East New Market
Property Reports
35 Main Street
The Old Tavern (bef. 1795)
(Also known as The Olde Shanty and The Tavern House)
In 1795 James Sulivane sold the 1 acre lot where John McClaren now lives to Charles Lecompte. John McClaren used the house as a public house and a grocery. An 1829 deed describes the lot as "the old tavern and home dwelling of Mary Ann Travers." Thus both the Old Collins House and the Old Tavern property were likely built by 1829. The Old Tavern was likely the public house where John McClaren lived in 1795. Silas Collins was known to have operated a public house at this location in 1828 and again in 1844 and 1845.
Before 1855, the Old Collins House and the Old Tavern Property were part of the same lot. The "Front Section" was a 1 acre lot that abutted the main street. The "Rear Section" was also 1 acre and was directly behind the "Front Section". Both structures stood on the "Front Section". Sometime after 1809, Mary Ann Travers obtained the "Front Section" as an heir of the elder Charles Lecompte. In 1829, she bought the "Rear Section" and the property became a single 2 acre lot. In 1854, a trustee sold the northernmost 1 acre to William Huffington. This northernmost one acre lot was the site of the Old Collins House. The southernmost 1 acre lot was the Old Tavern property. The property continued as a Tavern and Inn into the 1870s (John Dean 1860, William P. Conaway mid-1860s, and James Lawrence Colston early 1870s.) and maybe later (John F. Ryan 1880).
In 2005, the larger parcel 18, comprises both this property and the property to the north called Johnny's Tavern. James Cheesman (b. 1895) stated in 1990 that Dr. Nichols lived in the house where Warner got.
From New Revised History of Dorchester County, Maryland by Elias Jones, Tidewater Publishers, Cambridge, Maryland - 1966, Chapter X, East New Market, by Miss Emma Edmondson Jacobs 1925
From the older ones much interesting history may be heard of the old days, when the crossroads tavern here would be filled with travelers from the upper and lower peninsula. Frequently did traders from Delaware and New Jersey meet here who came to sell negroes or exchange horses. Iron staples are still shown here in one building to which slave negroes were chained for safe keeping until sold or to await the purchaser's time when ready to convey them South for service in the cotton fields of Georgia.
From "Between The Nanticoke and the Choptank, An Architectural History of Dorchester County, Maryland" Edited by Christopher Weeks, with contributions by Michael O. Bourne, Geoffrey Henry, Catherine Moore, Calvin Mowbray, M. Fred Tidwell.
This house consists of two portions, an older section, probably built in the 1840s, and a later three-bay, two-story section facing the street. The town charter of 1833 refers to a LeCompte tavern in the center of town, from which the town's boundaries were drawn. If this building is the original LeCompte tavern, it would mean that it is substantially older than 1840.
The Laskowski Papers - (The Old Collins Property)
It has been stated that the old Collins house was used in ante bellum days as a tavern. The tavern, however, was the house next to this [this property] and had rings in the floor to which slaves were chained while being taken from one part of the country to the other. The old tavern has been torn down and so renovated that it is now unrecognizable as such