Oxford, Md.

Flush with British?
“Why do Americans think bigger is always better?” queries Terry, my English husband, as I reach for a box filled with a dozen colossal strawberries at the Oxford Market. Before I get a chance to defend America’s big red beauties, he’s reminiscing about the succulent taste of English strawberries, significantly smaller, but, according to him, much more delicious than our oversized versions. “Oh dear,” I whisper under my breath. I begin to doubt the wisdom of crossing the Chesapeake instead of the Atlantic in search of similarities between his homeland and the Eastern Shore’s Oxford, Md.

Like many expats, he misses the little things, English strawberries among them. His Yorkshire roots permeate everything from indefatigable attempts to grow English roses in our steamy aphid-loving garden to our cars—Jaguars, of course. (Pronounced Jag-U-ars by the Brits.) But as we stand in this mish-mosh of a grocery store, the only hint of his native land is a six pack of Newcastle Brown Ale in the fridge and a rack of Altoids behind the register. While we ponder our day, we sip coffee and munch on a peanut-butter-white-chocolate cookie. Not exactly a warm scone, clotted cream, and jam at Harrods, but it’ll do. 

Oxford, one of the first ports in Maryland, was settled around 1659, and no one seems to know when it was named or why. During the seventeenth century, it hosted ships from Great Britain, Europe, the West Indies, and other far-away ports. According to Ellen Anderson, executive director of the Oxford Museum (100 N. Morris St.,), there is no known connection to Oxford, England, but that doesn’t stop us from looking for one.

With the intensity of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson on a hot lead, we scour every shop. “Anything English?” I ask Gary Marquardt, one of the owners of Oxford Greens (104 B S. Morris St.). He fetches a few English Staffordshire dogs, points out a blue and white Wedgwood teapot, and a painted coal scuttle—hardly appropriate for our contemporary, minimalist home. Then with the enthusiasm of one who’s just met the royal family, he pulls out a pair of solid walnut lamps in the form of English riding boots. Don’t think so. We move on.

At Mystery Loves Company Booksellers (202 S. Morris St.), I note a used Queen Victoria’s sketchbook and a handful of Sherlock Holmes classics. Across the street at Americana Antiques (111 S. Morris St.), we find a few paintings of British Clipper sailing ships and eighteenth-century English clocks. We peak behind fences at English-style gardens at Academy House and Linden Tree, two private residences along Morris Street. The experiences are pleasant—in understated British fashion—but not the English fix we’re looking for. 

For lunch, our plan had been to quench our thirst and appetite with English beer and fish ’n’ chips at the Robert Morris Inn (314 N. Morris St.), a historic restaurant named for the Englishman who lived there in 1730. (Known as the “Financier of the American Revolution,” Robert Morris Jr. was also one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.) But that was not to be. “Eighty percent of our orders are crab-related,” says assistant manager Ben Gibbson, explaining why there are no fish and chips on the menu. “People come to this area and they want crab cakes,” he adds as Kenny Rogers croons “Through the Years” over the Muzak system. While I am not expecting “Hail Britannia,” even the Beatles would better reflect the inn’s British history. We can’t even cry in our English beer: There is none on tap. Their version, Oxford Ale, made with raspberry wheat, is far from the real deal. We adopt stiff upper lips and order Diet Cokes and burgers. 

Over at the Highland Ice Creamery for dessert (314 Tilghman St.), I ask Victor Barlow, the Scottish proprietor, if he sells anything English. “Hmmm,” he says, mulling over the question. “I made Turkish Delight a few times (a jellied candy topped with white powdered sugar), but Americans don’t know what it is.” We order cherry pie ice cream and continue rambling through town, almost giving up on our search. But dinner at the Oxford Inn (504 S. Morris St.) turns things around. Skate is on the menu! The English love this light white fish that is rarely seen in America. Not only is it on the menu, but it turns out to be as good (or better) than any
we’ve had in England.

After dinner, we head for the Combsberry (4837 Evergreen Rd.), a stately English-style country inn two miles from the town center. An impressive half-mile drive down a tree-lined road ends at a magnificent house surrounded by towering magnolias, aromatic shrubs, and abundant flowers. Cathy Magrogan, the friendly, freckled innkeeper has a casual, come-on-in-let-me-show-you-around style. She, along with her two best friends—Skeeter, a Pembroke Corgi (the Queen’s favorite canine) and Annie, a Jack Russell, greets us. Here, chintz rules. Florals are everywhere—on the sofas, on the draperies, on throw pillows. There’s floral wallpaper and boarders here and there. Artificial garlands hang in swags over mantles. It is all terribly, terribly English, and it is perfect. 

Basking in the glory of arriving in this English nirvana, I curl up in a sporting leather club chair in the cozy paneled library to watch “Are You Being Served?” a favorite English sitcom on BBC America. “Here’s something that’s very English,” Terry says excitedly as he returns from the loo. I move to the edge of my chair, anticipating a startling revelation. “The toilet bowl lever is on the ‘correct’ side, i.e., the right side of the toilet, just like in England. American light switches are always opposite to those in my country, and most toilet bowl handles in the U.S. are on ‘the wrong side.’” He says this with no less glee than if he had discovered Yorkshire pudding in the oven.   

I guess as with most things in life, it’s the little things that flush out what’s really important. We say “Cheerio” to Oxford and return to Annapolis and to our loo with the lever on the “wrong” side, paying careful mind to staying on the right side of the road.—M.A.T.

Berlin, Md.

Germans Walked Here
I’m as German as it gets: big boned, slightly militant when it comes to certain issues, with a deep reverence for bratwurst and ’kraut. My great-great grandfather Nicholas Kessler left the grand duchy of Luxembourg, a country that’s half German, half French, in 1838 to seek his fame and fortune in the then-wilds of Helena, Mont. Determined to get a hunk of the gold rush, he instead turned his attention to what Germans know best—beer—and started the Kessler Brewing Company. Although I wince when my mother teasingly claims that I was named after a brew, it hasn’t kept me from being drawn to all things Germanic. It’s for this reason that I set out to uncover what this tiny Worcester County town has in common with its European namesake. 

The bullying Brandenberg gates, businesslike Bauhaus architecture, uber-tidy thoroughfares: These are the images that come to mind when Germany’s capital city is mentioned. But as I walk the placid streets of its Eastern Shore counterpart, I see no physical similarities, just modest brick storefronts and quaint cottage-style homes. And the only gates visible are of the white-picket variety. After scouring the boutiques, the only discernable connection I find are several antique Bavarian oyster plates and tankards at Town Center Antiques.

Still unconvinced that this shared name is no mere coincidence, I call Berlin native Edward Hammond, heralded as the town’s unofficial historian, in hopes that he can help unravel the mystery. 

When I ask Hammond how the town got its name, he explains that when the town was patented in 1684, it was known as Burley. At that time, there was a local establishment called the Burley Inn. As the story goes, the town’s modern day name is simply a contraction of the two words: Burl-Inn. “Burley Inn was the way people referred to the town,” says Hammond. “That’s all there was here back then.” (I also learned that the town was called Stevenson’s Crossroads before it was known as Burley.) But this does explain why locals leave the “e” silent in the town’s one-syllable pronunciation, “Burln.”

Hammond goes on to explain that during WWII, there was a German and Austrian prisoner-of-war camp in Berlin, Camp Decatur, named for Berlin native Commodore Stephen Decatur, who distinguished himself in the War of 1812 and was the youngest man to reach the rank of captain in the U.S. Navy. Seems that local farmers contracted with government to hire the POWs as laborers. “By all accounts,” explains Hammond, “they were much happier to be where they were than on the Western Front.”

He also notes that about twenty years ago, an organization for international study sponsored a two-week Berlin to Berlin student exchange that lasted for about ten years. “We hosted one of the kids, and my son went over to Germany,” recalls Hammond. “All of the girls wanted to take off their tops [on the beach], and that was a problem. And all of the kids wanted to go to bars, and that was a problem, too.”
My history lesson over, I take one more turn through downtown, stopping at the town hall, where, rumor has it, hangs a report someone had done years ago on the “twin cities.” But no one on duty this day seems to understand my request. I turn heel and walk back to my car, satisfied that the only immediate connection between Berlin, Germany, and Berlin, Md., is that a few wayward Germans, including a Kessler, once walked the streets.—K.B.

Warsaw, Va.

United in Solidarity
Though my Polish grandparents came from towns near Krakow, the lure of a town named Warsaw—even if it is in Virginia—is still as enticing to me as the scent of fresh kielbasa.

On the surface, Warsaw, Va., and Warsaw, Poland, have very little in common. There are no buildings over three stories in this Northern Neck town of around 1,000 people (including the inmates in the county jail). There are no reconstructed castles, no trams or subway, no gothic cathedrals, much less a Catholic church. And remnants of a Communist regime are invisible, if there at all.

But both towns have proximity to rivers, and like its European counterpart, Warsaw, Va., is the local government seat (of Richmond County). But what really connects the two towns is solidarity.

Virginia’s Warsaw was originally known as “Richmond County Courthouse,” a name that served the town for just over one hundred years before it was changed to Warsaw in 1832 “in sympathy with the Polish struggle for liberty,” according to the plaque in front of the old courthouse.

This gesture was not unusual, explains Francene Barber, director of the Richmond County Museum. Colonial Americans were introduced to larger than life Polish figures like Pulaski and Kosciusko during the Revolution (Kosciusko was even believed to have visited Thomas Jefferson at Monticello), and in the ensuing years, Americans followed Poland’s tumultuous political history with interest and devoured the various popular novels, like Jane Porter’s Thaddeus of Warsaw, which romanticized the partitions. “The Warsaw uprisings were a lost cause that attracted a lot of attention,” Barber explains, “Poles were forcibly exiled, and Americans could relate to that.”

In 1832, Richmond County Court-house, along with towns in Kentucky, Illinois, North Carolina, and Ohio, changed its name to Warsaw. Today, the town is managed by John Slusser, a native Michigander whose great-great grandparents on his mother’s side came to the United States from Poland. On hearing this, I start to believe that my search for all things Polish might not be in vain.

In walking through the town, though, I am quickly discouraged, finding little that is Polish, aside from the courthouse plaque. I comb through the wares at Corner Bargains, a consignment store at the crossroads of Main Street and Richmond Road and find albums by Glenn Campbell, Percy Faith, and the 101 Strings, but no Bobby Vinton. Commemorative plates come from Disney World, not the
Lalka Puppet Theatres, and Eric van Lustbader novels take the place of those of Henry Sienkiewicz. I can’t even find a worn copy of James Michener’s Poland. Sigh.

My mood brightens a little as I walk down Main Street and pass Teresa’s Nails with its impressive selection of “polish.” And I’m positively exuberant as I enter Northern Neck Gourmet for a bite of lunch and find an international selection of gourmet food and beverages. There’s beer from Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, even Russia, but none from Poland. No pierogis, no chrusciki, no smoked pork products either. I’m about to cry into a crab cake when my eye catches the magic word sauerkraut, so I order the Reuben, which is delicious.

Sustained, I decide to explore a little further. Although it is Episcopal, I wonder if St. John’s might have any Poles buried in its cemetery. There are lots of Muirs, Mallorys, and Montgomerys here, but no Kowalskis or Wojciechowskis among the nineteenth century headstones. Perched in the shadow of the church, however, is a giant stone eagle. The White Eagle is one of Poland’s symbols, and I feel my heart racing as I approach the monument, but the eagle and the impressive sculpture on which it sits turn out to be a dedication to Virginia Congressman William Atkinson Jones (1849-1918). Jones was from Warsaw, and he wasn’t Polish. And I don’t know if he ever visited Poland, but from the memorial plaque, I do know that he visited the Philippines, became a champion of the Filipino movement for independence, and sponsored the passage of the Philippine Independence Bill in Congress. The bill took sixteen years to pass, Jones died just two years later, and in 1926, the people of the Philippines donated this impressive memorial to the people of Warsaw in memory of Jones’ work on their behalf—another example of Warsaw solidarity in action.

The shadows are even longer as I leave the cemetery and begin to drive home. At the edge of town, I look up and see another eagle, a real one this time, flying low over a field. And I think how funny it is that there are people in town who say, “There was never anything Polish [about Warsaw] but the name.” They just need to look deeper.—M.K.Z.

Europe on the Cheap

Visiting these other Chesapeake towns won’t cost you any euros.


Delaware
Camden, Kent County
Canterbury, Kent County
Concord, Sussex County
Dover, Kent County
Glasgow, New Castle County
New Castle, New Castle County
Odessa, New Castle County

Maryland
Aberdeen, Harford County
Cambridge, Dorchester County
Cardiff, Harford County
Chester, Queen Anne’s County
Dublin, Harford County
Easton, Talbot County
Salisbury, Wicomico County
Scotland, St. Mary’s County
Vienna, Dorchester County

Virginia
Hague, Westmoreland County
Kilmarnock, Lancaster County
Kinsale, Westmoreland County
Lancaster, Lancaster County
Norfolk, Norfolk County
Portsmouth, Norfolk County