USA > Maryland > Dorchester County > History of Dorchester County, Maryland > Part 2
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On the 26th of February, 1635, the first legislative body of the colony met in a log fort at St. Mary's. This fort was their State House. Of the proceedings of this Assembly there is no record, and only known of by subsequent refer- ence to Acts then passed and vetoed by Lord Baltimore on April 15, 1637, when he granted power to Governor Calvert to call an assembly of freemen. In that year Lord Balti- more prepared a code of laws for the government of the col- ony, to secure the liberties of the people, and to provide for General Assemblies of all freemen, who might pass necessary laws to protect themselves in civil and political rights. This code of laws was brought over from England by John Lew- ger. After his arrival in the province, Governor Calvert summoned all the freemen to meet in general assembly at St. Mary's, November 28, 1637. There were but ninety of them out of about two hundred and twenty colonists. (This shows that a majority of the colonists were servants, chiefly held to pay for the cost of their transportation into the province.) Three Jesuit priests, Fathers Andrew White, John Altham and Thomas Copley, were summoned, and Robert Clark appeared for them and excused their absence by reason of sickness. (Since that time no priest or clergy- man has ever sat as a member in any Maryland Assembly. The Constitution of the State, since then adopted, has al- ways made all ministers and preachers of the gospel ineligible
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INTRODUCTORY HISTORY
as representatives in the General Assembly, an exclusion that does not exist in any other State.)
In the first Assemblies the Delegates specially summoned by the Governor, Burgesses elected by the freemen, and freemen who had not consented to an election, sat in the same room with the Governor and his Council; but by a request of the Burgesses, in 1649, they and the Council sat in sepa- rate apartments, and in 1650 two houses were formally organized.
The Proprietary generally chose the members of the Upper House for his Council in the province, but with executive prerogatives, the Governor sometimes selected men of known ability and good reputation to form a part of the Council. The Governor and Council formed the Upper House of As- sembly. The Governor appointed the civil and military officers for the province, with consent of the Proprietary. County courts were established by the appointment of Com- missioners for the counties; and, usually, one of the Gov- ernor's Council was named to preside at court sittings.
The Governor could call or prorogue Provincial Assem- blies at pleasure. For the passage of laws made by the Lower House it required the concurrence of the Upper House and approval by the Lord Proprietary. The Council or Upper House had limited legislative powers of its own. The char- ter gave the Proprietary's representatives the right to pass ordinances that would not affect the life, liberty or property of the freemen without the assent of the Assembly. They had power to lay out counties and hundreds, establish public offices and to confer civil liberty on aliens. They also formed the Provincial Court or Court of Appeals, except when the Proprietary Government was deprived of control by hostile invasion or revolution.
The code of laws prepared by Lord Baltimore for the government of the colony, and brought over by John Lewger, was at first rejected by the Assembly of freemen, who had been summoned by Governor Calvert in 1638, N. S., by order of the Proprietary, but were finally adopted in
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WILLIAM CLAIBORNE
reconstructed form. The first act of this people's Legisla- ture was an Act for establishing the "House of Assembly," and the laws to be made therein. It provided that the Bur- gesses be elected by the freemen who consent to the election, and the gentlemen summoned by his Lordship's special writ shall be called the House of Assembly. This Act was de- signed to be first the work of the freemen or their representa- tives, and afterwards to be confirmed by his Lordship. It was passed the first day the Assembly met, in 1639, February 25. From this Act we inherited our House of Assembly whose laws our Governors confirm or veto.
The first disturbing factor of note in the colony was Wil- liam Claiborne, who had obtained license in 1631 from King Charles to establish a trading post on Kent Island, which was within the limits of Lord Baltimore's grant, and claimed by him. He offered Claiborne and his company of traders the privilege to remain on the island and become subjects of the Maryland colony. This they refused, and at once con- spired with some Indian tribes to destroy the new colony, but were unsuccessful. Then they began military and naval operations against the Proprietary's government in the prov- ince. Prior to an attack made by Claiborne's adherents on the colonists in 1635, he fled to Virginia, and from there went to England to have his claims to the island confirmed by the King, which was declined, and also refused by the Commis- sioners of Plantations, to whom the matter had been referred by the King for their consideration. Their decision against his claim was made April 4, 1638, because he had not been granted plantation privileges; and also because Lord Balti- more had been granted the territory of "Crescentia" by the King of England, under his private seal, before Claiborne's license for Kent had been issued. It is thus shown that Claiborne was not unjustly deprived of his territory, but lost his personal property by confiscation under the usages of war for military resistance. From 1639 the colony prospered until 1643, when the Lord Proprietary made some changes in administrative officers of the Council, and conferred more
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INTRODUCTORY HISTORY
authority on Governor Calvert, who in that year went to England to confer with his brother on matters of interest to the provincial government. He appointed Giles Brent, Commander of the Isle of Kent, to be acting Governor in his absence. While Governor Calvert was in England, one Captain Richard Ingle, with an armed crew on his vessel, traded about the province, intimidated and disturbed the inhabitants at several places. By order of Governor Brent, Ingle was arrested and his vessel seized, but he was soon per- mitted to escape-possibly intentionally to avoid Protestant excitement in the colony at that time. Fiction pictures Ingle's arrest by order of Governor Brent, who with Council- lors Neale and Cornwaleys, secretly watched Sheriff Ellyson seize and bind him. Immediately after his arrest, a brief coun- cil of the trio decided to accompany their too much prisoner to his vessel at once, which they did; placed him on board and bade him depart from the province before the morning's dawn.
"In 1644 Governor Calvert returned from England in haste, in September, after the defeat of the Royalists in the civil war, only to find great disorder in the province. To add to this discontent, Lord Baltimore had commissioned for the colony a Catholic Governor and Council."
In 1645 Captain Ingle, who had been granted letters of marque by Commissioners of Parliament, to prey on the commerce of England, returned in an armed vessel, aided by some disloyal colonists, surprised the guards at St. Mary's, seized and carried away the records and Great Seal of the province, and also a number of Catholic colonists, prisoners to Virginia and England, including Father White. Gov- ernor Calvert fled to Virginia for protection from Claiborne, who took possession of the province at an opportune time made by the help of Ingle. But in 1646 Governor Calvert returned with an armed force of friends to Maryland, sur- prised the rebels, took St. Mary's, and reestablished his gov- ernment. Hardly had he allayed the disorder caused by Clai- borne's and Ingle's invasion, when on the ninth of June, 1647,
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ACT OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION
he suddenly died. On his deathbed he nominated Thomas Greene to act as Governor after his decease. Greene's ad- ministration was short and unsatisfactory.
In 1648, August 12, Lord Baltimore removed Governor Greene and his Council from office, and appointed William Stone Governor-Protestant, from Northampton County, Virginia. When he arrived he brought six settlers, and had promised Lord Baltimore to bring into the colony five hun- dred. Probably the Puritans he had invited from Virginia, who settled at Providence, were of the five hundred. If then his friends, they later proved to be his dreadful foes.
Lord Baltimore, at this time a paroled prisoner in England, watching the downfall of the King and the rise of Parliament, knew he could not sustain a Catholic government in the province, wisely chose a Protestant majority for the Gov- ernor's Council-namely, John Price, Thomas Hatton and Robert Vaughn, Protestants, and Thomas Greene and John Pile Stone, Catholics. He also prepared a new Great Seal for the province in the place of the one stolen by Ingle and never returned; and a code of sixteen new laws, one of which was the Act of Religious Toleration, one of the best laws ever enacted in Maryland. The passage of those laws in 1649 and assented to by the Lord Proprietary in 1650 was made the basis of an agreement of reconciliation and peace between; the Protestant and Catholic colonists, but for a brief time only. The civil war in England, the capture and execution of King Charles I. soon caused exciting disturbances between the Proprietary government and the Puritan-Protestant alliance in the colony that in sympathy supported Parliament.
CHAPTER IV.
REDUCTION OF CHESAPEAKE BAY COLONIES TO OBEDIENCE UNDER THE "COM- MONWEALTH" -EFFORTS OF LORD BALTIMORE TO RE-ESTABLISH THE PROPRIETARY GOVERNMENT-GOVERNOR STONE'S MILITARY EFFORTS FOR THE PROPRIETARY-HIS ATTACK ON THE PURITAN CAPITAL, DEFEAT AND CAPTURE-CROMWELL COMMISSIONERS IN CONTROL UNTIL 1658- DISCOURAGED BY LORD BALTIMORE'S INFLUENCE WITH THE PROTECTOR, SURRENDERED CONTROL IN THE PROVINCE-JOSIAH FENDALL APPOINTED GOVERNOR-USURPS AUTHORITY AND IS DISMISSED-CAPITALS OF MARY- LAND.
In 1651 an armed fleet sailed from London by authority of Parliament to reduce the Chesapeake Bay colonies to obedience under the "Commonwealth." Of the Commission- ers appointed to do this work, Capt. William Claiborne and Richard Bennett, first visited Virginia, and made terms with Governor Berkeley. They arrived in Maryland in March, 1652, and proposed terms to Governor Stone, who did not consent to their demands. They by proclamation assumed control and appointed a Board of Commissioners, viz: Robert Brooks, Col. Francis Yardley, Job Chandler, Richard Preston and Lieutenant Richard Banks, for the gov- ernment of the province, under the authority of Parliament. Thus was Lord Baltimore deprived of all his rights in the province, which he had maintained graciously with his wealth and exalted executive ability. Claiborne and Bennett then returned to Virginia, but in June came back to Maryland and appointed Captain Stone (late Governor Stone) Governor, and a new Council for the province. The Lord Proprietary did not long submit to this wrong; as soon as Cromwell dis- solved Parliament, in 1653, and became Lord Protector of England, he reestablished the Proprietary government in 1654 through Governor Stone, who attempted to defend the Proprietary's rights, but through persuasion by the Catholics
27
THE CROMWELL COMMISSIONERS
not to resort to arms, surrendered his authority again to the Commissioners, who took possession of the province in the name of Cromwell, July 22, 1654. Under the ten Commis- sioners then appointed, of whom Edward Lloyd and Richard Preston were members, an Assembly met and passed an Act disfranchising Catholics, and refusing them protection under the laws of England, to which they claimed to be subject. This Act indelibly stained the shrine of Maryland liberty. It was largely the work of the Puritans, who had lately settled at Providence on the Severn, and to whom Claiborne had alosely allied himself for greater political influence and power. Lord Baltimore's reproof to Governor Stone for his tame surrender of provincial authority to the Cromwell Commissioners, fired anew his ambition to regain colonial control; and he organized an armed party who went and seized the arms and ammunition and provincial records stored at Richard Preston's house, on the Patuxent, then the seat of colonial government.
At once he raised a military and naval force, sailed to Providence, the Puritans' capital, and on March 25, 1655, attacked their forces of defence, by whom his little army was defeated and captured. Stone and his leaders were con- demned by court martial to be shot; four of them were exe- cuted, and Stone's life only saved by the sympathy of the soldiers who had previously served under him. Edward Lloyd, whom Governor Stone had commissioned Com- mander of Anne Arundel County in 1650, was a member of the military court that condemned Governor Stone and others of this expedition to be executed.
From this time the Cromwell Commissioners ruled in the province until 1658 with great severity, imprisoning or ban- ishing the Proprietary adherents, confiscating their property and otherwise subjecting many to base indignities. At this time Cromwell was too busy with affairs in tyrannized Eng- land to give much attention to the American colonists; but did order Claiborne and Bennett, his Commissioners, to desist from persecuting the colonists.
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INTRODUCTORY HISTORY
Lord Baltimore ardently tried to keep the Proprietary gov- ernment organized. He revoked Governor Stone's commis- sion in 1656 and appointed Josiah Fendall Governor, who was arrested by a warrant from the provincial court and held a prisoner in the name of the Protector for some time and then released, when he sailed for England. About this time Richard Bennett, one of the Cromwell Commissioners, had gone to England to ask for greater recognition in governing the province, which he failed to get, but discovered that Lord Baltimore's influence with the Protector was so great that he decided with others there to secure the best terms possible by agreement with the Proprietary, to surrender to him their part of the dual government in the province. Terms were adjusted and an agreement made between the Proprietary and the Provincial Commissioners, which was brought to Maryland by Josiah Fendall, the Proprietary's newly ap- pointed Governor, who published a proclamation in 1658 at St. Mary's, calling for a joint council of the two governments to meet at St. Leonard's, on the Patuxent, March 23, 1658, to arbitrate local differences and ratify the agreement which was satisfactorily adjusted. Then the provincial records were delivered to Philip Calvert, Secretary of the Proprie- tary's new Council, Fendall was installed Governor and a new Assembly summoned to meet at St. Leonard's on April 27 following. Thus was the Puritan control in the province surrendered and the Proprietary fully reestablished.
Governor Fendall soon proved a traitor to the Lord Pro- prietary. In March, 1659, he tried to usurp the government by an alliance with the Assembly which retired the Council from sitting as a separate body, and delegated power to the Lower House to dissolve the Assembly. After reorganizing the Lower House, Fendall surrendered the commission given him by Lord Baltimore and accepted a new one given by his new Assembly. His control was brief. When the Cromwell government gave way to the Stuarts and Charles II. was pro- claimed King in 1660, then Lord Baltimore appointed his brother, Philip Calvert, Governor, who took full control of
29
CAPITALS OF MARYLAND
the province. Thus has it been shown that the Proprietary had been deprived of governing his province almost con- tinuously for nearly ten years.
CAPITALS OF MARYLAND.
The capital of Maryland, first established at St. Mary's in 1634, was continued permanently there until temporarily moved to Patuxent in 1654, when Commissioners Bennett and Claiborne subjected the colony to their control for the "Commonwealth." In 1659, after the restoration of the Proprietary in 1658, St. Mary's was again made the capital seat and so continued until 1683.
As the colony grew in population, complaints were made about the inconvenient location of the capital to the Proprie- tary, who, to satisfy the people that lived at a distance from it, yielded consent for its removal to a place in Anne Arundel called the "Ridge." Only one session of the General Assem- bly was held there. Inconvenient buildings and other causes led to its removal to Battle Creek, on the Patuxent, where was held a session of three days, and then adjourned to meet again at St. Mary's. The Proprietary gave the people of St. Mary's a written promise that the capital "should not be removed again during his life." But, alas! how futile are promises that cannot be fulfilled controlled by an unforeseen destiny. The failure of Lord Baltimore's proclamation toreach the province in due time to announce William and Mary as sovereigns, led to a revolution, in 1689, by an organization under John Coode, known as "An association in Arms for the defence of the Protestant religion, and for asserting the rights of King William and Queen Mary to the province of Mary- land and all the English Dominion." After a short conflict, in August, these seven hundred revolutionists took posses- sion of the province. Thus under royal control, an Assembly passed an Act in 1694 to remove the capital to Anne Arundel Town. After the removal in 1695, the Legislature changed the name of the capital to Annapolis, which has ever since been the State capital, a city of acquired romance and re-
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INTRODUCTORY HISTORY
nown, where social gayety and refinement, wealth and intel- lectual culture, lavishly maintained, has rarely been equaled and nowhere excelled in any capital of our Union.
This brief history, now concluded, of the province of Mary- land, beginning with the first Lord Baltimore, and extending to the time when Annapolis was founded, now leads us to con- sider with deeper interest the making, management and development of our home county-Dorchester, from its origin to the present day, and to place in local history the honored names of many useful, influential and heroic people, with the story of their noble deeds in colonial, revolutionary and later times.
DIVISION II.
Early History of Dorchester County. CHAPTER I.
EARLY SETTLEMENTS-FORMATION INTO A COUNTY-APPOINTMENT OF COUNTY OFFICERS BY GOVERNOR CALVERT.
Thirty-five years after the Calvert settlement at St. Mary's, the Province of Maryland had sufficiently developed to justify the organization and outlining of another county then to be named Dorchester.
It would interest the present and future generations of Dorchester County to know the names of those who made the first little settlements, when and where located east of the Chesapeake, in that part of the Eastern Shore south of the Choptank, and northwest of the Nanticoke. Certainly not long after, if not prior to the settlement of Patuxent, in 1645, it was that some adventurers decided to make new homes on the densely wooded isles and adjacent mainlands just across the Bay.
In 1659, ten years before Dorchester County was officially established, while Governor Fendall was intriguing with the Provincial Assembly, to deprive the Lord Proprietary of his jurisdiction in the colony, Anthony LeCompte was having his land lying on Horne Bay, in Choptank River, surveyed. His homestead there contained 800 acres, which he named "Antonine." William Chaplin had surveyed 300 acres, and named "Chaplin's Home," on Tar Bay; Richard Bently, "Ben- tleys," 300 acres, sur. July 7, 1659, on Hungar River; Thomas Stone, "Stonwrick Rathorn," 150 acres; Thos. Stillington, "Stillington," 100 acres, sur. July 1; others, Stephen Gary, Francis Armstrong, John Gary, Peter Sharpe, John Felton,
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HISTORY OF DORCHESTER COUNTY
.
William Stevens, Thomas Powell, John Hudson, and many more were granted patents for land, who as owners, came and settled thereon between that time and the date of the county formation. The rent-rolls record more than a hun- dred settlers who had located homes within the limits of the territory which was later named Dorchester. By this time five hundred inhabitants were living in the proposed new county; these first settlers located along the shores of the Bay and its tributaries for the open view and convenience the water afforded to communicate with their neighbors; and for fish and oysters, such desirable food-products; and pos- sibly for greater protection from wild animals then numerous in the forests, as well as from the suspicious Abacos, and treacherous Nanticokes that lived higher up the rivers. In small colonies of a few families, they cleared the land of its dense timber growth to make for themselves little farms and modest homes.
Governor Calvert had, in 1667, sent an armed force of militia under Col. Vincent Lowe, against the Nanticoke Indians, to demand redress and the surrender of some Indians who had murdered Captain Obder and his servants. Terms were agreed upon without war, and a treaty concluded be- tween the Lord Proprietary and Vinnacokasimmon, Emperor of the Nanticokes, on May 1, 1668. Of this treaty a para- graph of its pecuiiar language is here given: "It is agreed upon, that, from this day forward there be an inviolable peace and amity between the Right Honorable, the Lord Proprie- tary of this province and the Emperor of Nanticoke upon the Articles hereafter in this treaty to be agreed upon, to the world's end to endure, and that all former acts of hostilities and damages whatsoever by either party sustained be buried in perpetual oblivion." This treaty relieved the new settlers of much anxiety and danger, and allowed them to advance their lines of possession into the interior without great oppo- sition from the native owners of this primitive wilderness, with its loved haunts and happy hunting-grounds.
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DUTIES OF COMMISSIONERS
In the following year, 1669, Gov. Charles Calvert, with consent of the Council, issued writs on the sixteenth day of February, ordering elections to be held in the several coun- ties, for the freemen to elect delegates to an assembly, to meet on the thirteenth day of April, at the city of St. Mary's. One of the writs issued was directed to Raymond Staplefort, Sheriff of Dorchester County, "returnable into our chancery on or before April 6." This is the first evidence found in pro- vincial records of the formation or erection of Dorchester County. There is no Proprietary proclamation or Assembly Act of record to show what date the county was officially designated. At the election held in Dorchester at this time, Richard Preston was elected a Delegate to the Assembly. At no previous Assembly had the county been represented. During the session of that Assembly, on the sixth day of May, the first Justices or Commissioners for the county were appointed. This interesting record here deserves quotation: "Cecilius Calvert, Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maryland, and Avalon, Lord Baron of Baltimore, etc.
"To Raymond Stapleford, John Pollard, William Stevens, of Little Choptank; Stephen Gary, William Stevens, Henry Trippe, Anthony LeCompte, and Henry Hooper, Gents Greeting. Know ye that we for the great trust and confi- dence that we have in your fidelities, circumspections, pru- dences and wisdoms have constituted, ordained and appointed and do by these presents, constitute, ordain and appoint you the said Raymond Stapleford, John Pollard, William Stevens, Stephen Gary, Wm. Stevens, Henry Trippe, Anthony Le- Compte and Henry Hooper, Gent. Commissioners, jointly and severally to keep the peace in Dorchester County, and to keep and cause to be kept all laws and ordinances made for the good and conservation of the peace and for the quiet rule and government of the people in all and every the articles of the same, and to chastise and punish all persons offending against the form of the laws and orders of our said Province of Maryland, any of them in Dorchester County aforesaid, as according to the form of those laws 8
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HISTORY OF DORCHESTER COUNTY
and orders shall be fit to be done. We have also constituted and ordained you and every four or more or you, of which you the said Raymond Stapleford, John Pollard or William Stevens, of Little Choptank (unless some one of our Council be present who are also to be our Commissioners), to en- quire by the oath of good and lawful men of your county aforesaid, of all manners felonies, witchcraft, inchantments, soceries, magic arts, trespasses, forestallings, engrossings and extortions whatsoever, and all misdeeds and offences of which Justices of the Peace in England ought lawfully to enquire, by whomsoever or whensoever perpetrated, or which hereafter shall happen to be done or perpetrated in the county aforesaid, against the laws and ordinances of our said Province of Maryland :- Provided you proceed not in any the cases aforesaid to take life or member, but that in every such case you send the prisoners with their indictments and the whole matter depending before you to the next Provin- cial Court to be holden for our said Province of Maryland, whensoever or wheresoever to be holden, there to be tried; and further, we do hereby authorize you to issue writs, pro- cesses, arrests and attachments, to Plea of Oyer and ter- miner, and after judgement, execution to award in all cases civil, whether real or personal, in action that doth not exceed three thousand pounds of tobacco, to the laws, orders and reasonable customs made and used in
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