Subscribe
Community
What's in a name? Sometimes a road and a story
Particularly in 7th District, Chaptico, prominent former residents remembered
Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by JASON BABCOCK
Oscar Hayden Road in Bushwood was named for a farmer there.
|
E-Mail This Article
To avoid possible confusion for emergency volunteers, roads in St. Mary's County are not supposed to share the same name. Some local roads are obviously named after someone, but do people know or remember who these people were?
Who was Oscar Hayden?
Willie Cheseldine?
Zach Fowler?
Many locals had roads named after them, especially in the 7th District. In Abell, a driver has to go down Golden Thompson Road to get to Clarence Gass Road and to Wilmer Palmer Road. Clarence Gass was the owner there of the land called Cherry Grove, Collingwood, Cobrum and Bedlam Neck, according to deeds. Wilmer Palmer was a boat builder there, who died in 1986.
"Although his father was a successful farmer on the creek, boats and the sea were in his blood," wrote the late Edwin Beitzell in "Life on the Potomac."
The same book explained Capt. Golden Thompson was a prolific seafood dealer out of St. Patrick Creek.
Just up the road off Hatchet Thicket Road is Olen Mattingly Road.
"He was a seafood dealer," said Bob Kopel, 77, of Colton's Point. Mattingly ran "one of the biggest oyster shuckers around the county at the time," Kopel said.
In Avenue, Paul Ellis, who owned a store from 1932 to 1946, had a road and public pier named after him.
Over in Bushwood, Oscar Hayden Road is next to Beitzell Road. Oscar Hayden was a farmer who owned property on both sides of the road.
His son, Martin Hayden, lives on the road today, along with many other family members.
"It was a well-known family name," he said, and so when they petitioned the county commissioners for the name in the late 1970s, there was no problem. Oscar Hayden died in 1980 at the age of 81. His late brother also has road named for him over in Hollywood — Lawrence Hayden Road.
Oscar Hayden's father "had the misfortune to lose his dwelling house on Bashford, near Chaptico, Tuesday night," The Enterprise reported on May 10, 1889. "It is said there is insurance on the house."
Back in Bushwood, Martin Hayden said of the neighbors along the road that he's "kind of hoping it'll stay in the Hayden family."
Just a bit farther down Whites Neck Road is Willie Cheseldine Road, flanked by rows of corn. Known as Capt. Bill, Cheseldine died April 7, 1986 at the age of 98. His property at the end of the road named for him was once called "Part of Tournament Point" in older land records.
Heading north to Morganza Doctor Johnson Road connects Chaptico Road to Colton Point Road. Dr. Leonard B. Johnson died in 1962 at the age of 96. He lived at the property there called Shercliffe Manor his entire life and owned eight farms in the Morganza area, according to "Doctors of St. Mary's County, 1634-1900," by Margaret Fresco. Dr. Johnson was a member of the First National Bank of St. Mary's board of directors since its founding in 1903 to 1955, according to his obituary in The Enterprise.
Off Route 5 in Helen is Foley Mattingly Road, which leads back to a 200-acre farm, once owned by James Foley Mattingly Sr. He died Nov. 16, 1974 at the age of 80.
Farther north in Chaptico is a shortcut to Christ Church off Route 234 called Zach Fowler Road.
Fowler was postmaster in Chaptico from 1946 to 1966 in his general store at the corner of Hurry Road and the county road to take his name.
He was interviewed in the St. Mary's Beacon newspaper in 1982 about the slower country life in Chaptico during his childhood in the first decade of the 1900s.
Process to naming
a county road simple
Jeff Jackman, senior planner with the St. Mary's County Department of Land Use and Growth Management, said the county tries to avoid duplications when people petition for a certain road name.
Multiple roads with the same name can lead to confusion in emergencies.
"We always think of sending an ambulance to that address," he said.
A 1966 report from the county civil defense office said the road identification system in St. Mary's needed improvement. Local names didn't match state maps.
"We also find that several of the county road names have been changed without any substantial reason," the report said. "This also creates confusion when people have to remember new names for roads that have had the same name for, in some cases, generations."
Since that time, some developers named roads in a neighborhood after themes such as types of trees, horses, World War II vessels or famous seamen.
The criteria for a road's name isn't very stringent. "I don't think we have anything really spelled out against vulgar or inappropriate road names. Fortunately we don't have any of those," Jackman said.
People would have to live with that address. If 51 percent of residents on a road agree to have the name changed, the county commissioners can hold a hearing on the matter and make a decision.
Some years ago there was a proposal to change the name of Happyland Road.
If 100 percent of a road's residents agree to a name change, it is made automatically for a county road or private road. "We do get one or two of those," Jackman said.
Typically private drive names end with "Lane" or
"Way."
For a road to be accepted in the county's maintenance system, it has to be at least 18 feet wide, with two-foot shoulders, be paved and meet certain alignment requirements, said John Groeger, deputy director of the department of public works and transportation.
As of last year, there were 621 miles of county roadways. Back in 1898, there were 535 miles of total roads in the county, 505 of them made up of dirt.
