After His Fourth Draft Notice, a Wye Mills Farm Son Chose to Serve

EASTON, MARYLAND — John Portor Dulin III was born in 1918 on a farm in Wye Mills, in Talbot County, the oldest of 11 children. During World War II he received a draft notice four times and was exempt because he worked on the family farm. When the fourth notice came, he told his father he was going.

That is his family's account, published by the Talbot250 Commission with a wartime letter his granddaughter, Martha Darling Sparks, the county's finance director, contributed to Talbot Treasures, the commission's community collection of heirlooms with a Talbot connection. The commission dates the letter to about 1942.

He was drafted for one year and served four and a half, the account says. He was an Army cook. He landed in Normandy the day after the invasion, with the support forces, and served in France and Germany. At some point he was shot and sent back to England to heal.

He wrote letters home often. The one in the collection is addressed to his sister Alma, Mrs. Lester Chance, who lived with her family on a farm in Trappe.

Talbot Treasures began as a community show-and-tell of family letters, tools, photographs and keepsakes, held June 12–14, 2025, at the Waterfowl Festival Building in Easton with the Waterfowl Festival and the Talbot Historical Society. The commission photographs selected items and features them on its website, where the Dulin letter appears under the title Letter to Home, From War.