PUCKUM 2

PUCKUM 2

Puckum is more than just a curious name of a country road and a ditch that

crosses that road and flows into the Marshy Hope Creek. Puckum was an

Indian of Somerset and married a free Negro by name of Johnson.

They were not accepted in Princess Anne and moved up here to Dorchester.

According to old somerset records John Puckum married Jone Johnson,

February 25, 1682. Puckum was of the Monie Tribe living in a village

on the north side of Great Monie Creek. Northeast a few miles on the

south side of Great Monie lived the first free black family of Somerset and

Jone was probably one of this family. There is no record of them having

children and no record of ANY Puckum on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

However, in Laurel, Delaware there were two Puckum families. One was

Amy Puckum, but she did not know of the Puckum Road Puckums. She

did know her people were English and she knew from a book she had that

an Indian had taken up the Puckum name. She felt she might have an

Indian background. Her great, great, grandfather's, Perry Puckum's, picture

showed he was fair skinned, had different hair and might have been Indian

or a mix.

So lets say, John Puckum, brought Jone Johnson Puckum to the Marshy

Hope shores in the last 20 years of the 17^th century. Here he shared land

and dreams with one of the most prominent families in America, the

Lee family of Virginia. In 1673 Captain John Lee patented “Rehoboth”,

a 2500 acre plantation along the northwest branch of the Nanticoke River,

which we know is Marshy Hope Creek. Puckum Road bisects the heart of

the original Lee estate. In the fall of 1673, John Lee died in Virginia, so,

John Lee , never did live at Rehoboth on Marshy Hope Creek. Nor did

descenders who the estate was bequeathed too, Harry Light Horse Lee

nor his son Robert E. Lee ever live there. The mansion is said to have

been built by Thomas Lee, in 1723. Thomas was father of Richard Henry

Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee who were signers of the Declaration of

Independence. The Lee Mansion was devastated by fire in 1916. Another

account has it that Captain John Smoot built the house between 1783 and

1790. It is recorded that John Smoot purchased 200 acres of the Lee's

Rehoboth estate from Lettice Corbin Lee in 1787.

Major Frank Turpin, captain of Dorchester's Militia in the Revolution, was

a resident of the Lee Mansion and was a gracious host, having parties and

balls which continued for days.

Latter, Hal Roth, the writer, visited with Ruth Breuil, the owner, to see if

she had heard of Puckum, which she said was farther down the road.

Ms Breuil was more interested in talking about her father in law, Francis

J. Breuil, of Philadelphia, who came to Dorchester with a great collection of

firearm's and rebuilt the Lee Mansion in 1917 that sits high on a bank, a

distance from the water, all alone where Mrs Ruth Breuil and her spaniel,

General Lee live.

F. J. Breuil, on May 13, 1942 reported he had 1000 quaint firearms and

could equip ten companies of 50 men each if needed by the Dorchester

County Minute Men organized in 1942, five months after Pearl Harbor.

On his way back home on Maiden forest Road, between Reids Grove and

Hawkeye, on route 50, Roth stopped at Rosemary's in Eldorado and

asked a man filling his pickup with gas, “how do I get to Puckum' ?

The man, flung his arm in the direction of a road sign, “that Puckum Road

right there”. Then he asked how would he know he was at Puckum, The

man said to drive down Puckum and if you come to another road, you have gone to far”. Everyone's right, 'you can't get to Puckum from here'.

Abstract: Salisbury Daily Times, 1998, by Hal Roth.