John A. J. Creswell was born at this house at Creswell’s Ferry, now Port Deposit, in 1828. He graduated from Dickinson College, became a lawyer, and was elected to the General Assembly in 1861. He became Adjutant General in 1862, was elected to Congress that same year, and was elected to the United States Senate in 1864. He served as President Grant’s Postmaster General from 1869 to 1874, in charge of Republican Party patronage. He later returned to Elkton, where he was the acknowledged head of the State’s Republican Party until his death in 1891.