About Colonial Maryland
One of the original 13 Colonies, Maryland has a unique history all its own. It became a land of tobacco plantations, was a border colony for slavery, home to the Chesapeake Bay ports of Baltimore and Annapolis, and was a rarity in being a Catholic enclave among the Protestants of English North America.
Time Frame
The colony of Maryland came into being when Lord Baltimore applied for a charter from King Charles I of England. He died before the charter was granted, so it went to his son, the second Lord Baltimore, on June 20, 1632. The Colonial period lasted from this date until the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
Geography
The original charter of Maryland defined the colony to lie north of Virginia and south of the 40th parallel, an area comprising roughly 12 million acres. This poor definition resulted in territorial overlaps with the colonies of Virginia and Maryland. The northern border was fixed along the Mason-Dixon line in 1760. The southern border came to be defined by the Potomac River. Colonial Maryland was firmly centered on the Chesapeake Bay, although by the end of the period substantial farming towns such as Frederick (in the geographic center of the state) were becoming important.
History
Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, founded the colony with an eye towards creating a haven for persecuted British Catholics in 1632. Baltimore's father was the original applicant, and the grant of the charter was widely viewed at the time as compensation for being stripped of high office upon the elder Baltimore's announcement that he had converted to Catholicism. The Calverts recruited more settlers from among Protestant ranks than Catholics, but the colony did succeed in becoming a safe place for Catholic immigration in the largely Protestant British America.
In the 17th century, most Europeans in Maryland lived in small, rough family farms. The principal cash crop was tobacco, which came to dominate the Maryland colonial economy. By the 18th century, the colony had developed a plantation economy, with roughly 40 percent of the population being slaves. There was extensive use of prison labor and indentured servitude as well. Tobacco and other products were moved down river to the Chesapeake Bay for trade in the larger Atlantic merchant economy. By the time of the Revolution, Baltimore was the second most important port in the Southern colonies, after Charleston.
1642 saw a small war with the local Susquehannock Indians, which Maryland lost. In 1654, during the English Civil War, Protestant and Parliamentary forces seized control of the colony and sent its governor into exile in Virginia.
Significance
With much of the economy based on plantations farming tobacco as a cash crop, and with Quaker Pennsylvania dominating the northern border, Maryland became the northernmost colony with widespread slavery. Although other colonies further north also had legalized slavery, it was a very minor presence and easily abolished north of Maryland either before, during or after the Revolution.
The second Lord Baltimore was a convert to Catholicism, and founded the colony as a haven for Catholics fleeing persecution in Britain. However, the majority of the European population of Maryland was always Protestant. Despite this, Lord Baltimore did succeed in creating a safe haven for British Catholics and the Catholic identity continues to color Maryland into modern times.
Evolution
The Indian tribes that lived in Maryland included the Nanticoke, Powhatan and Susquehannock. Of the three, the Nanticoke and Powhatans were Algonquian-speaking peoples.
The Nanticoke people claimed descent from the Lenape, and lived mostly in what is now New Jersey and Delaware. They had early skirmishes with the settlers in Maryland, mostly because Nanticoke leaders resented English incursions, trading activities and the influx of liquor. Under pressure by white settlement, they migrated first to Pennsylvania, and finally into the Iroquois Confederacy by the 1750s.
The Powhatans were a confederacy of Algonquin-speakers who lived mostly to the south of Maryland, and were the people of the famed Pocahontas. Conflict with the English ground down the Powhatans, who virtually ceased to exist as an organized unit by the late 17th century.
The Susquehannocks have given their name to the Susquehannock River and lived in that area. With the help of Swedish traders, they defeated the early colonists of Maryland in battle. In return for a supply of weapons, other goods and promises of security for their southern frontier, they ceded to the Maryland Colony lands on the Chesapeake Bay. They were eventually forced to migrate south by pressure from the Iroquois, and their numbers were steadily whittled down by war and disease. They few that were not absorbed into the Iroquois were settled in Conestoga Town by the Pennsylvania Colony in 1763, only to be massacred by the Paxton Boys.
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