Let There Be Light - Electrical Power Before SMECO

Steve excavating a unit near a
trapezoidal shaped concrete block

Sometimes interpreting the archaeological record is about more than just understanding the soil deposits and the artifacts. It can require rebuilding the context in which the deposits occurred, as today’s story will illustrate.

Sometime during the fall of 2018, Judy told me that her grandparents had owned the farm near Dentsville where I was doing some archaeological testing. I was really excited to find this out because I had a few questions about missing buildings on the property. The archaeology suggested that there had once been a chicken house on the property as well as a shed near the kitchen wing that was not the meat house (that building was still standing). And, there was also this strange trapezoidal shaped concrete thing with a shallow round depression next to it that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. I invited Judy out to the farm to walk around with me.

The Strange Trapezoidal Shaped Concrete Thing

 

The day Judy visited we walked through the interior of the house and she told me what the various rooms had been used for when her grandparents lived there. Next we wandered around the property. She showed me where the hog pens had been, pointed out the location of the cow pastures and the chicken house, and told me what the different barns had been used for. She couldn’t remember a shed standing near the kitchen wing where the archaeology suggested it had been located (later analysis of the artifacts suggested it had been razed before she was born). Then we stopped by the strange trapezoidal shaped concrete thing with a shallow round depression next to it. Judy looked at, shook her head, and said she had no idea what it was, but that there had been shed at this location that her grandparents called the “light house,” although she had no idea why.

Amy (Left) and Judy (Right) During a Visit to Grandma and Grandpa's Farm

https://bibbmachinery.com/DelcoStory.html

That’s when the light bulb literally went on in my head and I realized the “light house” had been used to house a Delco Light System or a similar battery system that supplied electricity to the house. Its location near the chicken house meant that there was power to run a chick brooder box. Judy didn’t know what the “light house” was used for because before she was born the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) had extended power lines along Route 6 and her grandparents didn’t need the “light house” any more.

The Delco Light System was invented by Charles Kettering of the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co. (Delco). The system, which came on the market in 1916, consisted of a 1 ½  horsepower single cylinder air-cooled engine that was started with a 6-volt battery. The engine ran on fuel provided by a 5-gallon gasoline tank and generated the electricity that charged the storage batteries. The batteries, which were arranged on two shelves of 8 batteries each, were lead-acid storage batteries that were set in clear glass jars with lead lids. This system was capable of generating an output of 750 watts. The gasoline engine ran only when the charge level in the batteries dropped, which generally occurred every other day. The homeowner needed to check the fuel level in the gas tank and the oil level and t0 maintain the correct water and acid levels. The output of a small battery system could power a washing machine, vacuum cleaner, electric iron, electric lights and a radio in the house or a well pump, a churn, separator, milking machine, chick brooder or other small farm machinery.

https://www.marathoncountyhistory.org/rural-electrification/rural-living-with-electricity

The oral history, drawings of the Delco system, and the archaeological remains support this interpretation for the “light house,” One of the drawings (above) shows a generator mounted on a concrete pier with rebar attachments and a gasoline supply set on the ground/floor next to the generator. These two parts of the system were still visible at the site: the strange trapezoidal shaped concrete thing which served as the mount for the generator and the shallow round depression for the gasoline supply tank. I also excavated a 3 by 3 foot square unit next to the strange trapezoidal shaped concrete. The only artifacts we recovered were 20^th-century in date and included a porcelain screw base for an incandescent light bulb, with part of the base of the light bulb attached.

Left: Artifacts Recovered During Excavation Near the Light House Include
An aluminum jar Lid With a Nail Hole and a Porcelain Light Socket
With Fragments of a Light Blub Base
Right: Example of a Glass Battery Jar

St. Mary's Beacon, 25 September 1919

The next question I had was how common were these systems in the county and when did they appear on the local market? An advertisement for the Delco Light System appeared in the St. Mary’s Beacon on 25 September 1919, which included a map of the United States with the legend: “Every Dot represents Ten Satisfied Delco-Light Users.” The advertisement goes on to state that the system had been on the market for three and half years and that during that period more than 75,000 farm homes had purchased a DELCO system. The advertisement further stated that the system “…is providing an abundance of clean, bright, economical electric light for these homes.” And further, that the power it generated was “...actually paying for itself in time and labor saved.” The system was offered for sale by the Leonardtown Implement Company, which was about 20 miles from the site.

Delco Advertising Pamphlet

Advertisements for the competing GENCO light system, which was manufactured by the General Gas & Electric Co. in Hanover, Pennsylvania were placed in the Maryland Independent in January and February 1924 by Jones & Moreland of Hughesville, Maryland (about 8 miles from the site). The large ad included a mail-in-coupon for information about the system and claimed that a household could have “...a splendid powerful GENCO light and power plant, in your own home, enjoy the benefit and pleasure of bright light and power, without fire risk, just like city people and in the end it will have paid for itself and not cost you a penny” (emphasis added). The illustration with the ad indicates that the setup of the light system was similar to the DELCO-Light system.

Maryland Independent 8 February 1924

The Maryland Independent announced on 3 October 1924 that three electric demonstration plants would light the Charles County Fair Grounds that year, all of course hoping for would be customers:

 

The article also listed machinery that would be exhibited at the fair. In additions to cars, buggies, wagons, and farm machinery, there were cream separators, phonographs, ranges, radio sets, “…and other things useful and necessary to our people.” The radio display by Quinn and Burroughs promised to feature a live broadcast of the World Series games between Washington and New York. Many of these smaller appliances required an electrical system to run.

These battery systems were aggressively advertised to women, especially farm women. Advertisements showed women with leisure time because their household and farm chores were finished in a shorter amount of time because they owned electrical appliances.

In rural areas and small towns that had no direct access to the electrical power that was available in larger towns and cities, battery operated systems were the sole source of power into the 1950s. Battery systems enabled families to purchase appliances and radios that were run on electrical power. The radio revolutionized communication in rural areas, connecting them to the wider country in a more timely fashion than the local weekly newspaper. The radio stations in turn advertised products that could only be run on electricity, encouraging its listeners to participate in the purchase of new consumer goods.

A notice in the Maryland Independent on 18 June 1920 indicates that even La Plata was not fully electrified: 

The local newspapers carried advertisements for the battery systems through the mid-1930s. In 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration was established, and the following year Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act, providing funding to build miles of electrical power lines in rural areas across the country. Delco and Delco-like systems were replaced in Charles County after 1938 with the founding of the Southern Maryland Electric Coop (SMECO). SMECO began extending lines across St. Mary’s, Charles, and Calvert Counties in 1938. By the mid-1950s most of the areas in the three counties were electrified.

Lester Beall Posters Produced for the Rural Electrification Administration

The archaeological excavation at Judy’s grandparents’ house is completed and the house is gone. It was razed to make way for a new SMECO substation along Route 6. But before SMECO, many of the farms like Judy’s grandparents and rural homes and towns in Charles County were powered by Delco or Delco-like battery systems.