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Maryland

American Eras

Maryland

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Proprietor. George Calvert was a favorite of King James I, who had knighted him and appointed him a secretary of state. Calvert’s interest in America began long before he had a colony of his own. He bought stock in the Virginia Company in 1609 and in 1620 an interest in a group planning to settle Newfoundland. A trip to Newfoundland changed his mind about the merits of that island’s climate, and he petitioned the king in 1629 for a grant of land in Virginia. By that time Calvert’s life had changed: he had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1625, a move that had cost him his royal positions and precluded any other official duty. In friendship and as a mark of compensation, James I had granted him the Irish title of Lord Baltimore. James I also, against the protests of many in England and in Virginia, granted Calvert’s petition for land in what was then thought of as northern Virginia. Calvert left it up to Charles I to name this new grant—Mary’s Land, after Queen Henrietta Maria. Calvert did not live long enough to see his new project actually begin; Maryland’s charter was signed on 20 June 1643, a month after he died. It awarded the proprietary to Calvert’s son and heir, Cecilius, second Baron of Baltimore. The Lords Baltimore thus received the first proprietary grant issued by the English for lands in America. They undoubtedly hoped to make money from their new estate. They also hoped to provide a place in America where Roman Catholics could freely practice their religion and enjoy other political and legal freedoms.

Earliest Settlements. It is difficult to know who were among the 150 who sailed on the Ark and the Dove, the first ships to Maryland. A few women, “mades which wee brought along,” were among them. Unlike any other colony, however, those first settlers included a few Roman Catholic laymen and two Jesuit priests. They arrived at Saint Clements Island on 25 March, Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation, and celebrated Mass. They then moved on to settle at Saint Mary’s. Within the next few years large land grants called “hundreds” were worked by both tenants and paid laborers. The suitability of Maryland’s land for tobacco set it on a course much like Virginia’s economy. Those with some capital or connections amassed large landholdings, usually on one of the many rivers that eventually reached Chesapeake Bay. Those without came to work for them, often as indentured servants—laborers who had contracted to work for a set number of years. Most of these settlers were young men. By 1648 the civil war in England, which had reduced migration, and the disease environment, which killed off many of the settlers, had kept Maryland down to a mere 350 people. But immigration and natural reproduction helped the colony’s population grow. Even so, life expectancies in Maryland were far lower than in New England. By 1660 the colony had an estimated 2,500 people; in 1675, 13,000; and in 1701, when an official census was undertaken, 32,000. By 1760 population estimates had reached 162,000. Most of these people lived in scattered settlements or villages with only one significant town, Annapolis.

Ethnicity and Race. Maryland’s earliest settlers were English, but as in almost all of the proprietary colonies, the owners tried to recruit as many colonists as possible. By the 1730s Irish, German, and Welsh were granted lands along the northern border that the Lords Baltimore disputed with the Penn family. Scottish merchants came to live along the coast as they began to dominate the tobacco trade in the 1750s. On the eve of the American Revolution, Maryland attracted more immigrants, many of them artisans from various parts of England, than any other colony. The major change in Maryland’s population patterns took place, however, around 1700 when slave labor began replacing white indentured labor, especially on the larger tobacco plantations. By 1760, 46 percent of planters owned slaves, with half of these whites holding five or fewer. Few planters owned large holdings of more than one hundred slaves, and these men, women, and children lived on smaller holdings called quarters. In the 1750s approximately forty-five thousand black slaves lived in Maryland.

Religious Pluralism. Just as the proprietors welcomed various nationalities in order to gain settlers, so they also allowed various religions. Maryland was founded as a haven for Roman Catholics, although Catholics were never a majority, even on the Ark and the Dove. Lord Baltimore tried

to protect his coreligionists by asking that no Christian be “troubled [or] molested” and that such protection be made law. Jews and other non-Christians were excluded from these legal rights. Catholic immigration to Maryland was meager, but other religious groups took advantage of toleration. In the 1650s the Quakers found a welcome. Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and the Church of England all were represented by the 1670s. This early toleration did not last, and Catholics lost the right to hold political office and to vote in the twenty or so years after 1692. Dissenting Protestants like the Quakers fared better.

Sources

Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1986);

Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986);

Aubrey C. Land, Colonial Maryland: A History (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1981).

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