07/23/2026
Further Tales about East Catonsville
“Uncle Charlie”
By Guest Historian Stephen Stec
In 1897, while working as a streetcar motorman, Charles DePoyenne Bujac, later known around the Ville as “Uncle Charlie”, built one of the first houses on Delrey Avenue. The 1898 Baltimore County Atlas shows his house straddling lots 124 and 125, one of only four houses at that time in the East Catonsville development (the house still stands today). With his wife Margaret (Fissell), they raised six children, and their lively home was open always to visitors.
Charlie was born in February 1863 on the estate of his father, inventor and lawyer James Bujac, two miles south of Delrey near the Hilton plantation. The Bujacs came from a distinguished line of French Protestant merchants, scholars and artisans from the Bordeaux region of France. Charlie’s mother was born Ellen Rich Kelso, from a Scottish Ulster Presbyterian family of butchers that had prospered in Baltimore. James and Ellen Bujac settled in Catonsville prior to 1850 and raised five children. Some remarkable stories from this family’s past will be told in a future piece on Charlie’s parents.
Charlie joined the streetcar company while still a teenager. On July 1, 1886, he was promoted to driver for the horse-drawn Baltimore Catonsville and Ellicott’s Mills Passenger Railway Company. (See attached picture of Horse Drawn streetcar) His route from Catonsville to Fayette and Liberty Streets in Baltimore took an hour and a half. In a 1934 article in the Sun, Charlie reminisced about needing a “hill horse” to be harnessed at the Brunswick Street Bridge, because most horses couldn’t pull the car – sometimes with 60 or 70 passengers – up Mt. Olivet Hill.
Even after electrification of the lines, streetcar driving could be perilous. In February 1899, a powerful blizzard hit Maryland, and Catonsville was particularly affected. The snow and biting wind created drifts of up to ten feet. The Catonsville Argus of February 18 mentions Charles Bujac:
Messrs. Henry Middlekamp and Charles Bujac, motormen on the Towson-Catonsville branch of the Consolidated Railway, nearly perished in the blinding storm Monday night while walking from Irvington to their homes in Catonsville. They started at 4 o’clock in the afternoon and it took them four hours to walk home. They made fairly good progress until they reached North Bend where the snow was up to their waists. They were nearly frozen stiff and exhausted and [gave] up all hope of reaching home; but the thought of their wives and little ones encouraged them to greater effort and they finally reached their homes.
This down-to-earth streetcar driver welcomed the family’s many visitors, including Charlie’s Philadelphia merchant cousins, his brothers who fought in the Spanish American War, and later his nephew, a famous Hollywood actor. The blizzard almost coincided with the visit of Charlie’s brother, “Captain E. P. Bujac of Company E., First Texas Volunteers,” mentioned in the Catonsville Argus of February 25, 1899. This was Etienne de Pelissier Bujac, assigned to the First U. S. Volunteer Infantry in Cuba under General Fitzhugh Lee, the former Confederate cavalry general who had attended Catonsville’s St. Timothy’s Hall. (In the officers’ corps, Etienne also encountered several students from the Overlea Home School on Delrey Avenue.)
Etienne Sr. was the most adventurous of the Bujac brothers. He had drifted westward after working at the Catonsville post office and attending the Agricultural College (now University of Maryland); he went to law school in Tennessee and then enlisted in Houston. After the war, he settled in Carlsbad, New Mexico Territory, where he became a leading citizen, practiced law, commanded the militia, and built the picturesque Amandine estate.
Charlie’s Hollywood actor nephew was Etienne’s son, Etienne, Jr., called Jack. He visited his Uncle Charlie and his Aunt Ellen Adele Diffenderffer in Catonsville after dropping out of Sewanee, and wooed Grace Mary Mather-Smith, a 16-year-old student at St. Timothy’s School for Girls. Their rushed high society wedding was held in Orlando, and she soon gave birth to their daughter. Jack had inherited his father’s restlessness, and without any direction, he left his wife and daughter and drifted from job to job.
Meanwhile, Uncle Charlie dependably operated the streetcars that moved passengers and freight between Catonsville and the city. For the last 16 years of his employment, he conducted the mail and freight car between Catonsville and Towson, until retiring from the streetcar company in 1930. Afterwards he became the turnkey at the Catonsville police station, which was then next to the fire station.
Etienne Jr. “Jack” Bujac went to Hollywood and was discovered by legendary producer David O. Selznick at a party. Taking the stage name Bruce Cabot, he achieved screen immortality as the romantic lead, Jack Driscoll, in the classic King Kong of 1933. (See attached movie marquee). That same year, Cabot was back in Maryland, starring in a movie filmed in various Annapolis locations, called Midshipman Jack. In his long career he often played villains, such as the Huron warrior Magua in Last of the Mohicans and was a member of John Wayne’s stable of supporting actors in Westerns until his death in 1972.
Uncle Charlie finally stopped working at the police station on December 31, 1935. In the summer of 1936, ill at home, he was visited by the president of the Baltimore Transit Company and presented with a gold lapel button inset with a diamond to commemorate 50 years since he had started driving the cars. He died at home on March 22, 1937. His nephew, Bruce Cabot, had recently starred in a movie called Sinner Take All, which most likely played at the Alpha Theatre on Frederick Road.
