Col. Oswald Tilghman, the son of General Tench Tilghman, (Stop #5) tried, as his grandfather had thirty years earlier, to establish a military school in Oxford. In 1885 he convinced a group of investors to convert the Eastford Hall Hotel along the Park into the Maryland Military and Naval Academy. At the time, it was the only military academy in the country offering both army and navy instruction. The uniforms were copied from West Point and there was a three-masted sloop used for naval instruction anchored right out in the Tred Avon River. It was an expensive school with about 200 cadets enrolled, young men of wealthy families from all over the country.
The two hundred male cadets quickly discovered that there were only about 20 or 25 young ladies in town. Great odds for the ladies, but a challenge for the men. It was not unusual for each of the ladies to have more than one suitor. In the Museum’s collection are love letters written by two cadets to the grandmother of one local woman named Marcie Seth. In this letter one of them declares his love:
“Must I say again, what I have said so often: ‘I care more for you than for any other young lady living... Miss Marcie, I love you.”
The new Academy lasted only three years. The wealthy cadets did not take well to military discipline. When a Major in the regular army was brought in to instill strict regimentation the entire corps of cadets quit. And so ended the Maryland Military and Naval Academy.
After the Academy closed, Eastford Hall became a hotel again, until August of 1894, when a fire, most likely started by gasoline or kerosene lamps, burned almost all of the grand 15-year-old building to the ground.
