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Anyone in Caroline County with a good set of tastebuds has already marked their calendars for Ridgely’s annual Strawberry Festival, which takes place this year on Sunday, May 25. The yearly celebration got its start in 1979 when the Ridgely Lions Club decided to take a page out of Plant City, Florida Lions Club’s book – they’d been hosting a Strawberry Festival in Plant City since the 1930s.
But why a strawberry festival, and why in Ridgely? Depending on who you ask, Ridgely was once the Strawberry Capital of the World!
Strawberries have been used by humans as either a snack, medicine, or table ornament since ancient Roman times. However, wild strawberries before the 1700s were not the plump, juicy, sweet summertime treats we think of today. Modern strawberries were accidentally bred in France between Chilean female strawberries and Virginian male strawberries (go figure). Regardless of how it happened, strawberries became quite popular.
Another thing that is as old as mankind: using produce as a symbol of wealth. Before refrigeration or mass transportation, fresh fruits, flowers, herbs, and other simple pleasures with a low shelf life were only available to the rich. The aristocrats of Holland are known to have paid the equivalent of tens of thousands of US dollars for individual tulip bulbs simply to flaunt their disposable income. Strawberries were no different. By the early 1800s, wealthy Marylanders were hosting quite extravagant “Strawberry Parties”, where guests could stuff themselves with delicacies like strawberries, pineapples, sweets, and champagne.
However, the invention of railroads - and their expansion to the Eastern Shore of Maryland - meant that fresh produce could be shipped at greater speeds and at a much lower cost, thereby bringing the price of strawberries down considerably. Now that strawberries were less of a luxury, demand shot up. At the same time, the already primarily agricultural Eastern Shore realized that strawberries could provide valuable early-season income ahead of regular harvesting. So the truth is, it wasn’t just Ridgely that experienced the Strawberry-boom (in fact, Sussex County, DE sent “more strawberries to market than any county in the country” in 1899). But if any Eastern Shore town owes its roots to strawberries, it's Ridgely.
Ridgely was officially founded in 1867. It wasn’t long after that the strawberry business came to town. According to Ridgely Historical Society’s President Cathy Schwab, a gentleman by the name of T. L. Day started shipping strawberries out of Ridgely via refrigerated train cars as early as 1892. These berries headed for larger markets such as Baltimore, New York City, and Philadelphia. The Alliance Preserving Company opened in 1890 and also contributed to the demand for fresh strawberries. Just 20 years later, the Armour Packing Company opened its doors, increasing demand even further.
By the time Armour Packing Co. came to Ridgely, the town had basically become a strawberry-producing mecca. The Caroline Sun reported in 1907 that "From Monday until Friday of this week there has been 6,617 crates of strawberries shipped to the cities. That makes 158, 856 quarts with the average price of about $.11.” Back then, strawberry-dealing mob bosses negotiated their prices based on the quality of the day’s berries, hence the “average price.” As of 1903, the strawberry pickers were paid 2 cents a quart, and regular field workers were paid 10 cents an hour. It was said that “Good pickers can pick over 400 quarts in a long day of 14 hours.”
The strawberry business brought more workers to Ridgely than the town had people. When Armour Packing Co. opened, around 900 people lived in Ridgely, but the plant needed a worker population of about 1,000.” Armour built barracks to house workers, even including a kitchen, dining hall, and play equipment for the children. The plant was located on Cow Barn Road, near the present-day Caroline County Humane Society.
To say that Ridgely was built around strawberries would be an understatement. The Pennsylvania Railroad ran tracks specifically to haul berries from the fields to the refrigerated cars. Some Ridgely families made their living catering to the hired help – boarding immigrant workers, babysitting children who were too young to work, etc. The economy relied on the influx of field workers in May and June and the prosperity brought by the strawberry business. According to one source, by 1912 the total amount of souls needed to keep the industry going was upwards of 6,000, and the Armour plant was in operation “day and night.” Even school hours were dictated by strawberry season, as many of the field workers were children, so schools held night classes.
Perhaps most notably, the strawberries brought permanent residents who probably wouldn’t have otherwise heard of Ridgely, Maryland. One such family was that of Tom Rampmeyer, who is one of the main sources of information for Ridgely's history and this article.
But all good things must come to an end. Schwab noted that the beginning of the end was Armour’s involvement in a federal anti-trust suit in 1919, which led to their closing of the Ridgely plant. Advancements in refrigeration and transportation also meant that places unburdened by unpredictable weather (i.e. Florida and California) could mass-produce strawberries much earlier and easier than the Eastern Shore. And the icing on the cake: the soil was simply strawberried to death. So, the Shore switched to the agricultural products we still have today: poultry, grains, corn, etc. and strawberries became a thing of the past.
Until 1979 that is! That’s when the Ridgely Lions Club decided to base their yearly fundraiser on this sweet piece of history, and it has paid off tremendously. Lions Club member Jesse Crook said that the idea was first pitched by Jim Lynch, a prominent Caroline County businessman and member of the Ridgely Lions Club. The event has grown from around 500 people in attendance to about 5,000, and the Lions Club serves an estimated 1,800 servings of their famous strawberry shortcake (until it usually sells out). So now that you know all your stuff, you can educate everyone else waiting in the shortcake line with you about the history of the Ridgely strawberries.
