USA > Maryland > Talbot County > History of Talbot county, Maryland, 1661-1861, Volume I > Part 11
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69
92
THE WORTHIES OF TALBOT
in a letter of July 28th, 1745, to his fellow clerk in Liverpool, Mr. Robert Whitfield, he said:
Though we are with reason concerned for poor Captain Pritchard's misfortune, yet his gallant behavior in defending his ship and his safe arrival are very agreeable news to us. * * * Capt. Pritchard and his crew behaved as they ought to do. He died with glory. His epitaph is prettily done and has been printed in the Maryland Gazette. I dare say none of our commanders here will behave ill in such circumstances, but God avert the occasion.
There are in Mr. Callister's letters many references to the war with France, declared in 1744, and known as 'King George's War.' Into this war the colonies of Virginia and Maryland entered in a kind of half- hearted way, but those of New York and New England with much more spirit and vigor, as they meant to convert it into one of conquest. These references scarcely merit notice, for they add nothing to our knowledge of the events which were occurring, and which were merely preliminary to the great contest for supremacy upon this continent that came on a few years later; nevertheless, as they may be illustrative of the temper of Maryland, some of them may be quoted. In a letter to Mr. John Lewellin of Ramsay of August 13th, 1744, there is some political and military information imparted to his correspondent respecting the war then in progress, in which Spain as well as France was involved-of the treaty with the Six Nations, of the fitting out of privateers and the capture of prizes, &c., &c. In a letter to Mr. Robert Whitfield of Liverpool, dated November 25th, 1744, he says:
Immediate upon the news of your having declared war against France in England, we did the same in Maryland; and a pretty condition we are in for the war. I hope our neighbouring colonies will fight for us North and South, and the Indians have promised us they won't let the French come down upon us in the West. But I believe there will be no attempt made upon us. Our poverty will protect us.
Again in a letter of May 4th, 1746, he said:
Our Parliament had a sitting lately. They did no business but to grant 100£ sterling to be given to the Indians to engage 'em on our side against the French, who 'tis said have been tampering with them. The meanness of the present tribe or subsidy, whatever it may be termed, is matter of ridicule to our neighboring colonies. The Pennsyl- vanians say it is intended to furnish the Indians with Jewsharps; and the Virginians call it a present of an Indian Tomhawk; but as the Governor more seriously expresses it in his speech at the breaking up
93
HENRY CALLISTER
of the Assembly, they have put the Province to 600£ expences to give 100£ to the Indians, and desires them to consider the absurdity of it at their next meeting. There is a great deal of bad blood betwixt them, which hinders their doing of business.
In a letter to Mr. C. Craven of August 21, 1746, he speaks of Mary- land having raised three hundred men for the French War, of the fac- tors at Oxford having clothed them in a 'livery' or uniform of "Manx cloth faced with red and blue, half thicks (?)." He adds:
I don't think there's above a score of the Natives or Country born in these three Companies. The remembrance of the Spanish massacre is terrible to them.
In another letter railing at the people for their slackness, he says:
We are a parcel of mean-spirited fellows in this province. They are still worse in Virginia.
In a letter to Mrs. Dufour, mindful of the foible of her sex, he writes:
We are busy here about reducing Canada. We have clothed the best part of that share of the forces furnished by Maryland, with Manx cloth out of our store, faced with red. You never saw the Manx russet make so smart a figure in your life. I was the first that beat up volun- teers, and in half an hour got fifteen men. It was fifteen days before they got shirts for these fifteen men. Bearskins and Indian scalps in abundance, by and by.
From this long digression from the narrow but devious path of the life of Mr. Callister into a consideration of general topics suggested and illustrated by his letters, it is now necessary to return, and to attempt to follow his trail by such slight marks as he has left behind in these fugitive leaves. His career has heretofore been followed down to the earlier years of his apprenticeship as clerk at Oxford under Mr. Robert Morris. Before his term of indenture had expired he was indulging ambitious hopes of succeeding the chief factor, for he said in a letter of September 21, 1746, to his brother:
As to the chief place here, it is a place of great profit indeed, and I without doubt must expect to succeed to it ; but while it is filled with the persons now in it, I am quite satisfied and very well. You must know there are two of them [Mr. Morris and probably Mr. Hanmer] and I think I stand a chance for either as soon as they incline to drop it.
But his advancement was not made immediately in the line of his expectations, though ultimately it was. After he had served his appren- ticeship, he was, in 1747, ordered to take charge of a store of the Messrs.
94
THE WORTHIES OF TALBOT
Cunliffe at the "Head of Wye," the locality of which is in some doubt, though possibly it was what at one time was called Emersons, and now Wye Landing, or it may have been above this, for in latter years the Head of Wye was at the farm now owned by the Foremans, in Queen Anne's county. In the year following he contracted a marriage with Miss Sarah Trippe of a Dorset family, of whom nothing is certainly known but that her sister was the wife of Mr. Mazwell, a neighboring mer- chant and a kinswoman of Mr. Emerson, also a merchant of the same vicinity. The business of the store at the Head of Wye seems never to have prospered under Mr. Callister, owing as he intimates to great com- petition, and accordingly he was removed by the Messrs. Cunliffe to their store at Townside7 on Chester river, which had previously been under the care of Mr. Hanmer who was sent to succeed Mr. Morris at Oxford after his lamentable death in 1750. It had been Mr. Callis- ter's hope to be placed in charge of this factory at Oxford, which was "unequalled by any in Maryland," as he said, and his letters to his principals casting suspicion upon the conduct of both Mr. Morris and Mr. Hanmer were designed to effect this object. The store at the Head of Wye was still kept open under the care of Mr. Kemp, and there was a store of the Cunliffe's at 'Newtown,' with Mr. Dannet as under factor. Mr. Hanmer was the over-factor for all the establishments.
How long Mr. Callister remained at Townside is not precisely known, but from what has been said of his connections with the Acadians, it is evident that he had been removed to Oxford in 1755, and was then in charge of the factory there. Thus was his ambition gratified, as well as his longing for the invigorating atmosphere and luxurious bivalves of Third Haven and Choptank. For his health had suffered from mala- rial diseases contracted upon the head waters of Wye and Chester rivers, and their shell fish were unpalatable. When alluding to Oxford, as he often did in his letters, the praises of the salubrity of its air alternated with those of the excellence of its oysters-commendations which are not less deserving now than then. It may be well enough to note here that Mr. Ellis Cunliffe and also Mr. Robert Cunliffe had in about the
7 It is difficult to determine where "Townside" was located. In a letter of Callister he says it was upon Chester river, twelve miles above Newtown. Now according to the act of 1706, chap. 14, also act 1730, chap. 15, was the same as Chestertown: So that "Townside" may have been at or near Crumpton, in Queen Anne's. This is largely conjectural. No citizen of Queen Anne's or Kent, who has been consulted, knows of any place that bore or is bearing the name of Townside. Nevertheless, Townside may have been Chestertown.
95
HENRY CALLISTER
year 1756, received the honors of Knighthood, upon which Mr. Cal- lister congratulated them, possibly for their military services to the King, rendered at the time of the rising of the Pretender, for the former had then commanded a company in the royal army. The commercial business in Maryland, however, was continued under their direction, but how long is not evident. A curious and characteristic advertisement was inserted in the Maryland Gazette of September 1, 1757, by their factor at Oxford, which was as follows:
Oxford August 27, 1757. Thou who, for want of assurance, or want of modesty, have been so bashful as not to regard the kind admonition lately given them is so many Gazettes, are now desired to pay in cash what they owe to Messieurs Cunliffe's concern in Oxford; for the tobacco I presume is in the ground, and in that condition it no longer pays debts. They have hitherto been invited to pay with wheat, tobacco, and almost every way the most indulging to them. Since the discon- tinuance of that advertisement, I have indeed called upon several of them in the way best suited to the Constitution of the country. To the rest, I intend to allow five weeks from the date of this public notice; after the expiration of which, if they do not comply they may take to themselves five courts according to custom, and then petition for an act to pay off in oyster shells at twenty-five per cent. more than they are worth. The persons to whom this is addressed, understand me well, and perhaps, will allow I now speak plainer English than I have hitherto done. They never had so much patience with one another as I have had with them. H. CALLISTER.
It would be interesting, but it would be out of place, to trace the significance of certain allusions in this advertisement-as for instance to taking 'five courts,' which of course means delay of judgments and executions; or to petitions for "acts to pay off in oyster shells," which may mean laws to satisfy debts by some other medium than the usual currency.
Many of the letters in the collection from which so much has been extracted were written at Oxford during the time of Mr. Callister's second residence there, but they are almost wholly of a business char- acter and give as little insight into his own. There is but slight doubt that the business at Oxford seriously declined under his management. Whether this was owing to his incompetency and neglect, or to circum- stances which no capacity or attention could control, for Oxford had even then entered upon its era of decadence, it is impossible now to determine; but this decline brought about a variance between the Messrs. Cunliffe and their factor, which resulted in his resignation of their
96
THE WORTHIES OF TALBOT
employment in or about the year 1759, and in his removal again to Town- side on Chester river, where in 1760, he was conducting a store on his own account.8 He appears to have been aided by Messrs. Anthony Bacon & Company of London, in his trading adventure, by whom he was supplied with goods from abroad: but he had other commercial correspondents at home, through whom he secured supplies. Among these were Mr. R. Greenway and Mr. Robert Morris of Philadelphia, the last mentioned being the son of his former over-factor, and Mr. Wolstenholm of St. Mary's and Annapolis. A letter to a Mr. Gilpin, apparently a neighboring merchant written in 1760, may serve to indi- cate a commercial custom of the time. It says:
Although it is not the plan for one merchant in this country to assort another, I will assort you with tobacco at ten shillings prime, provided the articles you may want do not put me out of sorts.
It would seem, from this, that country merchants deriving their goods from abroad, were not desirous of supplying a neighboring mer- chant.9 Other letters of Mr. Callister, written during this portion of his career, which are almost wholly of a business character, indicate that changes were taking place in the manner of conducting trade with the mother country. Importation was concentrating in the large cities, or ships were sent out from Liverpool or London to the Maryland waters, with assorted cargoes, which found a market, wherever they could, among the numerous country merchants, or large planters, without the interposition of established factors or agents: and their ships took back as freight the products of the planters, who were becoming more independent. It is evident that Mr. Callister had several stores upon Chester river, conducted by his clerks, with his supervision, and that his business was of considerable magnitude. This did not prevent, per- haps it was the cause of his falling into financial embarrassments. By
8 It appears that in 1759, the Messrs. Cunliffe closed their business in Mary- land.
9 Etymological reflections are clearly misplaced in a biographical sketch: but nevertheless it may be well enough to say, Mr. Callister uses in this letter the word dissort, as signifying breaking of assortment. Again: may not the phrase as used by him "out of sorts" be the origin of the current phrase of the present, signifying a broken or disordered condition of the health of the body? In the same letter to Mr. Gilpin, Mr. Callister asks of him, "A coil of such wire is as proper, according to Franklin's scheme, with a gilded point, to set to a martin pole, seventy feet long." Lightning rods were then as novel as electric lights are now.
97
HENRY CALLISTER
the middle of the year, Messrs. Bacon & Company who had established him in business refused any longer to send him goods. This he resented very warmly in his letters to them, and claimed to be the cause of his discredit. The result was that in 1763, he became bankrupt, made an assignment of all his effects for the benefit of his creditors, surren- dered his property at Townside to Messrs. Bacon & Company, abandoned trade and removed to his farm, near Crumpton. In a letter of Decem- ber, 1762, he speaks of having "shut up shop forever," and added: "I begin to look down to the earth," which did not mean that he was pre- paring for death, but to cultivate the soil for a living. Accordingly we find that in September, 1763, he had removed to a farm in Queen Anne's county, near Crumpton, where he had built a house as a place of residence. Among the land records of this county, there is a deed from him to his then oldest daughters, Sarah, Margaret and Elizabeth of two hundred and fifty acres of land, called Pearle, and one hundred and sixty acres of land called Sandyhurst, both on Chester river, in consideration of his having received one hundred pounds [money] for three negro girls which were bequeathed to their daughters by Sarah Emerson of Talbot county. It is stated in the deed that the cause of his selling these negro girls was this: that at the time of the bequest he was factor of the Messrs. Cunliffe of Liverpool, at Oxford, and that he was unwilling to receive these negro slaves into his house, in as much as the cost of their support would fall upon his employers. An example of uprightness more admirable than common among fiduciaries.
There are abundant evidences in Mr. Callister's letters that he took a deep interest in public affairs both in England and America, but there are but few indications that he sought political advancement. In the year 1760 he very hesitatingly accepted the appointment from the Governor of a Justice of the Peace for Kent County, and in the following year he resigned. He, however, at the same time applied to be made Sheriff of the county, but failed to receive a favorable response. Some of his earlier letters show that he was a Whig, and a warm supporter of the House of Hanover, and in one he congratulated his "masters" the Cunliffes, upon the defeat of the Pretender in 1746. He loyally, if not religiously, celebrated the anniversary of the Gunpowder plot, as is shown by a passage in a letter from Oxford to his friend William Tear, of Douglas, of November 5, 1745, which reads:
Today is Gunpowder Plott day, and I must go aboard directly to commemorate it.
98
THE WORTHIES OF TALBOT
He lived down to the time of that controversy originated by the Stamp Act, which was preliminary to the great conflict for political independ- ence; but his letters, terminating in the year 1765, make no reference, the most remote to the subject of colonial taxation.
In religion, it is believed his opinions were exceedingly liberal. Doubt- less he as a true whig supported the church as established by law and in condemning Papistical disloyalty, also condemned Romish super- stitions, but there is an absence from his letters of any thing like religi- osity or sanctimoniousness, as well as impiety or skepticism. His refer- ences to the clergy of the Church of England are not always the most respectful, and there are hints that he was in sympathy with the dis- senters of various schools. This however seems to have been rather from a spirit of opposition than of actual approval of doctrine or discipline. There is hardly a doubt he had imbibed something of the Deism which prevailed in the last century, but continued to pay a decent regard to the observances and respect to the ministers of the church. He cer- tainly secured the good will or even friendship of pious clergymen, and was fond of their companionship. Soon after his arrival in Oxford he had the pleasure of welcoming to Maryland and his home a fellow- countryman from the Isle of Man, the Rev. Thomas Bacon, often mentioned in the paper, who became the rector of St. Peter's Parish, otherwise called 'White Marsh,' and subsequently of All Saints par- ish in Frederick county. It was this Mr. Bacon who was the able and industrious editor of the magnificent folio volume of the "Laws of Maryland," and the founder of the Charity Working School in Talbot, the first absolutely free school ever founded in Maryland. Much of what is known of this excellent man has been derived from the letters of Mr. Callister, who maintained a personal intimacy or epistolary correspondence with him during many years. Although there was not a complete harmony of belief between these two persons, they were too sensible to contend over matters that, perhaps, admit of no solution; and they found, in addition to the bond of compatriotism, another of good fellowship in their mutual love of music, which they were accus- tomed to gratify in concerted performances upon instruments of tone.10 Another clerical friend of Mr. Callister was the Rev. Richard Harrison, long a rector of St. Lukes' parish in Queen Anne's county, who is said to have enjoyed the esteem of his parishioners, to have been just in
10 The letters of Mr. Callister written of and to Rev. Mr. Bacon may be found in the memoir of this clergyman, making one of this series of contributions.
99
HENRY CALLISTER
his dealings, humane, benevolent and prudential to a fault.11 Him Mr. Callister tempted to conviviality by an invitation dated March 14, 1760, to participate in a supper at Townside upon 'oisters' brought from Oxford, which he pronounced to be the best of their kind and caught by the most expert oystermen of that town.12 Another clerical corre- spondent and associate of Mr. Callister in 1764, was the Rev. John Barclay, a Scottish clergyman of the Church of England, who suc- ceeded Mr. Harrison as rector of St. Lukes parish, Talbot. He was a man of ample learning, and for this was made one of the boundary com- . mission to supervise the line drawn between Pennsylvania and Mary- land. He was a clergyman of reputable life, which cannot be said of all the cloth in his day. He died at Easton, and has left descendants here. The fact that Mr. Callister sought the companionship of men of decided religious convictions must not be taken as evidence of com- munity of sentiment in matters of faith, but rather of his preference for the society of persons of the best intelligence and most virtuous lives. That he secured this companionship, when it was known that his religious views were of a latitudinarian order, must be taken as a proof of his possessing that fundamental element of the gentleman's character, a thoughtful regard for the sensibilities of others, which forbade his obtrusion of his own doubts and questionings into his intercourse with men who are apt to regard all expressions of scepticism as not simply erroneous, but morally culpable, and worse than all, as imputations upon their own sincerity of belief.
It is necessary, though disagreeable, to say that the life of Mr. Cal- lister was not regulated, at least in his early manhood, by the strictest rules of morality, but he erred in two points, where men are most fallible, his intercourse with the sex, and his indulgence in intoxicants. His own letters refer to several entanglements with women, from which, it is to be inferred, he did not extricate himself with entire credit. In the first year of his apprenticeship he was severely reproved by his masters, the Cunliffes, for his abuse of liquors, and in his reply to their letter he candidly acknowledges his fault and promises entire abstinence from inebriating beverages in any "shape or dress." Whether he kept the
11 Dr. Ethan Allen's MS. History of St. Lukes Parish.
12 It is thus seen that the oysters of Oxford had then an established reputation for excellence. The names of the oystermen mentioned by Mr. Callister were Daniel Peck and I. Ogle, and are the first in their occupation to be named in any authentic document. Who will grudge to these precursors in a long line of "toilers of the sea" a cranny in the crowded temple of history.
100
THE WORTHIES OF TALBOT
pledge or not is unknown, but it is extremely doubtful if he was able to resist the solicitations of an appetite which is apt to become inordinate and habit which is strengthened by social customs. In fact neither tem- perance nor continence were the conspicuous virtues of the past cen- tury. His want of success in life may, possibly, be attributed to a lack of moral restraint.
One of his pleasures, to which he was evidently much devoted, was music. He was a performer upon several musical instruments, the German flute, the violin, the haut-boy, the spinnet, and later in life the violincello. After the Rev. Mr. Bacon came to Talbot his passion was gratified by concerts with this gentleman, who appears to have been quite an adept with the violin and violincello. What he said of Mr. Bacon as a musician may be found in the memoir, making one of this series of papers, and need not be repeated. It appears he had another musical companion, who also was a Manx man, Mr. William Stevens. Of him he said in a letter to Mr. Tear of Douglas:
I have had the pleasure of playing a tune with Billy Stevens. He has lost a great deal of his musical capacity. However his performance was found sufficient to ravish and surprise some of our best top-men. You must know we abound in fiddlers, but most wretched ones they are. Some of the better sort have a little of the true taste, but they are con- tent if they exceed the vulgar in that, and seldom get any further. I shall give you at foot a specimen of the music that is most relished here. As to other English tunes, they murther them here ten times worse than the county fiddlers in the Island. It is, however, diverting to hear how they do it. I should have passed for a tip-top musician, if the Rev. Mr. Bacon had not come in, &c., &c.
Some years later, in 1760, he writes to Mr. Wolstenholme, a merchant of the Western Shore:
I have had a long fever this unwholesome fall, and have, as wellas Mr. Bacon, declined in my passion for music. But I have just got a Violin- cello, which I have an inclination to learn; and if ever I see the Parson again the Muse's influence may be revived in us again.
It may be a mere metaphysical caprice but nevertheless the thought is ventured, that the same aesthetical impulses which sought gratifica- tion in the practice of music were also indulged by the culture of flowers. Philosophy may yet reach the correlation of the tastes, as it has that of the forces. Mr. Callister, by his frequent requests that his friends in the old country would send him roots and seeds of flowers, reveals to us his sensibility to the pleasures imparted by the bright colors, the graceful forms, and the delicate odors of the parterre.
101
HENRY CALLISTER
It has already been noted that his education was such as to fit him for other employment than that of commerce, if indeed it may not be said it unfitted him for trade. He was fond of intellectual pursuits, a great reader and a profuse letter writer. He was an observant man, especially of nature. Natural history, including zoology and botany, was a favorite study, and he seems to have been upon a level with the science of his day in those departments of knowledge. He frequently sent home to his friends specimens of birds and small animals, and had a habit of keeping live animals upon his premises. There is to be found among his papers an extended essay or memoir of the swallows of this county. It is written as by one acquainted with the details or minutiae of ornithology, as it was then understood. The judgment of a scientific man would be required to determine its value. It evinces the fact that he had divested his mind of certain natural history superstitions, such as the disappearance of swallows under the water upon the approach of winter, and of other popular errors of like kind. There are many allusions in his letters to the trees and plants about him, showing not simply a curious interest in novelties, but an estimate of their value as illustrations of systematic Botany. His library seems, from references made to its contents, to have been quite extensive, considering his cir- cumstances, and was composed of good books of permanent value in letters and science as well as those written upon topics of contempora- neous interest. He also indulged in periodical literature, which then had not attained the extraordinary development it has reached in later years. He had an immoderate propensity to use his pen. His letters are long, in accordance with the custom of a day when newspapers did not supply all the information of current events and comments upon them, and exceedingly well written. They are really notable as show- ing how a cultivated man may mingle philosophy with commerce in correspondence. To be sure they are artificial and would be regarded as anything else than models for a business man to imitate at the present day, when the extreme of brevity, and simplicity has been reached in stated forms. He seems to have been something of a dreamer, and his thoughtful manner was actually put down, to his discredit by his enemies, to indolence and inertness of mind. His inclination to take broad views and to generalize instead of attending to details and the matter in hand, justified, in some degree at least, this adverse opinion of his character. He was too philosophical to be practical.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.