Sassafras Neck: A Special Place in Time (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781977743763)

Vincent Walmsley "Vince" Taylor was born June 5, 1912 in Earleville, (Cecil County) Maryland, the son of James Veasey and Eva Virginia Taylor. Vince grew up in and around his father's and uncle's blacksmith and wagon shop and his grandfather's farm nearby. He was always an outdoor person all of his life and loved hiking, trapping and wild duck and rabbit hunting in the woods and marshes. As a teenager he worked on several farms and in the blacksmith shop and after graduating from the local high school, was hired in the 1930s as a boatman by the U.S. Engineer Department Baltimore to work on hydro-graphic surveys in the Chesapeake Bay Area. He was later hired as a welder in the Posey & Jones shipyard in Wilmington, Delaware where they built liberty ships for World War II. In the 1940s, Vince was drafted into the U.S. Navy where he wound up a quarter master in piloting and navigation, and went overseas during World War II to work on a destroyer escort ship for convoy duty to New Guinea, the Philippines, Okinawa Japan. After the war he was hired by a New York engineering company for construction work on bridges, tunnels, turnpikes and dams along the Mid-Atlantic coastal area from Connecticut to Cape Fear, North Carolina. After 28 years he retired from the engineering company and worked another 12 years doing carpenter work and painting for local people out of his home in Sassafras Neck. He also carved many old style decoys, miniature geese and marsh birds and made small Chesapeake Bay model boats. Vince also loved music, especially the accordion, on which he played various hymns and ballads to which his wife, Susie, would sing along. Vince and Susie married in 1935 and had three children, four granddaughters, and seven great-grandsons. Vince was a member of Old Zion Methodist Church in Cecilton, the National Rifle Association and the Baltimore Engineering Society. He hoped to be remembered by his friends and neighbors as a "plain old outdoor country boy."