When did Maryland become a colony?
Southern Colonies
George Calvert received a charter from King Charles I to found the colony of Maryland in 1632. When George Calvert died, Cecilius Calvert, later known as Lord Baltimore, became the proprietor. Calvert came from a wealthy Catholic family and was the first individual (rather than a joint-stock company) to receive a grant from the Crown. He received a grant for a large tract of land north of the Potomac river and on either side of Chesapeake Bay. Calvert planned on creating a haven for English Roman Catholics, most of whom were well-to-do nobles such as himself who could not worship in public. He planned on creating an agrarian manorial society where each noble would have a large manor and tenants would work in the fields and on other tasks. However, with extremely cheap land prices, many Protestants moved to Maryland and bought land for themselves. They soon became a majority of the population, and in 1642 religious tension began to erupt. Calvert was forced to take control and pass the Maryland Toleration Act in 1649, making Maryland the second colony to have freedom of worship, after Rhode Island. However, the Act did little to help religious peace. In 1654, Protestants barred Catholics from voting, ousted a pro-tolerance Governor, and repealed the Toleration Act. Maryland stayed Protestant until Calvert again took control of the colony in 1658.
Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore
The Calvert family were Roman Catholics and had founded Maryland as colony where Catholics and Nonconformist Protestants as well as members of the established Church of England could live together in peace. Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1605–1675), had received the proprietorship that was intended for his father, George Calvert, the 1st Lord Baltimore, who died in 1632 at age 53, shortly before it was granted. Cecil established his colony in Maryland from his home in England, (but sent his younger brother Leonard Calvert, (1606–1647) as first colonial governor, and as a Roman Catholic continued the legacy of his father by promoting religious tolerance in the colony. He governed Maryland for forty-two years, though he never visited his colony in person.
Maryland
Maryland was one of the thirteen colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution. Near the end of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), on February 2, 1781, Maryland became the last and 13th state to approve the ratification of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, first proposed in 1776 and adopted by the Second Continental Congress in 1778, which brought into being the United States as a united, sovereign and national state. It also became the seventh state admitted to the Union after ratifying the new federal Constitution in 1788. In December 1790, Maryland donated land selected by first President George Washington to the federal government for the creation of the new national capital of Washington, D.C. The land was provided along the north shore of the Potomac River from Montgomery and Prince George's counties, as well as from Fairfax County and Alexandria on the south shore of the Potomac in Virginia; however, the land donated by the Commonwealth of Virginia was later returned to that state by the District of Columbia retrocession in 1846.
Severn River (Maryland)
If a tributary has sub-tributaries (commonly the upper, nontidal portion) below, they are listed after the "&".Providence, the first colonial settlement in Anne Arundel County, was founded in the fall and winter of 1649–1650 at the beginning of a mass migration of a group of Puritans and non-conformists from Lower Norfolk County in Virginia to primarily the north side of the mouth of the Severn. It faded away after the 1680s when Annapolis came into favor and, in 1694, became Maryland's capital. This "lost town" of Providence was originally though to be limited to the Carr Creek and Greenbury Point area across the river from Annapolis on what are now the grounds of Naval Station Annapolis (renamed North Severn Complex.) More recent archaeological research has uncovered homes of this scattered settlement further to the north and northeast as well, on the southern half of the Broadneck Peninsula, especially near Whitehall Creek.
St. Mary's City, Maryland
Originally the grant to the colony was given to George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (1579-1632), the first Lord Baltimore, by his patron and grateful friend King Charles I in thanks for his services to king and country, before he declared himself a Roman Catholic, making his political position in government untenable for those times of religious rivalry and hatred. It had been a dream of George Calvert to establish a colony in North America and to also make it a haven for persecuted Catholics.
Maryland
Most of the English colonists arrived in Maryland as indentured servants, and had to serve a several years' term as laborers to pay for their passage. In the early years, the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid, and white and black laborers commonly lived and worked together, and formed unions. Mixed-race children born to white mothers were considered free by the principle of "partus sequitur ventrem", by which children took the social status of their mothers, a principle of slave law that was adopted throughout the colonies, following Virginia in 1662. During the colonial era, families of free people of color were formed most often by unions of white women and African men.
Many of the free black families migrated to Delaware, where land was cheaper. As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in England, planters in Maryland imported thousands more slaves and racial caste lines hardened. The economy's growth and prosperity was based on slave labor, devoted first to the production of tobacco as the commodity crop.
Strange to Relate
Very few people, either Jewish or gentile, know that there was once a state in the Union where Jews were denied complete equality until 1826. That place was the State of Maryland. Though it was one of the thirteen original colonies that raised the flag of revolution against British tyranny, though its representatives were among the signatories to the Declaration of Independence which in 1776 declared that "all men were created equal," yet intolerance and religious bigotry persisted for half a century longer.
Maryland
George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore (1579–1632), sought a charter from King Charles I for the territory between Massachusetts to the north and Virginia to the immediate south.
After the first Lord Baltimore died in April 1632, the charter was granted to his son, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1605–1675), on June 20, 1632. Officially, the new "Maryland Colony" was named in honor of Henrietta Maria of France, wife of Charles I of England. George Calvert initially proposed the name “Crescentia,” the land of growth or increase, but “the King proposed Terra Mariae [Mary Land], which was concluded on and Inserted in the bill.”
Music of Maryland
Local music groups during the colonial era did much to sponsor musical development. Annapolis, a major center for colonial music in British North America, was home to the Homony Club and the Tuesday Club, while the Freemasons held balls and concerts across Maryland. Unlike the northern United States, religious music did not prosper in Maryland until the end of the colonial period, and then only in the German communities in the bustling ethnic port city of Baltimore along with outlying rural farming towns of Carroll, Montgomery and Frederick counties. Tavern owners frequently sponsored dances and concerts during the colonial era. Beginning in 1752, theater became a major part of Maryland culture for colonists of all classes; performances included light dance and incidental music, ballad operas and the works of William Shakespeare. Aside from the cultural and state capital of Annapolis, the city of Baltimore, and county seat towns of Upper Marlboro in southern Maryland and Chestertown on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, were major homes for Maryland theater, home to the debuts of the latest and most popular dances. With the French and Indian War (1754–1763), and then the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), soldiers brought back home to Maryland military band music, especially fife and drum ensembles.
Maryland
The royal charter granted Maryland the land north of the Potomac River up to the 40th parallel. A problem arose when Charles II granted a charter for Pennsylvania. The grant defined Pennsylvania's southern border as identical to Maryland's northern border, the 40th parallel. But the grant indicated that Charles II and William Penn assumed the 40th parallel would pass close to New Castle, Delaware when it falls north of Philadelphia, the site of which Penn had already selected for his colony's capital city. Negotiations ensued after the problem was discovered in 1681.
St. Inigoes, Maryland
St. Inigoes is part of the site of the first colonial settlement in Maryland (along with neighboring St. Mary's City, Maryland) and is where the Jesuit priests who came with the first Maryland settlers created their first farm and mission. They brought with them 20 indentured servants and soon established a tobacco plantation in St. Inigoes in order to fund the mission.
Maryland in the American Revolution
The State of Maryland began as the Province of Maryland, an English settlement in North America founded in 1632 as a proprietary colony. George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (1580–1632), wished to create a haven for his fellow English Catholics in the New World. After founding a colony in the Newfoundland called "Avalon", he convinced the King to grant him a second territory in more southern temperate climes. When George Calvert died in 1632 the grant was transferred to his eldest son Cecil.
Suitland, Maryland
In the 1600s, the Piscataway tribe inhabited the lands in southern Maryland. European settlers first visited Saint Clement's Island on the Potomac River and then established their first Maryland colony downriver at Saint Mary's City in 1634, and by the 1660s through the 1680s, settlers had moved into what is now known as Prince George's County. Faced with this encroachment, the Piscataways left the area in 1697, and moved north to what is now known as Conoy Island. They eventually moved further north into Pennsylvania and Michigan. The sole export of the European settlers was tobacco, and slaves were first brought to the county in the 1700s.
History of St. Mary's College of Maryland
Mathias Da Sousa was an indentured servant in early St. Mary's City, possibly of African and Portuguese heritage, who gained his freedom and established himself as a trader and a mariner in the colony. He was elected to the Maryland Assembly in St. Mary's City, the colony's first legislative body. He traded primarily with the Piscataway Indian nation and also worked as a sailor for the colonial leadership.
St. Mary's College of Maryland
St. Mary's College of Maryland is located on the original site of Maryland's first colony, St. Mary's City, which was also the first capital of Maryland and is considered to be the birthplace of religious freedom in America.
St. Mary's City, Maryland
Accompanied and led by Leonard Calvert, in 1633, two ships, "The Ark" and "The Dove", set sail together, loaded with settlers, Jesuit missionaries and indentured servants. After a long, rough sea voyage with a stopover to resupply in Barbados, they arrived in what is now Maryland in March 1634. They made their first permanent settlement in what is now St. Mary's County, Maryland choosing to settle on a bluff overlooking the St. Mary's river, a relatively calm, tidal tributary to the mouth of the Potomac river where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay. The site was already a Native American village when they arrived, occupied by members of the Yaocomico branch of the Piscataway Indian Nation, but the settlers had with them a former Virginia colonist who was fluent in their language and they met quickly with the paramount chief of the region. The chief sold 30 acres of land there to the new colonists.
Maryland
Maryland has been historically prominent to American Catholic tradition because the English colony of Maryland was intended by George Calvert as a haven for English Catholics. Baltimore was the seat of the first Catholic bishop in the U.S. (1789), and Emmitsburg was the home and burial place of the first American-born citizen to be canonized, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. Georgetown University, the first Catholic University, was founded in 1789 in what was then part of Maryland. The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Baltimore was the first Roman Catholic cathedral built in the United States, and the Archbishop of Baltimore is, albeit without formal primacy, the United States' quasi-primate, and often a cardinal. Among the immigrants of the 19th and 20th century from eastern and southern Europe were many Catholics.
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware on its eastern side. The state's largest city is Baltimore, and its capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are "Old Line State", the "Free State", and the "Chesapeake Bay State". It is named after the English queen Henrietta Maria, known in England as Queen Mary.
Maryland Toleration Act
The Maryland colony was founded by Cecil Calvert in 1634. Like his father George Calvert, who had originated the efforts that led to the colony's charter, Cecil Calvert was Catholic at a time when England was dominated by the Anglican Church. The Calverts intended the colony as a haven for Catholics fleeing England and as a source of income for themselves and their descendants. Many of Maryland's first settlers were Catholic, including at least two Catholic priests, one of whom became the earliest chronicler of the colony's history. But whatever Calvert's intentions, Maryland was a colony of an Anglican nation. Its charter had been granted by an Anglican king and seems to have assumed that the Church of England would be its official church. Anglican and later Puritan newcomers quickly came to outnumber the early Catholic settlers. Thus, by 1649 when the law was passed, the colonial assembly was dominated by Protestants, and the law was in effect an act of Protestant tolerance for Catholics, rather than the reverse.
Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore
While the expedition was being prepared, Baltimore was busy in England defending the 1632 Charter from former members of the Virginia Company. They were trying to regain their original Charter, including the entirety of the new Maryland colony, which had previously been included within the domains described as a part of Virginia. They had informally tried to thwart the founding of another colony for years, but their first formal complaint was lodged with the "Lords of Foreign Plantations" (Lords of Trade and Plantations) in July 1633. The complaint claimed that Maryland had not truly been unsettled, as stated in its charter, because William Claiborne had previously run a trading station on Kent Island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay off the eastern shore. It also claimed that the Charter was so broad as to constitute a violation of the liberties of the colony's subjects. At this point there were few Marylanders yet in residence.
History of the Catholic Church in the United States
Catholicism was introduced to the English colonies with the founding of the Province of Maryland. Maryland was one of the few regions among the English colonies in North America that had a sizable Catholic population. However, the 1646 defeat of the Royalists in the English Civil War led to stringent laws against Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from the colony, including Andrew White, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor. Due to immigration, by 1660 the population of the Province had gradually become predominantly Protestant. During the greater part of the Maryland colonial period, Jesuits continued to conduct Catholic schools clandestinely.
Republic of Maryland
The first area in the Republic of Maryland to be settled by the Maryland Colonization Society was Cape Palmas, in 1834, somewhat south of the rest of the American colony. The Cape is a small, rocky peninsula connected to the mainland by a sandy isthmus. Immediately to the west of the peninsula is the estuary of the Hoffman River. Approximately 21 km (15 mi) along the coast to the east, the Cavalla River empties into the sea, marking the border between Liberia and the Ivory Coast. It marks the western limit of the Gulf of Guinea, according to the International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO).
Republic of Maryland
In 1836 the colony appointed its first black governor, John Brown Russwurm (1799–1851), who served as governor for more than a dozen years until his death. Russwurm encouraged the immigration of African Americans to Maryland in Africa, and supported agriculture and trade. He had begun his career working as the colonial secretary for the American Colonization Society between 1830 and 1834. He also worked as the editor of the "Liberia Herald." He resigned this post in 1835 to protest America's colonization policies.
Baltimore County, Maryland
The name "Baltimore" derives from Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1605–1675), the proprietor of the new colony in the Province of Maryland, and the town of Baltimore in County Cork, Ireland. The earliest known documentary record of the county is dated January 12, 1659, when a writ was issued on behalf of the General Assembly of Maryland to its sheriff. The official founding of the county came in 1659, among the now 23 counties of the State of Maryland. This assumes that a certain amount of organization and appointments in the middle 17th Century had already occurred. Previously, (old) Baltimore County was known more as a geographical entity than a political one, with its territorial limits including most of northeastern Maryland, which was then the northwestern frontier of the Province and included the present day jurisdictions of Baltimore City, Cecil and Harford Counties, as well as parts of Carroll, Anne Arundel, Frederick, Howard and Kent Counties.
History of Maryland
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, applied to Charles I for a royal charter for what was to become the Province of Maryland. After Calvert died in April 1632, the charter for "Maryland Colony" (in Latin "Terra Mariae") was granted to his son, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, on June 20, 1632. Some historians viewed this as compensation for his father having been stripped of his title of Secretary of State in 1625 after announcing his Roman Catholicism.
History of the Jews in Colonial America
It would seem that only a few Jews found their way to Maryland during the first half of the 17th century, and that the first settlers of this colony came as individuals, and not in considerable numbers at any time, as was the case in New York, Newport, Savannah, and Charleston. To judge by the names alone it would appear that a few Jews were resident in Maryland from the earliest days of the colony. The most prominent figure, who was unquestionably a Jew, was a Dr. Jacob Lumbrozo, who had arrived January 24, 1656, and who, in 1658, was tried for blasphemy, but was released by reason of the general amnesty granted in honor of the accession of Richard Cromwell (March 3, 1658). Letters of denization were issued to Lumbrozo September 10, 1663. Besides practising medicine, he also owned a plantation, engaged in trade with the Indians, and had active intercourse with London merchants. He was one of the earliest medical practitioners in the colony, and his career casts much light upon the history and nature of religious tolerance in Maryland. By the strength of his personality he was able to disregard nearly all the laws which would have rendered his residence in the colony impossible, and he seems to have observed his faith even though this, under the laws, was forbidden. The unfavorable environment rendered the admittance of Jews to Maryland difficult, and until the Constitution of 1776 established the religious rights of all, few Jews settled in the colony.
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore
Maryland became a prime tobacco exporting colony in the mid-Atlantic and, for a time, a refuge for Catholic settlers, as George Calvert had hoped. Under the rule of the Lords Baltimore, thousands of British Catholics emigrated to Maryland, establishing some of the oldest Catholic communities in what later became the United States. Catholic rule in Maryland was eventually nullified by the re-assertion of royal control over the colony.
Province of Maryland
On 20 June 1632, Charles granted the original charter for Maryland, a proprietary colony of about twelve million acres (49,000 km²), to the 2nd Baron Baltimore. Some historians view this grant as a form of compensation for Calvert's father's having been stripped of his title of Secretary of State upon announcing his Roman Catholicism in 1625. The charter offered no guidelines on religion, although it was assumed that Catholics would not be molested in the new colony.
Province of Maryland
Of the 200 or so initial settlers who traveled to Maryland on the ships "Ark" and "Dove," the majority were Protestant. On November 22, 1633, Lord Baltimore sent the first settlers to the new colony, and after a long voyage with a stopover to resupply in Barbados, the "Ark" and the "Dove" landed on 25 March 1634 (thereafter celebrated as "Maryland Day"), at Blackistone Island, thereafter known as St. Clement's Island, off the northern shore of the Potomac River, upstream from its confluence with the Chesapeake Bay and Point Lookout. The new settlers were led by Lord Baltimore's younger brother Leonard Calvert, whom Baltimore had delegated to serve as governor of the new colony.
Republic of Maryland
In 1838, a number of other American settlements on the west coast of Africa united to form the Commonwealth of Liberia, which declared its independence in July 26, 1847.
Republic of Maryland
Most of the settlers were freed African-American slaves and freeborn African Americans primarily from the state of Maryland. The Colonization Society organizers thought they could establish new trading ties by relocating African Americans to West Africa. The colony was named Maryland In Africa (also known as Maryland in Liberia) on February 12, 1834.
Maryland State Colonization Society
The Maryland Colonization Society was founded in 1827, and its first president was the wealthy planter Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who was himself a Marylander and a substantial slaveholder. Although he supported the gradual abolition of slavery, he did not free his own slaves, perhaps fearing that they might be rendered destitute in the process Carroll introduced a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in the Maryland senate but it did not pass.
Economic history of Colonial Maryland
Maryland's colonial economic history is marked by a heavy reliance on the tobacco crop. Though it would remain a slave state until the end of the Civil War, it was not until the 1700s that labor began to drive agricultural production in the colony. The colonial era would also see Maryland begin early industrialization and urbanization, experiment with different monetary system, and make efforts to diversify its economy.
Maryland Toleration Act
In 1654, only five years after its passage, the Act was repealed. Two years earlier the colony had been seized by Protestants following the execution of King Charles I of England and the outbreak of the English Civil War. In the early stages of that conflict, the colonial assembly of Maryland and its neighbors in Virginia had publicly declared their support for the King. Parliament appointed Protestant commissioners loyal to their cause to subdue the colonies, and two of them, the Virginian William Claiborne and Puritan leader Richard Bennett, took control of the colonial government in St. Mary's City in 1652. In addition to repealing the Maryland Toleration Act with the assistance of Protestant assemblymen, Claiborne and Bennett passed a new law barring Catholics from openly practicing their religion. Calvert regained control after making a deal with the colony's Protestants, and in 1657 the Act was again passed by the colonial assembly. This time, it would last more than thirty years, until 1692.
Maryland Day
Ceremonies, activities, historical pageants and other commemorative events are held annually in Historic St. Mary's City in St. Mary's County, the first colonial capital of the province and the site of several reconstructed provincial and colonial structures including the first State House with a tourism/historical agency which runs operations and provides interpretative information. This was where the first sessions of the General Assembly of Maryland were held, over 375 years ago.
St. Mary's College of Maryland
However, in addition to this, since 1840, the school has been charged by the state in various capacities in researching, interpreting and memorializing Maryland history at the site of Maryland's first colony and capitol, St. Mary's City, Maryland, which is also where the college is located.
Maryland State Colonization Society
Soon afterward, local tribes including the Grebo and the Kru attacked the State of Maryland in retaliation for its disruption of the slave trade. Unable to maintain its own defense, Maryland appealed to Liberia, its more powerful neighbor, for help. President Roberts sent military assistance, and an alliance of Marylanders and Liberian militia troops successfully repelled the local tribesmen. However, it was now clear that the Republic of Maryland could not survive as an independent state, and on March 18, 1857 Maryland was annexed by Liberia, becoming known henceforth as Maryland County.
Colonial history of the United States
Very few women were present in the early Chesapeake colonies. In 1650, estimates put Maryland's total population near six hundred, with fewer than two hundred women present. Much of the population consisted of young, single, white indentured servants and, as such, the colonies lacked social cohesiveness, to a large degree. African women entered the colony as early as 1619, although their status remains a historical debate—free, slave, or indentured servant.
Mary Kittamaquund
Between December 1646 and April 1647, Governor Calvert's forces finally managed to repel the invaders (which reduced the Maryland colony from approximately 500 to 600 settlers to about 100 English). However, Calvert then fell ill and died on June 9, 1647. He had named Margaret Brent his executor, and told her to settle matters. In order to pay the mercenaries to go back across the Potomac River to Virginia, she sold Calvert's cattle. When Calvert's brother Lord Baltimore later learned this, he was upset, probably not realizing the danger his colony had faced. At some time during this period, chief Kittamaquund died, and Giles Brent (who had been freed in England and returned to Maryland) claimed all the Piscataway lands as Mary's husband. This violated Piscataway tribal customs, and also conflicted with Lord Baltimore's land grant, which had given rise to the English colony in the first place. Moreover, Claiborne's erstwhile Susquehannock trading partners took their furs to the new Swedish trading post at Fort Christina.
History of slavery in Maryland
In December 1831, the Maryland state legislature appropriated $10,000 for twenty-six years to transport free blacks and formerly enslaved people from the United States to Africa. The act authorized appropriation of funds of up to $20,000 a year, up to a total of $200,000, in order to begin the process of African colonization. Most of the money would be spent on the colony itself, to make it attractive to settlers. Free passage was offered, plus rent, of land to farm, and low-interest loans which would eventually be forgiven if the settlers chose to remain in the colony. The remainder was spent on agents paid to publicize the new colony.
St. Mary's College of Maryland
Colonial St. Mary's City was actually only a town and at its peak had between 500 and 600 residents. However, as the colony quickly expanded and settlements spread throughout the Eastern part of what is now Maryland, the town remained the capital and representatives would travel from all over the colony to participate in the Maryland General Assembly, the colony's first legislative body.
History of Maryland
After the Revolutionary War, numerous Maryland planters freed their slaves as the economy changed. Baltimore grew to become one of the largest cities on the eastern seaboard, and a major economic force in the country. Although Maryland was still a slave state in 1860, by that time nearly half of the African American population was already free, due mostly to manumissions after the American Revolution. Maryland was among the four divided border states that officially remained in the Union during the American Civil War (1861–1865), although large numbers of Marylanders "went south" to fight for the seceded Confederacy.
Province of Maryland
The Province of Maryland was an active participant in the events leading up to the American Revolution, and echoed events in New England by establishing committees of correspondence and hosting its own tea party similar to the one that took place in Boston. By 1776 the old order had been overthrown as Maryland citizens signed the Declaration of Independence, forcing the end of British colonial rule.
The Catholic George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, (1579–1632), former Secretary of State to His Majesty, King Charles I, wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the New World. After having visited the Americas and founded a colony in the future Canadian province of Newfoundland called "Avalon", he convinced the King to grant him a second territory in more southern, temperate climes. Upon Baltimore's death in 1632 the grant was transferred to his eldest son Cecil.
St. Mary's College of Maryland
The school is non-religious (secular) and has been since it was started in 1840 (The name St. Mary's commemorates Maryland's first colony, "St. Mary's City", which once stood where the college stands now).
Rosedale, Maryland
Rosedale, a community northeast of the city of Baltimore, was a plantation and later farming community, from the time of the first settlers and their slaves, until suburban development began after World War II. Maryland Route 7, which runs through the community, was originally the Philadelphia Road. George Washington traveled it to New York in 1789 where he was inaugurated as the first American president.
Province of Maryland
In 1672, Lord Baltimore declared that Maryland included the settlement of Whorekills on the west shore of the Delaware Bay, an area under the jurisdiction of the Province of New York (as the British had renamed New Netherland after taking possession in 1664). A force was dispatched which attacked and captured this settlement. New York could not immediately respond because New York was soon recaptured by the Dutch. This settlement was restored to the Province of New York when New York was recaptured from the Dutch in November, 1674.Frederick died in 1771, by which time relations between Britain and her American colonies were fast deteriorating. In his will, Frederick left his proprietary Palatinate of Maryland to his eldest illegitimate son, Henry Harford, then aged just 13. The colony, perhaps grateful to be rid of Frederick at last, recognized Harford as Calvert's heir. However, the will was challenged by the family of Frederick's sister, Louisa Calvert Browning, who did not recognize Harford's inheritance. Before the case could grind its way through the Court of Chancery, Maryland had become engulfed by the American Revolution and by 1776 was at war with Britain. Henry Harford would ultimately lose almost all his colonial possessions.
Governor of Maryland
During the Colonial period, Maryland's Proprietors, the Barons and Lords of Baltimore, who generally remained in the Kingdom of England, chose who would serve as the proprietary Governor of Maryland on their behalf. Leonard Calvert (1606-1647), youngest brother of the second Lord Baltimore, Cecilius Calvert (1605-1675), and the first Lord Proprietor, came with the first settlers in March 1634 to serve as first Governor of the colonial Province of Maryland until his death in 1647. Between 1692, when the Baltimores lost control, and 1715, Maryland was a direct Royal Colony, and the Governor was appointed by the British Monarch. The Lords of Baltimore regained their Royal Charter in 1715, under the British monarchs of the German House of Hanover, and then under the fifth and sixth Lord Baltimores, they resumed choosing the Governors until the beginning of the American Revolution (1775-1783). The first Governor of an independent state chosen to break this chain of colonial Governors was Thomas Johnson (1732-1819) of Frederick County, who took office on March 21, 1777.
Annapolis, Maryland
In 1654, after the Third English Civil War, Parliamentary forces assumed control of the Maryland colony and Stone went into exile further south across the Potomac River in Virginia. Per orders from Charles Calvert, fifth Lord Baltimore, Stone returned the following spring at the head of a Cavalier royalist force, loyal to the King of England. On March 25, 1655, in what is known as the Battle of the Severn (first colonial naval battle in North America), Stone was defeated, taken prisoner, and replaced by Lt. Gen. Josias Fendall (1628–1687) as fifth Proprietary Governor. Fendall governed Maryland during the latter half of the Commonwealth period in England. In 1660, he was replaced by Phillip Calvert (1626–1682) as fifth/sixth Governor of Maryland, after the restoration of Charles II (1630–1685) as King in England.
Province of Maryland
Here at St. Clement's Island they raised a large cross, and led by Jesuit Father Andrew White celebrated Mass. The new settlement was called "St. Mary's City" and it became the first capitol of Maryland. It remained so for sixty years until 1695 when the colony's capital was moved north to the more central, newly established "Anne Arundel's Town (also briefly known as "Providence") and later renamed as "Annapolis".
Lexington Park, Maryland
Historic St. Mary's City, seven miles south of Lexington Park, is the site of the founding of the Maryland colony as well as being recognized as the birthplace of religious freedom in America. It is now a reconstructed colonial town, a museum complex, and a center for living history. The "Maryland Dove" a full-sized working replica of the sailing ship that bore the firsts colonists to the new Maryland colony is there as well.
Cape Palmas
Originally a branch of the American Colonization Society that founded Liberia in 1822, Maryland State Colonization Society decided to establish a new settlement of its own that could accommodate its emigrants and named it Maryland In Africa on February 12, 1834. With Cape Palmas at its center, the colony was granted statehood on February 2, 1841 and then independence on May 29, 1854. On March 18, 1857, the state of Maryland was annexed as a part of the Republic of Liberia, after signing an annexation treaty with the Republic of Liberia.
History of Maryland
Maryland was a border state, straddling the North and South. As in Virginia and Delaware, some planters in Maryland had freed their slaves in the years after the Revolutionary War. By 1860 Maryland's free black population comprised 49.1% of the total of African Americans in the state.
History of slavery in Maryland
During the American Civil War, fought primarily over the issue of slavery, Maryland remained in the Union, though a minority of her citizens – and virtually all of its slaveholders – were sympathetic towards the rebel Confederate States. As a Union border state, Maryland was not included in President Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in Southern Confederate states to be free. The following year, Maryland held a constitutional convention. A new state constitution was passed on November 1, 1864, and Article 24 prohibited the practice of slavery. The right to vote was extended to non-white males in the Maryland Constitution of 1867, which remains in effect today. (The vote was extended to women of all races in 1920 by ratification of a national constitutional amendment.)
St. Mary's County, Maryland
The settlement of Lord Baltimore's Maryland began with the arrival of passengers from England at St. Clement's Island in the Potomac River in what is now southwestern St. Mary's County on March 25, 1634 (the anniversary of this landing being annually celebrated as Maryland Day). The passengers arrived in two vessels, the "Ark" and the "Dove," which had set sail from the Isle of Wight on November 22, 1633. The county is also home to the first Catholic Mass celebrated in one of the original thirteen colonies -after they'd become English colonies (masses were said in 1526-7 at San Miguel de Gualdape).
Morris v. United States
On June 20, 1632, Charles I, King of England, made a land grant in North America to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore which became the Province of Maryland (later the state of Maryland). This grant set the boundary of Maryland at the low-water mark of the southern bank of the Potomac River. On September 27, 1688, King James II made a land grant in North American to Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper which became the Colony of Virginia (later the state of Virginia). This grant designated "the Potomac River" as the boundary of Virginia. The conflicting grants led to a long-running border dispute between Maryland and Virginia. The two states settled navigational and riparian water rights in a compact in 1785, but the boundary dispute continued.
Margaret Brent
Margaret Brent (c. 1601 – c. 1671), an English immigrant to the Colony of Maryland, settled in its new capitol, St. Mary's City, Maryland. She was the first woman in the English North American colonies to appear before a court of the common law. She was a significant founding settler in the early histories of the colonies of Maryland and Virginia. Leonard Calvert, Governor of the Maryland Colony, appointed her as the executrix of his estate in 1647, at a time of political turmoil and risk to the future of the settlement. She helped ensure soldiers were paid and given food to keep their loyalty to the colony, thereby very likely having saved the colony from violent mutiny, although her actions were taken negatively by the absentee colonial proprietor in England, Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, and so ultimately she paid a great price for her efforts and was forced to leave the colony.
History of slavery in Maryland
During the eighteenth century the numbers of slaves imported into Maryland greatly increased, as the labor-intensive tobacco economy became dominant, and the colony developed into a slave society. In 1700 there were about 25,000 people in Maryland and by 1750 that had grown more than 5 times to 130,000. By 1755, about 40% of Maryland's population was black.
Province of Maryland
The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S. state of Maryland. Its first settlement and capital was St. Mary's City, in the southern end of St. Mary's County, which is a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay and is also bordered by four tidal rivers.
St. Mary's City, Maryland
Lord Baltimore's World was a large-scale, months-long colonial reenactment that was staffed by professional actors and also included live Shakespearean theater, that occurred within St. Mary's City proper and celebrated the 350th anniversary of the arrival of Maryland's first colonists.
Caroline Eden
Upon the death of her brother, Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore, the colony of Maryland passed to Frederick's illegitimate son, Henry Harford. Despite his illegitimacy, the people of Maryland initially supported Harford and welcomed him as their new Lord Proprietor, even naming Harford County, Maryland after him in 1773. However, Governor Robert Eden disputed Harford's inheritance, and in 1774 tried to claim a part of the estate on behalf of his wife Caroline.
Delmarva Peninsula
In the 1632 Charter of Maryland, King Charles I of England granted "all that Part of the Peninsula, or Chersonese, lying in the Parts of America, between the Ocean on the East and the Bay of Chesapeake on the West, divided from the Residue thereof by a Right Line drawn from the Promontory, or Head-Land, called Watkin's Point, situate upon the Bay aforesaid, near the river Wigloo, on the West, unto the main Ocean on the East; and between that Boundary on the South, unto that Part of the Bay of Delaware on the North, which lieth under the Fortieth Degree of North Latitude from the Equinoctial, where New England is terminated" to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, as the colony of Maryland. This would have included all of present-day Delaware; however, a clause in the charter granted only that part of the peninsula that had not already been colonized by Europeans by 1632. Over a century later, it was decided in the case of "Penn v. Lord Baltimore" that because the Dutch had colonized Zwaanendael in 1631, that portion of Maryland's charter granting Delaware to Maryland was void.
Piscataway Indian Nation and Tayac Territory
The English explorer Captain John Smith first visited the upper Potomac River in 1608. When the English began to colonize what is now Maryland, the Tayac made allies of the newcomers. He granted the English a former Indian settlement, which they renamed St. Mary's City, after their own monarch. The Tayac intended the new colonial outpost to serve as a buffer against Susquehannock incursions from the north. In 1634 Tayac "Chitimachen" or "Kittamaquund" converted to Christianity under the guidance of Jesuit Rev. Andrew White. His young daughter Mary, who also had converted and taken a Christian name, married the colonist Giles Brent of Maryland. Soon, the tribe was caught in English religious wars, as the Virginia Protestant trader William Claiborne and his ally Captain Ingalls, invaded Maryland and destroyed St. Mary's City as well as the rival trading post at Kent Island. Moreover, both Gov. Calvert and Kittamaquund soon died. Since neither the tribe nor the rival Maryland governments recognized Brent's claim to Piscataway lands, the couple crossed the Potomac to establish a trading post and live at Aquia Creek, Virginia.
Republic of Maryland
The larger American Colonization Society was founded in 1816; it supported the settlement of thousands of free African Americans to their colony based in Monrovia in West Africa, along the coast. There were also initially separate settlements founded by state colonization societies of Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Louisiana. In 1838, these African-American settlements were united into the Commonwealth of Liberia, which declared its independence from the American Colonization Society in July 26, 1847. The Maryland colony remained separate from Commonwealth of Liberia, as the colonization society wished to maintain its trade monopoly in the area. On February 2, 1841, Maryland-in-Africa became the Independent State of Maryland. Following an independence referendum in 1853, the state declared its independence on May 29, 1854 under the name Maryland in Liberia, with its capital at Harper.
Province of Maryland
Maryland developed into a plantation colony by the 18th century. In 1700 there were about 25,000 people and by 1750 that had grown more than 5 times to 130,000. By 1755, about 40% of Maryland's population was black. Maryland planters also made extensive use of indentured servants and penal labor. An extensive system of rivers facilitated the movement of produce from inland plantations and farms to the Atlantic coast for export. Baltimore, on Chesapeake Bay, was the second-most important port in the 18th-century South, after Charleston, South Carolina.
History of Maryland
When Europeans began to settle in Maryland in the early 17th century, the main tribes included the Nanticoke on the Eastern Shore, and the Iroquoian speaking Susquehannock. Early exposure to new European diseases brought widespread fatalities to the Native Americans, as they had no immunity to them. Communities were disrupted by such losses. Furthermore, The Susquehannock, already incorrectly considered savages and cannibals by the first Spanish explorers, made massive moves to control local trade with the first Swedish, Dutch and English settlers of the Chesapeake Bay region. As the century wore on, the Susquehannock would be caught up in the Beaver Wars, a war with the neighboring Lenape, a war with the Dutch, a war with the English, and a series of wars with the colonial government of Maryland. Due to colonial land claims, the exact territory of the Susquehannock was originally limited to the territory immediately surrounding the Susquehanna River, however archaeology has discovered settlements of theirs dating to the 14th and 15th centuries around the Maryland-West Virginia border, and beyond. It could generally be assumed that most of Maryland's southern border is based on the borders of their own land. All of these wars, coupled with disease, destroyed the tribe and the last of their people were offered refuge from the Iroquois Confederacy to the north shortly thereafter.
Maryland v. West Virginia
On June 20, 1632, Charles I, King of England, made a land grant in North America to Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore which became the Province of Maryland (later the state of Maryland). This grant set the boundary of Maryland at the low-water mark of the southern bank of the Potomac River. On September 27, 1688, King James II made a land grant in North America to Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper which became the Colony of Virginia (later the commonwealth of Virginia). This grant designated "the Potomac River" as the boundary of Virginia. The conflicting grants led to a long-running border dispute between Maryland and Virginia. The two states settled navigational and riparian water rights in a compact in 1785, but the boundary dispute continued.
Gentry
The Colonial families of Maryland were the leading families in the Province of Maryland. Several also had interests in the Colony of Virginia, and the two are sometimes referred to as the Chesapeake Colonies. Many of the early settlers came from the West Midlands in England, although the Maryland families were composed of a variety of European nationalities, e.g., French, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Swedish, in addition to English. Charles I of England granted the province palatinate status under Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. The foundational charter created an aristocracy of lords of the manor for Maryland. Maryland was uniquely created as a colony for Catholic aristocracy and landed gentry, but Anglicanism eventually came to dominate, as Protestant immigrants led a rebellion against the Calvert government.
Somerset County, Maryland
In 1689, the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 in England resulted in the exile of the Roman Catholic King James II. After conquest by invasion, the Protestant Dutch rulers William of Orange-Nassau and Mary of Orange (James II's Protestant daughter) later became King William III, (1650-1702) and Queen Mary II. The "Protestant Revolution" of 1689 in Maryland overthrew the Roman Catholic government, resulting in the reversion of Lord Baltimore's proprietary charter. The Province was converted into a Royal colony (with a later government controlled by the king and his ministers). The capital was moved from the Catholic stronghold at St. Mary's City in southern Maryland to the more central, newly renamed Annapolis on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, opposite Kent Island.
History of Maryland
Because Maryland remained in the Union, it fell outside the scope of the Emancipation Proclamation. A constitutional convention in 1864 culminated in the passage of a new state constitution on November 1 of that year. Article 24 of that document outlawed the practice of slavery. A campaign by state politician John Pendleton Kennedy and others ensured that abolishment of slavery would be in the new document, and the issue was hotly contested for nearly a year throughout the state. In the end the elimination of slavery was approved by a 1,000-vote margin. The right to vote was extended to non-white males in the Maryland Constitution of 1867, which is still in effect today.
History of Maryland
Annapolis served as the temporary United States capital from November 26, 1783, to June 3, 1784, and the Confederation Congress met in the recently completed Maryland State House. Annapolis was a candidate to become the new nation's permanent capital before the site of the along the Potomac River was selected for the District of the Columbia. It was in the old Senate chamber that General George Washington famously resigned his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army on December 23, 1783. It was also there that the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the Revolutionary War, was ratified by Congress on January 14, 1784.
Colonial charters in the Thirteen Colonies
As a result of political upheavals, especially after the three English Civil Wars in the 1640s, and the later "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 with their Roman Catholic--Protestant/Anglican conflicts which also transformed into struggles between the King and Parliament. As these conflicts traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, most colonies eventually surrendered their charters to the Crown by 1763 and became royal colonies as the King and his Ministers asserted more centralized control of their previously neglected and autonomous Thirteen Colonies. By the late 1600s, the colonial Maryland, had its Proprietary Charter to the Lords Baltimore revoked and had become a royal colony with its Governor of Maryland appointed by the Monarch with the advice of his Ministers and the Colonial Offices and Board of Trade of members from Parliament. By 1776, when the Pennsylvania and its lower Delaware Bay counties remained proprietary colonies under a charter originally granted to William Penn and his heirs. The Province of Connecticut and the Province of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations continued as corporation colonies under charters, and Massachusetts was governed as a royal province while operating under a charter after the unifying of the older "Massachusetts Bay" colony at Boston and the "first landing" colony, Plymouth Colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts, with its famous "Mayflower Compact" from 1620. Further south, the Provinces of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia to the undefined border with Spanish Florida, all had their original charters dismissed with different opinions about the role and powers and taxing authority between the Royal Governors and their increasingly restless and defiant colonial Assemblies. The Royal Authority reasserted itself and becoming governed more directly from London with increasing friction as the 18th Century progressed to its revolutionary climax.
Music of Maryland
Indigenous peoples created the first music in what became Maryland. The documented music history of Maryland begins during the colonial era, in the 18th century. The capital city of Annapolis was a major center for music during the colonial era; the city's Tuesday Club left behind documentation of musical life in Annapolis, one of the most complete sources for musical knowledge about that era in the United States. The larger growing port city of Baltimore 20 miles farther north eventually replaced Annapolis as a center for music in Maryland, and eventually became home to most of the prominent music institutions in the state, especially the Peabody Institute, founded by George Peabody in 1857. Later still, Baltimore's Pennsylvania Avenue, northwest of downtown, became a very well known home for African American music, especially jazz, while Maryland began producing popular musicians like The Orioles. In modern times, Maryland has been a home for styles including emo and hardcore punk.
Maryland
Tourism is popular in Maryland, with tourists visiting the city of Baltimore, the beaches of the Eastern Shore, and the nature of western Maryland, as well as many passing through on the way to Washington, D.C. Baltimore attractions include the Harborplace, the Baltimore Aquarium, Fort McHenry, as well as the Camden Yards baseball stadium.
Ocean City on the Atlantic Coast has been a popular beach destination in summer, particularly since the Chesapeake Bay Bridge was built in 1952 connecting the Eastern Shore to the more populated Maryland cities. The state capital of Annapolis offers sites such as the state capitol building, the historic district, and the waterfront.
Maryland also has several sites of interest to military history, given Maryland's role in the American Civil War and in the War of 1812. Other attractions include the historic and picturesque towns along the Chesapeake Bay, such as Saint Mary's, Maryland's first colonial settlement and original capital.
St. Mary's Peninsula
The St. Mary's Peninsula was the site of the first Maryland Colony and was the fourth permanent colonial settlement in North America. Consequently, its history from that perspective goes back more than 380 years to the 1630s. Many of the descendents of this period, and also descendents of later immigrants to the area as well as former slave populations from the antebellum period also still live on the peninsula.
History of Maryland
In 1689, following the accession of a Protestant monarchy in England, rebels against the Catholic regime in Maryland overthrew the government and took power. Lord Baltimore was stripped of his right to govern the province, though not of his territorial rights, and Maryland became a royal province, administered by the crown via appointed governors until 1715—when Benedict Calvert, 4th Baron Baltimore, having converted to Anglicanism, was restored to proprietorship.
Maryland State Colonization Society
In 1838, a number of other African-American settlements on the west coast of Africa were united into the Commonwealth of Liberia, which then declared its independence in 1847. However, the colony of Maryland in Liberia colony remained independent, as the Maryland State Colonization Society wished to maintain its trade monopoly in the area. On February 2, 1841, Maryland-in-Africa was granted statehood, and became the State of Maryland. In 1847 the Maryland State Colonization Society, published the "Constitution and Laws of Maryland in Liberia", based on the United States Constitution.
Eastern Shore of Maryland
William Claiborne was granted land (part of the Colony of Virginia) in 1629 and named the land "Kent County". In 1631, he sailed north up the Chesapeake Bay from its south and west side to the area known today as Kent Island. There he made a fortified settlement that is considered to be the first English settlement within the Province of Maryland. Talbot County was formed in 1662. Cecil County was formed in 1674, by proclamation of the Governor, from eastern portions of Baltimore County and the northern portion of Kent County. Wicomico County was formed in 1867, as the 9th and last county, created from Somerset and Worcester counties.Ocean City was founded on July 4, 1875, when the Atlantic Hotel opened on Assateague Island. At the time, Assateague Island was continuous from the Delaware state line to well south of Ocean City: the Ocean City Inlet was not formed until a hurricane in August 1933 cut across the south end of the town, although the inlet was cut not by waves sweeping inland, but by 4 or 5 days' worth of freshwater runoff from the coastal creeks running seaward. By 1935, government money had built jetties to make the inlet permanent, dividing Fenwick Island (north) from Assateague Island (south). Early transportation to the island was by train.
Maryland in the American Revolution
In 1774, committees of correspondence sprung up throughout the colonies, offering support to Boston, Massachusetts, after the British closed the port and increased the occupying military force. Massachusetts had asked for a general meeting or Continental Congress to consider joint action by all the colonies. To forestall any such action, the royal governor of Maryland, Sir Robert Eden prorogued the Maryland colonial assembly on April 19, 1774. This was the last session of the colonial assembly ever held in Maryland.
Maryland Day
Maryland Day is a legal holiday in the U.S. state of Maryland. It is observed on the anniversary of the March 25, 1634, landing of the first European settlers in the Province of Maryland, the third English colony to be settled in British North America. On this day settlers from ""The Ark"" and the smaller ""The Dove"" first stepped foot onto Maryland soil, at St. Clement's Island in the Potomac River. The settlers were about 150 in number, departed from Gravesend on the Thames River downstream from London. Three Jesuit priests were collected from Cowes on the Isle of Wight in England where they avoided having to give the oath of allegiance and supremacy to the King. The colony's grant was renewed to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, (1605-1675), two years prior by Charles I of England, after first being given to his father Sir George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, (1574-1632), along with the title of "Lord Baltimore", and a first grant in Acadia, in Newfoundland, (modern Canada), (title named after lands and town Baltimore, in Ireland) who had served the King in many official and personal capacities as Secretary of State, 1619-1625 (despite his conversion to Roman Catholicism). In thanksgiving for the safe landing, Jesuit Father Andrew White celebrated the Mass for the colonists led by the younger brother of Lord Baltimore, Leonard Calvert, (1606-1647), who served as the first governor, and perhaps for the first time ever in this part of the world on the first landing at Blackistone Island, later known as St. Clement's Island off the northern shore of the Potomac River, which was the new border between the new colony and the earlier English settlements in Virginia) and erected a large cross. The landing coincided with the Feast of the Annunciation, a holy day honoring Mary, and the start of the new year in England's legal calendar (prior to 1752). Maryland Day on 25 March celebrates the 1634 landing at St Clements. Later the colonists and their two ships sailed further back down river to the southeast to settle a capital at St. Mary's City near the point where the Potomac flows into the Chesapeake Bay.
Catholic Church in the United States
Anti-Catholicism was official government policy for the English who settled the colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. Maryland was founded by a Catholic, Lord Baltimore as the first 'non-denominational' colony and was the first to accommodate Catholics. A charter was issued to him in 1632. In 1650, the Puritans in the colony rebelled and repealed the Act of Toleration. Catholicism was outlawed and Catholic priests were hunted and exiled. By 1658, the Act of Toleration was reinstated and Maryland became the center of Catholicism into the mid-19th century. In 1689 Puritans rebelled and again repealed the Maryland Toleration Act. Freedom of religion returned with the American Revolution. In 1756 a Maryland Catholic official estimated seven thousand practicing Catholics in Maryland and three thousand in Pennsylvania. The Williamsburg Foundation estimates in 1765 Maryland Catholics at 20,000 and 6,000 in Pennsylvania. The population of these colonies at the time was approximately 180,000 and 200,000, respectively. By the time the American War for Independence started in 1776, Catholics formed 1.6%, or 40,000 persons, white and black of the 2.5 million population of the 13 colonies.
American gentry
The Colonial families of Maryland were the leading families in the Province of Maryland. Several also had interests in the Colony of Virginia, and the two are sometimes referred to as the Chesapeake Colonies. Many of the early settlers came from the West Midlands in England, although the Maryland families were composed of a variety of European nationalities, e.g., French, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Swedish, in addition to English.
Great Mills, Maryland
The area was part of the original agricultural expansion after the initial settling of the first Maryland Colony in St. Mary's City, Maryland, which is several miles South of Great Mills. Early planters established farms in the area by the mid to late 17th century.
St. Dominic Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.)
St. Dominic Church was built on land held by Catholic families or institutions since at least 1735. Widow Ann Rozier Carroll relative of Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence . Carroll remarried to Benjamin Young, Commissioner of Crown Lands. Although Maryland was founded by Catholic Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore as the first English colony in America permitting religious freedom, the English government took over Maryland's government following the Protestant Revolution in 1689. Under English rule, Benjamin Young lost his post when he became Catholic. The family lived at a manor house with a private house chapel on what is now G St. SW between 9th and 10th St. near present day L'Enfant Plaza.
Thomas John Jackson
"On September 20, 1838, Thomas Jackson, of Cape Palmas, addressed a crowd at the Evangelical Lutheran Church on East Church Street in Frederick on the colonization program. He left Frederick for Africa in 1831. (The independent African state of Maryland was founded at Cape Palmas in 1833 and was annexed by Liberia in 1857.)"
St. Mary's College of Maryland
The Colony was founded under a mandate by the colonial proprietor, Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore of England, that the new settlers engage in religious tolerance of each other. The first settlers were both Protestant and Catholic during a time of persecution of Catholics. This mandate was unprecedented at the time, as England had been wracked by religious conflict for centuries.
Economic history of Colonial Maryland
Landing initially on St. Clement's Island on March 25, 1634, Maryland's first settlers would establish their colony around St. Mary's City. Nearly as soon as they arrived in St. Mary's, the colonists successfully grew enough food to prevent starvation and to export back to Britain. In these early days, the majority of settlers were indentured servants. Though Lord Baltimore initially hoped to establish a "landholding aristocracy" through the provision of affordable land, the colony's land system promoted the creation of a large number of small farms. Many were owned by former indentured servants. By the late 1600s, more than two-thirds of farmers in the colony held estates worth less than £100. They practiced a form of agriculture, known as Chesapeake husbandry that employed twenty-year crop rotations that preserved the viability of the land but limited economies of scale.
Maryland
Maryland's early settlements and population centers clustered around rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay. Its' economy was heavily plantation-based, centered mostly on the cultivation of tobacco (FACT). The need for cheap labor led to a rapid expansion of indentured servants, penal labor, and African slaves. In 1760, Maryland's current boundaries took form following the settlement of a long-running border dispute with Pennsylvania. Maryland was an active participant in the events leading up to the American Revolution, and by 1776 its delegates signed the Declaration of Independence. Many of its citizens subsequently played key political and military roles in the war. In 1790, the state ceded land for the establishment of the U.S. capital of Washington, D.C.
History of Christianity in the United States
Catholicism was introduced to the English colonies with the founding of the Province of Maryland by Jesuit settlers from England in 1634. Maryland was one of the few regions among the English colonies in North America that was predominantly Catholic.
St. Mary's City, Maryland
St. Mary's City is the historic site of the founding of the Colony of Maryland (then called the Province of Maryland). The original settlement was also the fourth oldest permanent English settlement in the United States.
Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore
One of Calvert's earliest decisions, regarding the position of Africans imported into Maryland, would have long-term and baleful consequences. Although the first Africans had been brought to Maryland in 1642, when 13 slaves arrived at St. Mary's City, the first English settlement in the Province, their legal status was initially unclear and colonial courts tended to rule that a slave who accepted Christian baptism should be freed. In order to protect the rights of their owners, laws began to be passed to clarify the legal position. In 1663 the Assembly ruled that slaves should be slaves for life, and that the children of slaves should also be enslaved for life, thus perpetuating the institution of slavery for the next 200 years, until its eradication during the Civil War. However, the impact of such harsh laws would not be felt for some time, as large scale importation of Africans would not begin until the 1690s.
Maryland State Colonization Society
In 1836 the colony appointed its first black governor John Brown Russwurm (1799–1851), who remained governor until his death. Russworm encouraged the immigration of African-Americans to Maryland-in-Africa and supported agriculture and trade. He had begun his career as the colonial secretary for the American Colonization Society between 1830 and 1834. He also worked as the editor of the "Liberia Herald", though he resigned his post in 1835 to protest America's colonization policies.
History of slavery in Maryland
The issue of slavery was finally confronted by the new Maryland Constitution of 1864 which the state adopted late in that year. The document, which replaced the Maryland Constitution of 1851, was pressed by Unionists who had secured control of the state, and was framed by a Convention which met at Annapolis in April 1864. Article 24 of the constitution at last outlawed the practice of slavery.
Republic of Maryland
The Maryland State Colonization Society was originally a branch of the American Colonization Society, which had founded the colony of Liberia at Monrovia on January 7, 1822. The Maryland Society decided to establish a new settlement of its own to accommodate its emigrants and with the intention of controlling trade to the colony. In December 1831, the Maryland state legislature in the United States appropriated US$10,000 for 26 years to transport 10,000 free blacks and ex-slaves, and 400 Caribbean slaves from the United States and the Caribbean islands, respectively, to Africa. It founded the Maryland State Colonization Society for this purpose.
Province of Maryland
Up to the time of the American Revolution, the Province of Maryland was one of two colonies that remained an English proprietary colony, Pennsylvania being the other. Maryland declared independence from Britain in 1776, with Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton signing the Declaration of Independence for the colony. In the 1776–77 debates over the Articles of Confederation, Maryland delegates led the party that insisted that states with western land claims cede them to the Confederation government, and in 1781 Maryland became the last state to ratify the Articles of Confederation. It accepted the United States Constitution more readily, ratifying it on 28 April 1788.
Restoration in the English colonies
Maryland had resisted the republic until finally occupied by New England Puritans/Parliamentary forces after the Battle of the Severn in 1655. In 1660 the Governor Josias Fendall tried to turn Maryland into a Commonwealth of its own in what is known as Fendall's Rebellion but with the fall of the republic in England he was left without support and was replaced by Philip Calvert upon the Restoration.
Montgomery County, Maryland
Like other regions of the American colonies, the region that is now Montgomery County saw protests against British taxation in the years before the American Revolution. In 1774, local residents met at Hungerford's Tavern and agreed to break off commerce with Great Britain. Following the signing of the Declaration of Independence, representatives of the area helped to draft the new state constitution and began to build a Maryland free of proprietary control.
Londontowne, Maryland
London Town was a colonial seaport town founded in 1683 near Annapolis. The original wharf was built by Colonel William Burgess, one of the area's original settlers. He parceled his land and sold it, leading to the creation of the town with the Act of 1683. It was once considered as the site for the capital of Maryland, a state of the United States of America. It was as prominent a city in trade as Annapolis and Williamsburg, Virginia. A series of events caused it to decline and disappear by the 19th century, including its non-selection as a tobacco inspection station, economic depression, and the Revolutionary War.
History of St. Mary's College of Maryland
The Colony was founded under a mandate by the colonial proprietor, Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore of England, that the new settlers engage in religious tolerance of each other. The first settlers were both Protestant and Catholic during a time of persecution of Catholics. This mandate was unprecedented at the time, as England had been wracked by religious conflict for centuries.
Republic of Maryland
The American Colonization Society had been founded in 1816, in part due to alarms over the violence of the Haitian slave revolution and its aftermath, which resulted in independence for that country in 1804. Fears were raised about the effects of emancipation of slaves in the United States.
Adams Morgan
Before the colony of Maryland was established in 1632, the area of today's neighborhood was home to Native Americans, the Nacotchtank tribe. Robert Peter and Anthony Holmead, two prominent colonial-era landowners, held the land beneath Adams Morgan when the District of Columbia was created in 1791. At that time, these local tracts sat just above the original planned City of Washington, and were either undeveloped or only lightly farmed. As the population of D.C. expanded, this land was divided into several estates purchased by wealthy residents, including Meridian Hill, Cliffbourne, Holt House, Oak Lawn, Henderson Castle, a part of Kalorama, and the horse farm of William Thornton. After the Civil War, these estates were subdivided and the area slowly grew. Once the city's overall-layout plans were finalized in the 1890s, these various subdivisions, using modern construction techniques, developed more rapidly, and the area of Adams Morgan then grew into several attractive and largely upper- and middle-class neighborhoods.
History of Maryland
The recorded history of Maryland dates back to the beginning of European exploration, starting with the Venetian John Cabot, who explored the coast of North America for the Kingdom of England in 1498. After European settlements had been made to the south and north, the colonial Province of Maryland was granted by King Charles I to Sir George Calvert (1579–1632), his former Secretary of State in 1632, for settlement beginning in March 1634. It was notable for having been established with religious freedom for Roman Catholics, since Calvert had publicly converted to that faith. Like other colonies and settlements of the Chesapeake Bay region, its economy was soon based on tobacco as a commodity crop, highly prized among the English, cultivated primarily by African slave labor, although many young people came from Britain sent as indentured servants or criminal prisoners in the early years.