It became the nucleus for trade and government. It was first called Chandlers Town. The town was one of the oldest English-speaking communities on the East Coast of the United States. In 1658, it was designated the first county seat of Charles County. Later the English adapted the Potapoco name as Port Tobacco. Its name also referred to what became the colony's chief export commodity crop. The town grew as it became a major port for the tobacco trade, with exports transported by ocean-going sailing ships. During the late 17th century, Port Tobacco became the second-largest river port in Maryland. The early immigrants to Port Tobacco were products of the religious turmoil in England. Their deeply felt convictions were powerful influences in Maryland's history. The area had both English Catholic and Church of England congregations. Father Andrew White of the Jesuits established a mission in 1641 and later a church at what became St. Thomas Manor at Chapel Point. The manor's chapel was expanded to what is called St. Ignatius Church, a center for local Native Americans converted to Christianity. The oldest continuously operating Catholic parish in the United States, the complex has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is part of the Religious Freedom Maryland Scenic Byways route. Catholic parish records identified Indian families through the decades, when civil records began to use only designations of free people of color, colored, or Negro for mixed-race persons, thus failing to record their cultural identification. The two state-recognized Piscataway-descendant tribes have used Catholic records in making their case for cultural continuity. Freed from restraints by the Toleration Act of 1649 and feeling a need for spiritual guidance, some settlers gathered their first Anglican congregation in a log building at the head of the Port Tobacco Creek in 1683, nine years before the Establishment Act. Supported by the tobacco poll tax of 40 pounds per head from 1692 to 1776, Christ Church prospered. The community built a second structure in 1709. After the American Revolution, although the Anglican Church was disestablished in the US, parishioners rallied to contribute directly to Christ Church, and Lemuel Wilmer, of a distinguished family of Maryland Episcopalian clerics which included his brother William Holland Wilmer, uncle James Jones Wilmer, and father, grandfather and brother (all named Simon Wilmer) served as rector for 35 years. After a tornado destroyed the building in 1808, they held a lottery and ultimately financed a new brick structure, which was rededicated in 1827.