“[The Eastern Shore’s] biggest booster lives in Chestertown,” wrote W.C. Thurston in the preface to his book The Eastern Shore (of Maryland) In Song and Story. She was “a fair daughter of the Shore who typed two stories for us when we needed only one.”
Westcott contributed two odes to the book, one to the Eastern Shore in general, and one written to honor the Ann McKim, the “first of the Baltimore clippers”, “adored by all the skippers.”
Westcott was born Nellie Charlotte Schneider in 1887 to Louis H Schneider and Nellie S Ernesty, residents of Washington DC. In 1900, Nell was living in New York with her mother and teaching music. According to Nell’s mothers 1932 obituary, the elder Nellie was founder of her town library and active in the civic and social life of Pleasant Valley, New York.
In 1910 or 1911, Nell married Fred B. Westcott from New Jersey. Their daughter Dorothy was born in 1911. The couple and their children settled back in Chestertown by 1930. There, Nell worked for the government in the employment office and the Chamber of Commerce, but found time to pen a column in the Chestertown Enterprise of tidbits, notes, and praise for her home region. As secretary for the Chamber of Commerce, she had dealings in issues ranging from poultry farms brokering Thanksgiving turkeys to the groundwork for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
Nell C. Westcott was just the type of person to end up on the radar of Frederick Phillip Stieff when he was compiling Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland. That book includes Nell’s recipes for Crab Cakes, Potato Rolls, Oyster Pie, Lemon Butter, and Rusks.
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