| Warwick - A Municipality No More |
| By Michael L. Dixon |
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| Maryland's legislature incorporated the "the town of Warwick" in southeastern Cecil County in 1867. To govern the municipality, state law-makers said Warwick should annually elect three commissioners on the first Monday in May (Laws of Maryland, 1867). |
| The act from which the town was born granted full municipal powers to the corporation. Its town-fathers could employ two officers, a clerk to keep the records and a "discreet person" to be bailiff, constable and collector. Town commissioners could ratify ordinances, and they could impose fines — fines could not exceed ten dollars per offense. Also, the corporation could establish streets and alleys, and levy and collect property taxes. Taxes could not, however, exceed 30¢ per $100 in valuation. Cecil's County Commissioners, could, if they wanted to, "pay over to the town fifty dollars," to aid in taking care of streets as part of the county's public roads. |
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| Counting the Residents |
| A federal census enumerator, Dr. R. H. Tuft of Elkton, visited Cecil's newest town to take a headcount, three years after incorporation (Cecil Whig, 1870, May 7). For the 1870 census, the country's ninth, he found 320 townspeople. County-wide returns for the decennial tally showed that Warwick was not Cecil's smallest municipality. In fact, the little burg was larger than the oldest municipal corporation, Charlestown (233 residents), and one of its newest, Rising Sun (277 residents). Perryville, the county's second largest town today, was yet to be incorporated (it was incorporated in 1882). |
| The "census man" must not have recognized Warwick as a Maryland municipality when he reappeared to take the enumeration in 1880 for the townspeople were never again tabulated separately. One would find their number aggregated in the total of the county's first election district from then on (Bureau of the Census 1850 - 1930 and the Maryland Manual, 1987). |
| Warwick in 1877 |
| Lewis Publishers, publishers of the Maryland Directory, had one of its men, J. W. Spicknall, canvas Warwick in 1877 to compile facts for its upcoming directory. Exceptionally good land (which could be purchased at from $50 to $100 per acre), healthy village, and business fair, he recounted in the 1878 edition. Corn, wheat and "peaches unsurpassed in quality or quantity" were the agricultural yields; very little tobacco was raised. |
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| Warwick school children about 1908 |
| The little corporation had its respectable allotment of businesses in 1877. Goods and wares for the household and farm were offered by three general merchandisers and three butchers. Skilled craftsmen consisted of a carpenter, a carriagemaker, two millers, a machinist and a pumpmaker. Representing the professions were two physicians, a druggist, and an undertaker. Eary travelers could lodge at the "Gillispie House" a hotel operated by Samuel Gillispie (Maryland Directory, 1878). |
A Municipality No More |
There appears to have been little advocacy for or against the corporation — county newspaper scribes too failed to notice this little civil division. Evidence that a tax was ever collected, an ordinance passed, a street improved, or a fine imposed was not located in an examination of the Cecil Whig and Cecil Democrat. |
| Warwick's brief experiment with self-government died quietly; even Elkton's normally clamorous newspaper editors even failed to notice its passing. nly twenty-five years old, and apparently without ever holding an election, the townspeople melted back into the informal composite of the first election district's large and small farms, one incorporated town (Cecilton) and small crossroads villages. |
| With an act of the legislature and a stroke of Governor Frank Brown's pen, Warwick was signed back into the unincorporated on February 25, 1892 (Laws of Maryland, 1892). Few noticed! |
