary Parks Harding Dorchester County My father was Bronza Parks. He is most famous for his skipjacks, commercial fishing boats, and fast motorboats. Counting the little ones and all, he built over 400 boats in his lifetime. The ones that are most famous, I suppose, are the skipjacks. The first one he built was the Wilma Lee, and then the Rosie Parks, Martha Lewis, and Lady Katie. The Martha Lewis was named after my mother’s mother. The Rosie Parks was named after my father’s mother. And the Lady Katie was my mother. And those boats happened to be named after my grandmothers because the boats were built for my father’s brother and also his brother-in-law. “My father first started building boats probably around 1932 or ‘33. They were built in the side yard of our home right along the county road, right at Wingate. My father had a fairly large piece of property attached to our yard and he built a long shed-like boathouse. It was 50 feet long. Then he wanted to be able to build two boats at one time, so he added another 50 feet, and then another 50 behind that. By then he had some mechanical tools. He had a big band saw, but when he started everything was done by hand. He added the last two 50 foot sections so he could now build five boats inside. Others were built outside, but he still had a lot of space. If the weather was bad he could go inside and work on other boats. And do you know my father never ever had a blueprint. He never ever sketched out blueprints. I think he probably just figured it out. He never ever worked with anybody else. He was kind of an artist in his own right. He’d work all day long, and they had to work very hard on the heavy lumber. At night he’d go down to the boathouse and feel the sides of the boats to make sure they were nice and smooth. veloping its first Chesapeake Folk Festival, Buckley seemed like a natural connection. Buckley was on hand on July 26 to talk to visitors about the work he is doing and his new book, but his involvement, and that of WRNR, went further. Buckley and the station set up audio equipment and recorded the presentations on the “Shore Stories” stage, where local tradition bearers of the Bay met and discussed family fishing, crabs, eating local, life and song on Smith Island, the African American town of Bellevue, pound netting, and remembered log canoe sailor Jimmy Wilson. Buckley and WRNR then donated the audio recordings of these unique discussions to CBMM. “Michael Buckley’s and WRNR’s generosity in recording the ‘Shore Stories’ at the Chesapeake Folk Festival was invaluable,” says Melissa McLoud, director of CBMM’s Breene M. Kerr Center for Chesapeake Studies. “Recording these one-time conversations provides much greater access to the living traditions of the Chesapeake Bay.” The Museum is not the only educational institution to align itself with the Voices Project. Buckley has become the program manager of Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience. He is working with students to document the vanishing voices of the Bay, teaching the techniques of conducting oral histories, and nurturing the curiosity that will lead them to look for stories in unusual places. “Through my work at Washington College, I’m striving to develop this same gift of inquiry and enchantment in my students,” says Buckley. “The Voices Project equips students with the skills and confidence they will need to greet and engage fascinating people who are so often sequestered behind their work.” With an award-winning radio show, a new book, and a job working with students and scholars at one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, Michael Buckley is building a reputation as the oral historian of the Chesapeake Bay. Michael Buckley’s new book, Voices of the Chesapeake Bay, is available for sale at CBMM’s Museum Store. Oral histories are excerpted with permission.
Attic Treasures Tell History of Maple Hall, Claiborne By Dick Cooper The box on Penny Rhine’s table holds answers and secrets, memories and mysteries. Like the ones stored in the attic and garage of Maple Hall Inn, the historic bed and breakfast she owns with her husband Rick, the box contains ledgers, letters, photos and documents that track 150 years of the Tunis, Cockey and Cook families of Claiborne, Md. As she pulls out a pack of old picture postcards, Penny almost sheepishly admits that she hasn’t had time to sort all of the treasures. “Every time you get started, you wind up spending too much time just examining each piece,” she says. She points to the elaborately decorated diploma that would rival a sheepskin from an Ivy League institution. It notes that in May 1913, John Cockey completed “Prof. Beery’s Mail Course in Horsemanship.” It is signed by Jesse Beery, presi- Penny Rhine and CBMM curator Pete Lesher explore some of the historic treasures in Maple Hall. dent of Miami County, Ohio, and reads that Cockey “is hereby entitled to the respect and confidence of the public … with complete knowledge of training colts and breaking horses of bad or vicious habits.” “How do you study horsemanship in a mail-order course?” she wonders aloud. Everything in Maple Hall has a back-story. Take Theophilus Tunis’ sword, for instance. Penny opens the glass door of the large display case in the breakfast room of the B & B and takes out the weapon that Theophilus wore on his side as a Confederate officer in the Civil War. He was only 18 when the War Between the States broke out and he joined the Southern Cause. “He was one of the youngest Confederate officers,” Penny says. “See these dents in the scabbard? The story goes that during his first combat, he was so scared that he forgot to draw the sword, and these dents are from bashing a Yankee on the head.” For generations, it seems, when a family member passed away, his or her personal records and private possessions were put in boxes and chests and stashed away.
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Page 5 and 6: (Above) Families try their hand at
Page 7 and 8: Folk Festival Starts a New Traditio
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Page 17: the U.S. Geological Survey Patuxent
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Fall 2008 - Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

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