Province of Maryland
The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America from 1634 until 1776, when the province was one of the Thirteen Colonies that joined in supporting the American Revolution against Great Britain. In 1781, Maryland was the 13th signatory to the Articles of Confederation. The province's first settlement and capital was in St. Mary's City, located at the southern end of St. Mary's County, a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay bordered by four tidal rivers.
The province began in 1632 as the Maryland Palatinate, a proprietary palatinate granted to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, whose father, George, had long sought to found a colony in the New World to serve as a refuge for Catholics at the time of the European wars of religion. Palatines from the Holy Roman Empire also immigrated to Maryland, with many settling in Fredrick County, with Maryland Palatines reaching a population of 50,000 by 1774.
Provincial Maryland served as an early pioneer of religious toleration in the English colonies. However, religious strife among Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers was common in the early years and Puritan rebels briefly seized control of the province. Later, in 1689, the year following the Glorious Revolution in Great Britain, John Coode led a rebellion that removed Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, from power in Maryland. That power was restored to the Baltimore family in 1715 after Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, declared in public that he was a Protestant.
Despite early competition with the colony of Virginia to its south, and the Holland Dutch colony of New Netherland to its north, the province of Maryland developed along similar lines to Virginia. Its early settlements and population centers tended to cluster around the rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay, and, like Virginia, Maryland's economy quickly became centered on the cultivation of tobacco for sale in Europe.
However, after tobacco prices collapsed, the need for cheap labor to accommodate the mixed farming economy that followed led to a rapid expansion of the Atlantic slave trade and the concomitant North American enslavement of Africansas well as the expansion of indentured servitude and British penal transportation. Maryland received a larger felon quota than any other province.
Maryland was an active participant in the events leading up to the American Revolution, echoing 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's colonial representatives signed the Declaration of Independence, presaging the end of British colonial rule.
Origins in the 17th century
Founding charter
The Catholic George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, former Secretary of State to King Charles I of England, 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, the 2nd Baron Baltimore.On June 20, 1632, Charles granted the original charter for Maryland, a proprietary colony of about twelve million acres, to the 2nd Baron Baltimore. Some historians view this grant as a form of compensation for the 2nd Lord Baltimore's father's having been stripped of his title of Secretary of State upon announcing his Catholicism in 1625.
Whatever the reason for granting the colony specifically to Lord Baltimore, however, the King had practical reasons to create a colony north of the Potomac in 1632. The colony of New Netherland begun by England's great imperial rival in this era, the United Provinces, specifically claimed the Delaware River valley and was vague about its border with Virginia. Charles rejected all the Dutch claims on the Atlantic seaboard, but was anxious to bolster English claims by formally occupying the territory. The new colony was named after the devoutly Catholic Queen Mary, by an agreement between the 1st Lord Baltimore and King Charles I.
Colonial Maryland was considerably larger than the present-day State of Maryland. The original charter granted the Calverts a province with a boundary line that started "from the promontory or headland, called Watkin's Point, situate upon the bay aforesaid near the river Wighco 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 lyeth under the 40th degree of north latitude from the aequinoctial, where New England is terminated."p. 116 The boundary line would then continue westward along the fortieth parallel "unto the true meridian of the first fountain of the river Pattowmack". From there, the boundary continued south to the southern bank of the Potomac River, continue along the southern river bank to the Chesapeake Bay, and "thence by the shortest line unto the aforesaid promontory, or place, called Watkin's Point."p. 38. Based on this deceptively imprecise description of the boundary, the land may have comprised up to, 50% larger than today's State.
Early settlement
In Maryland, Baltimore sought to create a haven for English Catholics and to demonstrate that Catholics and Protestants could live together peacefully, even issuing the Act Concerning Religion in matters of religion. The 1st Lord Baltimore was himself a convert to Catholicism, a considerable political setback for a nobleman in 17th-century England, where Catholics could easily be considered enemies of the crown and potential traitors to their country. Like other aristocratic proprietors, he also hoped to turn a profit on the new colony.The Calvert family recruited Catholic aristocrats and Protestant settlers for Maryland, luring them with generous land grants and a policy of religious toleration. To try to gain settlers, Maryland used what is known as the headright system, which originated in Jamestown. Settlers were given of land for each person they brought into the colony, whether as settler, indentured servant, or slave.
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 March 25, 1634, 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 the Honorable Leonard Calvert, whom Baltimore had delegated to serve as governor of the new colony.
The Native Americans in Maryland were a peaceful people who welcomed the English. At the time of the founding of the Maryland colony, approximately forty tribes consisting of 8,000 – 10,000 people lived in the area. They were fearful of the colonists' guns, but welcomed trade for metal tools. The Native Americans who were living in the location where the colonists first settled were called the Yaocomico Indians. The colonists gave the Yaocomico Indians cloth, hatchets, and hoes in exchange for the right to settle on the land. The Yaocomico Indians allowed the English settlers to live in their houses, a type of longhouse called a witchott. The Indians also taught the colonists how to plant corn, beans, and squash, as well as where to find food such as clams and oysters.
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 capital 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 and later renamed as "Annapolis".
More settlers soon followed. The tobacco crops that they had planted from the outset were very successful and quickly made the new colony profitable. However, given the incidence of malaria and typhoid, life expectancy in Maryland was about 10 years less than in New England.
"Historic St. Mary's City" has been established to protect what is left of the ruins of the original 17th-century village, and several reconstructed, government buildings, little of which remained intact. With the exception of several periods of rebellion by early Protestants and later colonists, the colony/province remained under the control of the several Lords Baltimore until 1775–1776, when it joined with other colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and eventually became the independent and sovereign U.S. State of Maryland.
Relations with the Susquehannock
The establishment of the Province of Maryland disrupted the trade relationship between Virginian colonists and the Susquehannock, an Iroquoian-speaking tribe that lived in the lower Susquehanna River valley. Following a raid on a Jesuit mission in 1641, the Governor of Maryland declared the Susquehannock "enemies of the province." A few attempts were made to organize a military campaign, however, it was not until 1643 that an ill-fated expedition was mounted. The Susquehannock inflicted numerous casualties on the English and captured two cannon. 15 prisoners were taken and afterwards tortured to death.Raids on Maryland continued intermittently until 1652. In the winter of 1652, the Susquehannock were attacked by the Haudenosaunee, and although the attack was repulsed, it led to the Susquehannock negotiating the Articles of Peace and Friendship with Maryland. The Susquehannock relinquished their claim to territory on either side of Chesapeake Bay, and reestablished a trading relationship with the English.
A Haudenosaunee raid in 1660 led Maryland to expand its treaty with the Susquehannock into an alliance. The Maryland assembly authorized armed assistance, and described the Susquehannock as "a Bullwarke and Security of the Northern Parts of this Province." A detachment of 50 soldiers was sent to help defend the Susquehannock town against Haudenosaunee attacks. Despite suffering a smallpox epidemic in 1661, the Susquehannock easily withstood a siege in 1663, and destroyed a Haudenosaunee war party in 1666.
By 1675, epidemics and years of war had taken their toll on the Susquehannock. They abandoned their village on the Susquehanna River and moved south into Maryland. Governor Charles Calvert invited them to settle on the Potomac River above the Great Falls, however, the Susquehannock instead chose to occupy a site on Piscataway Creek where they erected a palisaded fort. In July 1675, a group of Virginians chasing Doeg raiders crossed the Potomac into Maryland and mistakenly killed several Susquehannock. Subsequent raids in Virginia and Maryland were blamed on the tribe. In September 1675, a thousand-man expedition against the Susquehannock was mounted by militia from Virginia and Maryland led by John Washington and Thomas Truman. After arriving at the Susquehannock town, Truman and Washington summoned five sachems to a parley, but then had them summarily executed. Sorties during the ensuing six-week siege resulted in 50 English deaths. In early November, the Susquehannock escaped the siege under cover of darkness, killing ten of the militia as they slept.
Most of Susquehannock crossed the Potomac and took refuge in the Piedmont of Virginia. Two encampments were established on the Meherrin River near the village of the Siouan-speaking Occaneechi. In January 1676, the Susquehannock raided plantations in Virginia, killing 36 colonists. Nathaniel Bacon, unhappy with Governor Sir William Berkeley's response to the raids, organized a volunteer militia to hunt down the Susquehannock. Bacon persuaded the Occaneechi to attack the closest Susquehannock encampment. After the Occaneechi returned with Susquehannock prisoners, Bacon turned on his allies and indiscriminately massacred Occaneechi men, women and children.
Other Susquehannock refugees fled to hunting camps on the North Branch of the Potomac or took refuge with the Lenape. Some refugees returned to the Susquehanna River in 1676 and established a palisaded village near the site of their previous village. This village was also abandoned when the inhabitants merged with the Haudenosaunee a few years later.