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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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Men of Mark in Maryland
V.I Biographies of Leading Men in the State
VOLUME I
With an Introductory Chapter on Maryland: Proprietary Province and State
By BERNARD C. STEINER, PH.D. of Johns Hopkins University
Illustrated with Many Full Page Engravings
JOHNSON-WYNNE COMPANY Washington, D. C. 1907
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MEN OF MARK IN MARYLAND
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MARYLAND PROPRIETARY PROVINCE AND STATE BY
BERNARD C. STEINER, PH.D.
A YLLON, a Spanish voyager of the sixteenth century, was per- haps the first Caucasian to put foot upon Maryland soil. His visit, therefore, made in the year 1526, marks the beginning of the State's authentic history. Other Spaniards contemporary with Ayllon may also have sailed into the waters of Maryland, but no detailed exploration of the Chesapeake was made, nor was an accurate map or description of it published, until the time of that bold sol- dier-adventurer, Captain John Smith. Only a short while after the establishment of the English colony at Jamestown, Captain Smith made two expeditions into the Bay, in the course of which he gained a remarkably correct idea of its configuration and of the rivers flowing into it. Smith's expeditions were the forerunners of many others, and in time a group of traders, like Captain Henry Fleet, opened . a lucrative fur trade with the aborigines, soon becoming familiar with their languages and customs. Among these traders was a most pertinacious man, William Claiborne, who held prominent place among the Virginia settlers and established, in 1629, a fur-trading post-like those of the Hudson's Bay Company-on the east side of Kent Island, near its southern extremity.
.While Claiborne, with the help of London merchants who were his partners, was establishing himself on Kent Island, the attention of Sir George Calvert, First Baron of Baltimore in the Irish peerage, was drawn to the new country. He had been interested in colonization projects for a number of years, having already received the grant of the Province of Avalon in Newfoundland. But the sterile soil and forbidding climate of his northern province induced him to seek another grant further to the south and, in his quest, he visited Virginia. Here the officers of government seem to have
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suspected his designs and tendered him certain oaths, which being a Roman Catholic, he could not take. Upon his refusal to take the oaths, he was compelled to leave the colony. Calvert returned to Eng- land, and applied to the Crown for a grant: first, of the country to the south of the Virginia settlements, and, when that was refused, for a grant of the country around the Chesapeake Bay. This grant was agreed on, but before the charter could pass the seals Calvert died. His eldest son and heir was Cecil or Cecilius Calvert, named for the father's patron, Cecil, the great Lord Burghley, and to this son the charter was issued in 1632 for a Province to be called Terra Maria, or Maryland, in honor of the Queen of England, Henrietta Maria.
This province was situated on the Atlantic seacoast, and the State that has grown from it comprises some 12,000 square miles, of which about a fourth is covered by the Chesapeake Bay and its estuaries. The territory consists of a most varied country in its geologic history, and in its climate. From the flat coastal plain of the lower Eastern Shore to the lofty mountains of the extreme west of the State, is found a great variety of soil and products. The coastal plain rises into the Piedmont region and the western counties are crossed by the parallel ranges of the Appalachian system. The waters of the Bay teem with oysters, crabs and fish, and over these waters fly large flocks of wild fowl. The same waters furnish great highways of commerce for all the eastern part of the State. Toward the west the land rises; good water power is found in the streams, and the mountains abound in veins of coal and iron. The climate is neither so severe as in the New England States, nor so enervating as in the far south.
A prudent, shrewd, and sagacious man, Cecil, Lord Baltimore, at once prepared to send out a colony to settle this new Province, over which he had been invested with the powers of a Count Palatine. The first expedition, commanded by Leonard Calvert, the Lord Proprietary's brother, set out from England in the Ark and the Dove, in November, 1633, and, after a long and tedious voyage, landed on Maryland soil on March 25, 1634. Buying from the Pis- cataway Indians one of their villages and clearings, the settlers founded there the town of St. Mary's. From the very first, difficulties arose, which so continued that Cecil Calvert was never able to come out to his Frovince, but spent his life in England guarding his charter
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privileges. The Virginians resented the curtailing of their territory and the loss of the Northern fur trade. Claiborne was especially enraged at finding his trading post under Baltimore's jurisdiction, and spent the rest of his life in a forty years' ineffectual struggle to resist the extension of the Proprietary's power. He refused to recognize Baltimore's authority over Kent Island; his pinnace and Calvert's engaged in a petty naval conflict in the waters of Pocomoke Sound, and Leonard Calvert and his men were unable to establish their power on the Eastern Shore, until Claiborne's absence in England and the defection of the man sent by his partners to command the fort in his stead, left the opposing forces greatly weakened. An expedition, led by Calvert himself, surprised the fort by a night attack in February, 163S. Meantime the organization of the Province had gone on, the first Assembly met in February, 1635, and passed "wholesome laws and ordinances, " and a second assembly met in 1638. At first, these Assemblies were gatherings at which all freemen might be present in person or by proxy; but, gradually, a system sprang up, by which four representatives from each county, like the four knights of the shire in England, constituted the lower or popular house, while the upper house was composed of the large landholders of the Province, appointees of the Proprietary, who also acted as the Governor's Council and as the Provincial Court. Among the leading early councillors were Captain Thomas Cornwallis, Jerome Hawley, John Lewger, and Giles Brent.
After the beginning of the English Civil Wars, a sea captain of the Parliamentary party, named Richard Ingle, joined by Corn- wallis, who was then disaffected toward the government, drove Leonard Calvert from the Province, and an anarchie period followed for something over a year. After this, Calvert returned from Vir- ginia, whither he had fled, and reestablished his brother's authority but shortly afterward (1647) died. Thomas Greene was named by the dying governor as his successor, and held that position until Wil- liam Stone arrived in 1649, with a commission from the Proprietary and a draft of an act for religious toleration. This act, somewhat amended by the General Assembly, was passed in the same year. Baltimore's policy was, consistently, one of granting religious freedom to all Christians, and, indeed, Jews also dwelt in the Province without molestation. He was too wise and far-sighted to make the rash attempt to establish the Roman Catholic religion, which attempt
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would surely have cost him his charter: he was too true a member of his church to allow the establishment of any other faith.
After the establishment of the Commonwealth, Richard Bennett, a prominent Virginian Puritan, and Claiborne were appointed to reduce Virginia to subjection. Maryland needed no subjection, for Cecil Calvert was ever carefully loyal to England's de facto ruler, yet, by a subterfuge, the commissioners' powers were extended to the "plantations within the Chesapeake; " and they came to Maryland and ordered the authorities to make writs run in the name of the Common- wealth, instead of in that of the Proprietor as, under the charter, they had run before. Stone for a time, complied, but later restored the old custom. Meantime a third party of settlers had come into the Province: Puritans, who, had been driven from Virginia for religious reasons, and settled under Baltimore's protection on the West Shore of the Bay, where they formed the newly-organized Anne Arundel County. They resented the renewed recognition of the Proprietary's power, and a small civil war ensued. By the battle of the Severn River in 1655, the forces of Governor Stone were routed and the Prov- ince was thenceforth in the hands of Commissioners, who were Puritans, until, by Cromwell's orders, it was returned to Baltimore in 1657.
Josias Fendall, the Proprietary's first representative, proved un- mindful of his master's interests and was succeeded in 1660 by Philip Calvert, Baltimore's brother. The heir of the title, Charles Calvert, became Baltimore's representative in 1661. His administration lasted fifteen years, until after he succeeded to the Proprietorship. During this time, the planters began to feel the restrictions of the British navigation acts; the cultivation of tobacco had supplanted the fur trade, as the chief industry of the Province, and the freemen had settled in scattered plantations along the banks of the various rivers emptying into the Chesapeake. There were no towns, and the work on the plantations, to which the vessels came from year to year to exchange English goods for tobacco, was done largely by indentured white servants from England.
There were few blacks in the State before the beginning of the eighteenth century, but afterward their importation came rapidly and white field hands ceased to be found on the plantations. During Charles Calvert's governorship Maryland suffered the first of several spoliations of territory, by the grant to the Duke of York from his
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brother, the king, of the territory now comprised within the State of Delaware. For the most part Maryland's relations with the Indians were peaceful, and her dealings with them just. Gradually the tribes faded away, the Nanticokes,-the last of the aborigines,- passing northward through the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania during the middle of the eighteenth century. Charles, Lord Balti- more, ruled his Palatinate in person, from 1679 to 1684, and then left the government in the hands of the Council. Though Baltimore had not been in James's favor, still he was a Roman Catholic like the king, and was suspected by the Protestant settlers. The foolish con- duct of William Joseph, whom he sent over as governor in 16SS, in demanding oaths of allegiance and in delaying to acknowledge Wil- liam and Mary, precipitated a revolution. A number of Protestant freemen, under the military leadership of a drunken and brawling fel- low, John Coode, who had formerly been a clergyman, overthrew the Proprietary government. The leaders, who seem to have used Coode as a stalking horse, were Henry Jowles, Kenelm Cheseldyne, Ninian Beall, and Nehemiah Blackistone. They soon held a Convention of the Freemen and asked the Crown to revoke the Charter and gov- ern Maryland directly.
Although the Charter was not revoked by the Crown, nor was Baltimore deprived of his lands or revenues, yet the government was taken from him and Sir Lionel Copley, a royal governor, was sent to administer Maryland affairs. On Copley's death, Sir Edmund Andros, Governor of Virginia. claimed the chief authority in Maryland, but was soon succeeded by Francis Nicholson, during whose administra- tion the capital was changed from St. Mary's to a town newly laid out and called Annapolis; and there King William's School, the first permanent educational institution in the Province, was established.
About the time of Nicholson's departure, Reverend Thomas Bray, the Bishop of London's commissary or representative, arrived in the Province, and his administration, though lasting only a few months, was signalized by the establishment of the first library system in America. The Province had been divided into parishes and the Anglican Church established. Shortly after the Crown took the government of Maryland, Bray placed a parochial library in every parish and a Provincial Lending Library of 1095 volumes in the cap- ital. This same period of history was that of the establishment of the first printing press in the Province and the printing of the
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earliest pamphlets in 1700. Bray was not the only one especially interested in Maryland's religious welfare. In Somerset and Wor- cester counties Reverend Francis Makemie was founding Presbyterian churches, while George Fox and other Quaker preachers had been laboring in the Province for a generation.
William Penn, who, in 1684, received a grant of a Province lying immediately to the north of Maryland, acted with some un- scrupulousness, in his desire to gain territory to the south. He placed his capital, Philadelphia, just south of the fortieth parallel of latitude, where Maryland's boundary rightfully lay, and even tried to gain access to the Chesapeake. The struggle between the two Proprietaries was a long one, and in 1732, Baltimore was induced to agree to a surrender of the territory of the present State of Delaware and that part of Pennsylvania lying between the parallels of 40° and 39º 43', the present northern boundary of Maryland. The line thus agreed on was surveyed with great accuracy by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, between 1762 and 1767, and attained fame later under their names, as the dividing line between free and slave States.
Charles, Lord Baltimore, died in 1715, and the government of the Province was restored to his son, Benedict Leonard Calvert, who had become a Protestant. He lived only a few months and was succeeded by his son, Charles, the Fifth Lord Baltimore, a minor. At the time of the restoration of the Province to the Proprietary, Captain John Hart, an obstinate, but conscientious and able soldier, was governor, and he continued in that post for a number of years. During his administration, the Jacobite troubles in England had their reflex influence in Maryland in leading the Assembly to pass laws disfran- chising the Roman Catholics. The legal profession had become most influential and the Maryland bar had gained the high reputation which it has retained until the present day.
The town of Baltimore was laid out on the Patapsco in 1729. Its fine harbor and its admirable situation, near the head of the Chesa- peake Bay and close to the western country, destined it to grow rapidly as settlements pressed westward. The establishment of a commercial town, (which has now grown until it contains half the population and much more than half the wealth of the State,) was a noteworthy event. About the same time began the immigration of the Germans, who have been so potent a factor in Maryland. They came directly to Baltimore, or through the valleys leading south-
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westward from Pennsylvania, and settled on lands now included in Carroll, Frederick, and Washington counties. Among them were such men as Reverend Philip W. Otterbein, the founder of the United Brethren Church; John Thomas Schley, the first schoolmaster in Frederick; and Jonathan Hager, the founder of Hagerstown.
About the middle of the eighteenth century, after the guber- natorial terms of Thomas Bladen, Samuel Ogle, and Benjamin Tasker, Colonel Horatio Sharpe, was sent as governor, and con- tinued from 1753 until displaced in 1769, to give a position to the Proprietary's brother-in-law, Captain Robert Eden. During the whole of Sharpe's administration, the Lord Proprietary was Frederick, the last and worst of the Lords Baltimore, who succeeded his father in 1748 and died without legitimate issue in 1771, leaving the Prov- ince to his illegitimate son, Henry Harford. Sharpe was an upright, soldierly gentleman, who tried to be true to the interests of both Prov- ince and Proprietary, but found his task most difficult with a grudg- ing and quarrelsome Assembly, and an absentee landlord. The French and Indian war, the building of Fort Frederick and Fort Cumberland, and the ill-fated expedition under General Braddock, are the chief events associated with this period of Maryland's history.
In the latter part of Sharpe's governorship, the passage of the Stamp Act marked the beginning of the long struggle which led to America's independence. The Province rose as one man. the stamp distributer was forced to resign, and delegates from Maryland partici- pated in the proceedings of the Stamp Act Congress at New York. Though the Stamp Act was soon repealed, the English Parliament stood firm in its claim of the right to tax the colonies, and-in the midst of the turmoil-Eden came to Maryland. Aman of attractive personality, his influence and that of the conservative Maryland people prevented the radical party from gaining power. The Assembly had largely kept the administration of affairs in its own hands, by passing temporary laws whose expiration demanded the reassembling of the legislature and, especially, by limiting the dura- tion of the fee bill, which fixed the legal fees with which most pro- vincial officials were paid. Such a bill expired in 1770, but the two houses failed to agree upon a new one. Eden felt that some regula- tion of fees must be made, and issued a proclamation forbidding any officer from taking fees at any higher rate than that established by the old bill. This was, of course, an implied license to take them at
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the old rate, which the officers proceeded to do. Great excitement followed, Eden's action was denounced, and a war of newspaper articles occurred, in which Charles Carroll of Carrollton, writing under the signature, First Citizen, is the best remembered disputant on the popular side, though William Paca, Thomas Johnson, and Samuel Chase were also conspicuous. The argument for the governor's course was most ably stated by Daniel Dulany, under the pen name of Antillon.
But these local conflicts lost importance, when the Continental matters came to hold men's interest. Sympathy with Massachusetts, and a desire to present a united front against the arbitrary measures of the ministry, led the Province to send delegates to the First Con- tinental Congress in 1774. During Eden's absence from Maryland, the ship Peggy Stewart was burned at Annapolis in the autumn of that year, her owner being compelled to set fire to her, because she had brought in a cargo of tea. The same year is marked by the assembling of the first Convention of the Freemen, to be followed by others, in which the non-importation agreement was adopted; an executive committee, called the Council of State, appointed to sit while the Convention was not in session; Committees of Observation directed to be organized in each county; assent authorized to a Decla- ration of Independence; and, finally, a complete new constitution for the government of the State adopted to go into effect in 1777. Before this, however, Maryland riflemen under Captain Thomas Price and Captain Thomas Cresap were the first troops from the South to arrive as a part of the Continental army which besieged Boston. In the Continental Congress, on the nomination of Thomas Johnson, George Washington had been selected to command that army. The few independent companies of 1775 were superseded by the Flying Camp of 1776, and this by the famous Maryland Line-not a short term levy of militia, but a Continental force enlisted for three years, whose veteran service was worth that of many times their number of raw recruits.
Maryland had been slow to accede to Independence. On May 21, 1776, the Provincial Convention still favored a "reunion with Great Britain on constitutional principles" and a committee waited upon Eden to ask him to remain as governor and continue the "osten- sible form of government," until either a "reestablishment of the old government, or a total separation " occurred. Eden could not accept
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this offer, with the condition that he "take no active hostile part, nor correspond" with the English, and the tide of events hurrying on forced him to leave Annapolis, on June 22. The Convention, a few days later, authorized its delegates in the Continental Congress to accede to a declaration of independence. It is interesting to con- sider that on Eden's return to England, because of his services during his governorship, he was created first baronet of Maryland, a title still held by his descendants. When she had cast in her lot with the other states, Maryland was behind no one in her devotion to the common cause. The troops from this State saved the army by stopping the British advance at the battle of Long Island, while Washington cried in agony at the loss of their lives: "Good God, what brave fellows must I this day lose." In all his campaigns, they were faithful under such men as Wm. Smallwood, Mordecai Gist, and Nathaniel Ramsay, until they were transferred to the Southern Department and placed under General Nathanael Greene. With him, they won even brighter laurels at Eutaw Springs, Camden, and Guilford Courthouse. Trained by de Kalb and led by Otho Hol- land Williams and John Eager Howard, the Maryland Line was the backbone of the army.
The course of the State was in general most commendable. It refused to enter the Confederation, until assured that the Western lands should be presented to the Union by the states which claimed them, to be used for the benefit of all; it entertained Congress at Baltimore in the winter of 1776, and, under the governorship of Thomas Johnson and Thomas Sim Lee, furnished supplies to the armies and guarded British prisoners, at Frederick. In 1783, the Confederation Congress met at Annapolis and thither, just before Christmas, came Washington, to give up, in the old Senate chamber, his commission as commander of the army. To that Congress, Maryland gave one of its Presidents-John Hanson.
* The Confederation proved too weak a bond to hold the states together. A meeting of Commissioners from Maryland and Virginia, was called at Alexandria and Mt. Vernon, in 1785, to discuss a regulation of traffic on the Potomac. This meeting led to a Con- vention of all the states at Annapolis in 1786 to discuss the grant to the Continental Government of a greater power over commerce and a uniform commercial regulation. The Convention prepared the way for a second one. held at Philadelphia in 1787, to make any
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needed amendments to the Articles of Confederation. To this con- vention, Maryland sent Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, Daniel Carroll, and James McHenry, who were Federalists, and Luther Martin, a brilliant lawyer, and John Francis Mercer, who were Anti-Federalists and advised against the adoption of the United States Constitution, the completed work of the Convention. The hand of the three Federalists may be seen in the adoption of the Presidential Electoral College, from a similar institution used in Maryland for the choice of the State Senate, and in certain of the commercial articles. The State adopted the Constitution without wavering. Little discus- sion was allowed at its convention, which refused to consider any amendments. This act of Maryland was thought to have had great effect in South Carolina and Virginia.
The last decade of the eighteenth century saw Baltimore incor- porated as a city, in 1796. Her trade with the West Indies and South America had become extensive and that with China was commemo- rated in the name of a suburb, Canton. Baltimore clippers were found on every sea. To the city came many refugees from Santo Domingo and France; among the latter were the Sulpician Fathers, who founded, in 1795, St. Mary's Seminary, the first Roman Catholic theological training school in the United States and the second of any denomination. In national politics, Maryland men assumed impor- tant positions. James McHenry was Secretary of War from 1796 to 1800, and Benjamin Stoddert, Secretary of the Navy from 179S to 1801. Under the Jeffersonian Republicans, other Marylanders held important cabinet positions : Robert Smith was successively Secretary of the Navy, Attorney-General, and Secretary of State; the eloquent William Pinkney-after he returned from serving as Minister to Eng- land-became Attorney-General; and the brilliant lawyer, William Wirt, became Attorney-General under Monroe and was later candidate for president of the United States on the Anti-Masonic ticket. In the navy, the Tripolitan war gave the Marylander, Stephen Decatur, an opportunity to distinguish himself. " The names of General Samuel Smith of Baltimore, William Hindman, James Lloyd, John Henry, Edward Lloyd, and William Vans Murray, in addition to some already mentioned in other connections, show that the State did not lack strong and faithful representatives in the two houses of Con- gress during the early years of the Nation's existence.
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