USA > Maryland > Talbot County > History of Talbot county, Maryland, 1661-1861, Volume II > Part 5
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Indians. They cann say noe more then Ahatsawop had said for- merly that they left it to his Lsp; if it be his Lsps: will to transport him, they will say noe more in it; but desire they may be disobleiged from their words, and that we would looke to keepe the prisoner safe.
Judgment to be banished.
Court give Judgmt that the prisoner be banished into some remote part beyond the Sea, where his lordship shall appoint.
Court ffurther order that the Sheriff take him into safe custody and with convenient speed deliver him to the high Sheriff of St. Maries County.
Vera Copia
p Tho: Impey Clk:
The "court house in Wye River" referred to in the above was located at the ancient town of Doncaster, near Bruff's Island, in Miles River Neck. Coll. Philemon Lloyd's homestead, Wye House, adjoins Doncaster.
William Troth was appointed in 1694, press master for Bowling- brook Hundred, Talbot County, under an act of Assembly requiring the County Commissioners "to appoint honest and substantial men of their counties for every hundred to be Press Masters for the year ensuing, that, if occasion requires, they and no others shall impress victuals or other things given them in charge to press, etc. This office was probably considered more of a civil than of a military nature, as it was the outcome of legislation intended to protect the people against unjust military exactions.
That portion of the "Troth Fortune" estate upon which stands the Troth homestead is now (1915) owned by General Joseph Bruff Seth, the present Mayor of Easton, who has recently planted an apple orchard on his farm of over 8,000 trees.
Among the early Quaker familes into which the Troths intermarried
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AN INCIDENT AT TROTH'S FORTUNE
were those of the Berrys, Prestons, Stevens, Powells, Kemps, Dickin- sons, Skillingtons, Sherwoods, Bartletts, Johns, Jenkins and Oldhams. J. Eugene Troth of Camden, N. J., is a member of the Society of the Cincinnati of Maryland, as the representative of his ancestor, Captain Edward Oldham, of the Maryland Line in the American revolution, his mother, Narcissa Julia Oldham, having been a grand-daughter of Captain Edward Oldham, a descendant of William Troth, above referred to.
THE "STAMP ACT" IN TALBOT
It is a matter of regret to every one who takes an interest in our local annals that we possess so few memorials of events that preceded our revolutionary trouble, and of those that transpired during our war of Independence. Newspapers, those repositories so invaluable to the local historian or annalist, had not begun to be published within our bounds nor did they begin until 1790, when the Maryland Herald first appeared. The journals printed within the Province, prior to the war, numbering only two, the Maryland Gazette, of Annapolis, dating from 1745, and the Maryland Journal, of Baltimore dating from 1773, gave little space to what occurred in the distant sections of the province, and noticed only what transpired within their own precinct as it were, or what was of most general interest. The other public sources of local information, our Court and Church records, are almost entirely silent upon politics, confining themselves, the one to matters relating to the administration of justice, and the other to affairs ecclesiastical. Reading them, one ignorant of history would suppose the current of society from 1765 to 1782 was hardly disturbed by a ripple, much less broken into furious rapids by a great political revolution, and bloody war. To be sure, the formation of our State Constitution in 1776, which brought about a change and re-organization of our Courts, was noted in our county records, yet only, obscurely: for this change was so accordant with the demands of the growing commonwealth and so necessary for the ends of justice, that it seemed to be the result rather of a natural transition than of a violent catastrophe, so noiselessly did the old system of judicature merge into the new. As for the church, but for the interruption of the collection of its legal dues, caused by the new form of government, the historical student would hardly learn from the record of her vestries, anything more of our political affairs than that she had passed from condition of humiliating vassalage to the Provincial government, to a state of noble dependence upon the loving bounty of her children, In short, our public records say almost nothing of events within this county that antedated, or were coincident with our Revolutionary war. Of private memoranda of this stirring period in our history, there exists almost if not absolutely none. Not a private journal nor collection of letters can be found. The papers of that gentleman who was most prominent and active in Talbot anterior
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THE "STAMP ACT", IN TALBOT
to and during the war, Mr. Matthew Tilghman, of Bay-Side, were de- stroyed, it is thought, by fire when the house at "The Hermitage," Queen Anne county, was burned, not many years ago. Had this dis- tinguished gentleman's papers been preserved, they no doubt would have elucidated those obscurities in our political affairs which now, it is to be feared, must ever remain in darkness. Such being the case. every memorandum relating to these times in our county that may be discovered, is cherished, by the annalist and antiquary, as a precious memorial; and what would be regarded as quite insignificant, if our historical treasures were richer, is now looked upon as invaluable.
Recently there have fallen into the hands of the writer two documents relating to that extremely interesting period in our history, the time of the passage of the "Stamp Act." The first was found among the pro- ceedings of the Court, in a book of Civil Judgments from Aug. 1765 to 1768, now in the Clerk's office of Talbot county. For the other the writer is indebted to the courtesy of Oswald Tilghman, Esq., great great grand-son of the gentleman mentioned above, who discovered it in a bound volume of old pamphlets among which was a single number of Carey's Museum-that for July, 1788, in which it was printed prob- ably for the first time. These documents derived from such diverse sources, have a very natural connection. The first is the expression of the sentiments of the highest civil tribunal in the county, while the second is a declaration of the sentiments of the body of freemen assembled in public meeting, upon a subject then intently engaging the attention of the people of America. There is little doubt that the account of the refusal of our Court to comply with the Act, and that of the meeting of our citizens, reached the hands of the ministry and the King together, and that they had their weight, small it might be, in determining the subsequent action of Parliament. They served to show to the ruling powers in England, as they still show to us, that the fires of patriotic indignation glowed with no less ardor down in this remote and secluded corner of his Majesty's dominions than they did in Virginia or Massa- chusetts, and that the detestation of the odious "Stamp Act," in as much as it was expressed in pretty much the same words, and shown in almost precisely the same manner, was as hearty here as in centres of political influence or the great marts of commerce.
The observant reader, will not fail to notice that the resolutions of the public meeting reveal a condition of feeling closely resembling that which existed during our recent troubles. The intolerance of the majority in 1765 is quite as conspicuous as that manifested in any meet-
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HISTORY OF TALBOT COUNTY
ing of Unionists in the North or of Secessionists in the South, in 1861. And this majority was ready to visit the same kind of punishments upon the minority, as were threatened to be visited in more recent times. We have canonized our revolutionary forefathers, but these documents plainly show they were possessed of the same frailties as we their children are, and that they are no more entitled to political saintship than many a blatant Rebel or Union shrieker, of more modern date, to make use of the epithets the opposing parties applied to each other. With a change of a few words the fifth resolution might have been adopted at some of the political meetings of one or the other side in 1861 or 1862. It must be remembered, however, that social ostracism, with which this resolution threatens the agents of the British Government, had a significance and a weight, that do not belong to it now. The persons who were appointed stamp agents by the Crown, were generally men of character and good position, and for them to be banished from society, particularly from the polite society of a community essentially aristo- cratic in its structure, as ours was in Talbot in 1765, was a penalty few of their condition were prepared to encounter. On the contrary in our democratic society of the present day, in which there is either an actual approximation to equality or less regard paid to social distinctions, often arbitrary or conventional, to be excluded from intercourse with any clique or coterie on account of political differences is only a matter of amusement to any man of good repute and true independence, or at worst it is only an inconvenience which is shared by the excluding as well as the excluded.
It will be remembered, or those who do not remember may refresh their recollection by consulting any manual of American history, that in 1765 the famous "Stamp Act" was passed by the British Parliament. By this act every legal document, newspaper, pamphlet, &c., was re- quired to pay a stamp tax, which varied in amount from three pence to a guinea. The inhabitants of the American Colonies objected not to the amount of the tax but to the political principle in obedience to which the tax was laid. Probably at no period in our whole history, was there more feeling aroused, than at the time when the passage of this obnoxious act was announced in America. Legislatures, that of this province included, passed resolutions of condemnation, and indig- nation meetings of the citizens were held in many of the provinces, those of Virginia and Massachusetts being notable for the warmth of the expressions of reprobation of the taxing a free people without repre- sentation. A Congress, composed of delegates from nine of the thirteen
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THE "STAMP ACT" IN TALBOT
colonies, of which Maryland was one, assembled at New York in October 1765, which drew up a declaration of rights and grievances for pre- sentation to Parliament and the King. This was the precursor of that other and greater declaration of July, 1776, and the Union then born, developed into that "more perfect" and glorious Union of 1788. The act was to go into operation November 1, 1765. Before that day had arrived the packages containing the stamps that had been sent over for distribution among the Crown's agents, were seized in some of the ports, and their contents destroyed. Those intended for distribution in Maryland arrived at New Castle, Delaware, but by request of Gover- nor Horatio Sharpe, they were retained on board the ship, and never reached their destination. The agents themselves were warned that their life and property were endangered if they attempted to enforce the law. Before Nov. 1st had arrived every agent had either resigned his post, or had fled from the country. The story of Zachary Hood, the stamp agent for the province of Maryland, who was burned in effigy at Annapolis, his house torn down, and he himself compelled to flee to New York, is familiar to all. It was just about this time that the Court of Talbot county met-namely on the 1st Tuesday in November 1765- and of its proceedings we have this record:
NOVEMBER
"At a County Court of the Right Honourable Frederick Lord & Prop'ry of the Province of Maryland & Avalon. Lord Baron of Balti- more, held for Talbot County, at the Court House in the same County, the 1st Tuesday in November Anno Dom. Seventeen Hundred and Sixty- five, before the same Lord Prop'ry his Justices of the Peace for the County af'd., of whom were present
The Worshipful
MAJOR RISDON BOZMAN, MR. JNO. GOLDSBOROUGH, MR. ROBT. GOLDSBOROUGH, MR. WILLIAM THOMAS, MR. JONATHAN NICOLS, MR. TRISTRAM THOMAS & MR. JACOB HINDMAN Justices.
John Bozman-Sheriff, John Leeds-Clerk.
The Justices aforesaid taking into consideration An Act of Parlia- ment lately made, entitled An Act for granting and applying certain Stamp duties, and other duties in the British Colonies and planta- tions in America, towards further defraying the expenses of defending,
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HISTORY OF TALBOT COUNTY
protecting and securing (?) the same and for amending such parts of the several acts of Parliament relating to the trade and revenues of the s'd colonies and plantations, as direct the manner of determining and recovering the penalties and forfeitures therein mentioned, and finding it impossible at this time to comply with the said Act, ad- journed their court until the 1st Tuesday in March, seventeen hundred, and sixty-six.
At which s'd first Tuesday in March, seventeen hundred, and sixty- six, the Justices above mentioned (having since the adjournment of the former court taken into consideration the mischievous consequences that might arise from proceeding to do business in the manner pre- scribed by the above mentioned Act of Parliament, and as it would be highly penal to do anything contrary to the directions of the Act) would not open nor hold any Court.
Between the time of the adjournment of the Court in November, 1765, and its meeting again in March, 1766, public sentiment in the county had been clearly and emphatically expressed. This may in some measure account for the phrase, "mischievous consequences that might arise from proceeding to business" in the above recital. The Court was unwilling to place itself between two fires-popular indignation, and legal penalties. It therefore, wisely adjourned.
The expression of the sentiments of the people of our county respect- ing the execution of the "Stamp Act," was made at a public meeting of the freemen, which doubtless had been advertised, by posting notices at the Court House door and at the Churches, as was customary at that time, before the introduction of newspapers. We are fortunate in finding, as above related, an account of the proceedings of this meet- ing in Carey's Museum, for July 1788, to which it was probably furnished by some former resident of the county, then having his home in Phila- delphia, who had been present at the meeting and had preserved a copy of the spirited resolutions, then passed:
RESOLUTIONS OF THE FREEMEN OF TALBOT CO.
MARYLAND,
November 25, 1765
The Freemen of Talbot County assembled at the Court House of said County, do in the most solemn manner declare to the world:
I. That they bear faith and true allegiance to his Majesty King George III.
II. That they are most affectionately and zealously attached to his person and family; and are fully determined, to the utmost of their
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THE "STAMP ACT" IN TALBOT
power, to maintain and support his crown and dignity and the suc- cession as by law established; and do with the greatest cheerfulness submit to his government according to the known and just principles of British Constitution: and do unanimously resolve:
I. That under the Royal Charter granted to this Province, they and their ancestors have long enjoyed, and they think themselves entitled to enjoy, all the rights of British Subjects.
II. That they consider the trial by jury, and the privilege of being taxed only with their consent, given by their legal representatives in assembly, as the principal foundation, and main source of all their liberties.
III. That by the Act of Parliament lately passed, for raising stamp duties in America, should it take place, both of these invaluable privi- leges enjoyed in their full extent, by their fellow subjects in Great Britain, would be torn from them; and that therefore the same is, in their opinion, unconstitutional, invasive of their just rights, and tending to excite disaffection in the breast of every American subject.
IV. That they will at the risk of their lives and fortunes endeavor by all lawful ways and means, to preserve and transmit to their pos- terity their rights and liberties, in as full and ample a manner as they received the same from their ancestors; and will not by any act of theirs countenance or encourage the execution or effect of the said Stamp Act.
v. That they will detest, abhor, and hold in the utmost contempt, all and every person or persons who shall meanly accept of any em- ployment or office relating to the Stamp Act; or shall take any shel- ter or advantage under the same; and all and every Stamp-pimp, in- former or favorer of the said Act; and that they will have no com- munication with any such persons, except it be to upbraid them with their baseness.
And in testimony of this their fixed and unalterable resolution, they have this day erected a gibbet, twenty feet high, before the Court House door, and hung in chains thereon the effigy of a stamp informer, there to remain in terrorem, till the Stamp Act shall be repealed.
Unfortunately we have no record of the names of the officers of this meeting, nor of any of those who attended it. At the date, beside the Justices whose names are mentioned as being present at the court that met in November, these gentlemen also were of the commission of the peace: Edward Oldham, James Dickinson and James Lloyd. That their names were not recorded is not evidence they were supporters of the Crown and parliament, in their arbitrary course towards America.
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HISTORY OF TALBOT COUNTY
These gentlemen constituted the Grand Jury at the same term of the Court:
WILLIAM SHARP,
JOHN SHERWOOD 3rd
DAN'L SHERWOOD
JOHN DAWSON
CHRIS'R BIRKHEAD
WILL ELSTON
JOHN MULLIKIN
JOHN S. HOPKINS
GRUNDY PARROT
RIC'H AUSTIN
THOMAS DELAHAY
WILLIAM VICKERS
JOHN CATRUP
JAMES MORTON
JOHN CAREY
WILL BESWICK
RICH'D SKINNER
FRANCIS BAKER
JOHN BRACCO
These gentlemen were members of the General Assembly of the State, from Talbot County, in 1765:
Upper House.
SAM'L CHAMBERLAINE EDWARD LLOYD
Lower House.
POLLARD EDMONDSON WOOLMAN GIBSON
JOHN GOLDSBOROUGH HENRY HOLLYDAY
The Assembly of which these gentlemen were members was that same assembly, referred to above, that met on the 23d of September, 1765, after frequent prorogations of the Governor, and which appointed the delegates to the Congress to be held in New York in October of the same year. These delegates were Mr. Edw'd Tilghman of Queen Anne's, Mr. Thomas Ringold of Kent, and Mr. William Murdock of Prince George's. They received instructions in the form of a series of resolutions, remarkable for their temperateness, dignity, and firm- ness, that were reported by a committee, of which four were from the Eastern Shore, and of these, two were from Talbot, namely, Mr. John Goldsborough and Mr. Henry Hollyday.
The names of all these persons here mentioned are those of persons of some consideration and weight in the county, and of those who would be likely to participate in a meeting of freemen for the assertion of their rights and privileges. We have no assurance that they all were oppo- nents of the measures of the British ministry, for at least one among them, when the rupture occurred in 1776, espoused the cause of the King, and between him and his near neighbor in the Bayside, Matthew Tilghman, tradition says, there was many a tournament of argument.
.
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THE "STAMP ACT" IN TALBOT
In them Congress and King were championed in the lists of Talbot. John Leeds, the Clerk of the county, was a Tory, but a man of the utmost sincerity of conviction, of the highest social position, of elegant culture in letters, and of conspicuous scientific attainments. It is not improbable, however, that every man, whose name is here mentioned, even John Leeds was an opponent of the Stamp Act, for there was a notable unanimity of sentiment upon this subject throughout the province-a greater than in the year of Independence. But besides those who are here mentioned there were doubtless many others who attended this meeting, whose names nowhere appear on record. There were heroes in Greece before Agamemnon, who had no Homer to cata- logue their names and recite their deeds; so there were patriots in Talbot who will be forever unknown in that there was no historian to record their devotion to their county.
It is almost useless to say the Stamp Act which arrested the oper- ation of our courts, and caused such ebullient indignation among the freemen of Talbot, and which, indeed, came so near precipitating the Revolution ten years before it actually broke out, was repealed by Parliament, in March, 1766; but our county justices did not know that, when they met in this month, and declared it would be attended with mischievous consequences to proceed to business while an act was in force which would nullify many of these proceedings unless complied with, which they for conscience could not do. The act of repeal was coupled with this fortunate or unfortunate declaration, that the Royal Government still held the right "to bind the colonies in all cases what- soever." We all know to what this led ten years after. We do not know to what it shall lead in a future which to the thoughtful mind is certainly not altogether bright.
THE REVOLUTION IN TALBOT
Quantum distat ab Inacho Codrus, pro patria non timidus mori, Narras, et genus Æaci Et pugnata sacro bella sub Ilio.
-HORACE, CAR. III., 19, 1-4.
The philosophic study of nations has been concomitant with that of nature. The broader view which modern science has been enabled to take through the vast extension of physical exploration, modern history has been qualified to obtain through a more thorough scrutiny of the movements of political societies. The great law which physicists, in every department, have been able to discover as operative, and have formulated, namely, that there is no change without antecedent and efficient cause, and that changes are not paroxysmal but regular, soci- ologists have also discovered and formulated, namely, that changes in states and nations are never without antecedent and efficient causes working with regularity as well as potency. If nature has her earth- quakes, her cataclysms, her cyclones and tornadoes, the scientists no longer look upon them as accidents in the working of the machinery of the world, much less do they regard them as the purposed interven- tions of the Great Engineer-with reverence be it spoken-but as the orderly result of causes acting through immeasurable time and space, regular and certain, if not, at the present, calculable and prognosticable. So if organized society has its riots, tumults, insurrections, rebellions, revolutions, the social philosopher, or philosophic historian, is impelled to study them on their remote or efficient causes, with an assurance that these are governed by a law permanent, regular, and possibly subject to the moral calculus of probabilities. That there are no acci- dents to be recorded in the history of nature or of nations, is the conclu- sion that has been reached by the investigation of the highest science in physics or politics. The American Revolution, one of the most important events that has occurred within the memory of man, whether as giving expression to a principle of civil government, or as far-reaching in its results, was not a sudden outbreak of patriotic passion, but the resultant of political and social force which had been in operation from the very settlement of the colonies, and their organization into orderly governments-to go no farther backward in the history of English
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THE REVOLUTION IN TALBOT
liberty. In the province of Maryland the spirit of the Revolution was betrayed in the very earliest years of its history in the firm protests of its House of Burgesses against the claimed prerogative of the Lord Proprietary to frame and present laws to the General Assembly for its ratification-that is to say that the initiative of legislation as well as the veto upon legislation should rest with Lord Baltimore, or his imme- diate representatives in the province. Later, and from time to time, other evidences of the growth of the democratic idea of self government were presented, so that at the coming in of the period to which this contribution relates, the fundamental principles upon which the Rev- olution was based had very thoroughly pervaded the minds of the people of Maryland, or the minds of those who gave expression and direction to public sentiment in this province. It is therefore difficult to determine what shall be regarded as the date of the beginning of the Revolutionary period. Nevertheless there is a consentaneity of agree- ment among historians that the time of the organized resistance by the American Colonies to the passage and enforcement of the Stamp Act shall be regarded as epochal. So in this attempt to recover from the oblivion into which they have fallen, and to record for memorial preser- vation the occurrences of the great struggle for independence, as they came to pass in this county of Talbot, the relation shall commence with the incidents connected with this notable event in our history as a nation.
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