It started with two ships sailing out of an English port in 1633 and led to the founding of Maryland on March 25, 1634.
St. Mary’s County Museum Division manager Karen Stone discussed the first Maryland colony as well as those in Virginia and Massachusetts during a “Maryland Day History — Who Knew Who?” presentation a week ago at the Leonardtown library.
“It is [overlooked], and it’s actually the most important day in Maryland’s history,” Stone said. “It’s a very important date, and I think people remember it in passing, but like so much of history they don’t really understand the full story of it. They don’t understand what it meant to come here as Catholics and have a safe place to worship.”
St. Clement’s Island Museum celebrated Maryland Day on the actual day, Monday, March 25, with free admission and free water taxi rides. There was a Mass at 10 a.m. and a ceremony on St. Clement’s Island at 2 p.m. A separate event was held at Historic St. Mary’s City on Saturday, March 23.
“I think it’s a day that everyone would take the opportunity to visit where Maryland began,” said Stone, whose descendants arrived in the New England colonies in the late 1620s, while her husband has ties to the Virginia colonies.
While there is no known official list of passengers that sailed on the Ark and the Dove and eventually landed at St. Clement’s Island in the Potomac River, Stone said, the settlers that arrived between 1634 and 1680 are able to be identified by their claims for land.
Stone estimated there were about 32,000 settlers that arrived in Maryland between 1634 and 1680.
“What was needed was families to set up a community that would be a Catholic refuge and a personally profitable enterprise for the proprietor,” Stone said. “There were people who came to Maryland with the hope of economic prosperity, but the ruling men and their families came for religious freedom.”
Each settler was automatically entitled to 50 acres of land per person until the system ended in 1680. Though they were entitled to free land, the property itself was difficult to attain as the owner needed to acquire four different permits, each of which cost plenty. As a result, many settlers were unable to afford their “free” land and were forced to sell their acreage, she said.
“Prices were not set [at a fixed rate],” Stone said, “so [the permit sellers] made a living off these.”
After trying to colonize the island of Newfoundland in northeast Canada in the 1620s, George Calvert, who was the first baron of Baltimore and the founding father of Maryland, determined the climate was too harsh. So he requested and eventually received a charter of lands for 12 million acres just north of the Potomac River.
Jamestown was the first English colony in the New World and settled in 1607 by entrepreneurs, mostly single men, intent on making their fortune. It was a private venture funded by the Virginia Company of London. By the end of the first year, only 38 settlers were still alive but 100 new settlers and provisions arrived in January 1608, and a church was constructed.
The theme by John Smith, who was the council president, was, “He that will not work shall not eat.” The plan was to establish a silk colony, but a tree fungus forced them to start harvesting tobacco.
Plymouth was also chartered by King James I and was supposed to be a private venture, but with families and it was established at the northern end of the Virginia territory. Its principal business was whaling.
The colonization of Jamestown and Plymouth ultimately helped the Maryland settlers because they had maps and friends, and Stone said they didn’t “have the language issues, they knew what to bring because lists had been set home, so they knew a lot more what to expect.”
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