USA > Maryland > Maryland's colonial Eastern Shore ; historical sketches of counties and of some notable structures > Part 4
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According to records a British fleet sailed up the Miles River in 1813 and under cover of darkness attacked the town of St. Michaels. The inhabitants, anticipating the attack, placed lights in the upper stories and on the roofs of their homes; consequently, most of the enemy's shells passed over the village. One shell, however, found a lodging place in a tall chimney, where it remains to this day.
On the upper Miles River are many beautiful homes, but there are few on the Eastern Shore more attractive and home-like than "The Anchorage," the summer home of Milton Campbell, a native of Talbot County now residing in Philadelphia. The earliest record
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shows the erection of "The Anchorage" was in 1732, by Rev. John Gordon, a Scotch Episcopal minister who was at that time in charge of the Miles River Parish.
The church stood on the opposite side of the Miles River road, nearly in the center of a field. The parsonage is now the central part of "The Anchorage" building, and was erected in 1732, either by or for the Rev. John Gordon. Just how long this reverend gentleman resided there is not known, but there is a tradition current that he always had an excellent congregation on Sundays, the secret of which may be attributed to the fact that a race-track had been constructed in the rear of the church and after service the congregation adjourned to the track for amusement. This bears out early records that the min- isters sent over to the colonies were rather of a sporting class.
Governor Edward Lloyd bought "The Anchorage" before his daughter, Miss Sarah Scott Lloyd, married Commodore Charles Llowndes, U.S.N., and after adding the wings and portico presented it to his daughter at her wedding. Later "The Anchorage" passed into the hands of Gen. Charles A. Chipley, who occupied the prop- erty for about fifteen years. Mr. Campbell purchased the property from the Chipley heirs nine years ago and since that time has added very much to the beauty of the place. The attractive features of this homestead are its simplicity, large trees and rolling lawn extending to the river, and the cordial and hospitable hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Campbell.
Just opposite "The Anchorage," on the south bank of the Miles River, is "The Rest," once the home of Admiral Franklin Buchanan, of Confederate fame, commander of the "Virginia" in the first test of naval ironclads. This home is now owned by C. E. Henderson. Just above the long bridge which spans the Miles River is "Myrtle Grove," the home of Charles Goldsborough and one of the old places of Talbot County. The interior of this homestead is colonial and the accompanying picture shows the hall and stairway.
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LONG POINT
SURVEYED 1663
O NE year after Talbot became a county of the Province of Mary- land, Ralph Elston came from England and obtained a grant to this beautiful tract of land, which lies at the southernmost end of Broad Creek Neck, between Harris Creek on the west and Broad Creek on the east. The following year, 1664, he acquired the adjoin- ing tract, known as "Long Neck." "Long Point" received its name from the point of land which was formerly known as Elston Point, now erroneously called Nelson's Point.
Ralph Elston married, in 1694, Mary Ball, the widow of John Ball, the emigrant. Her son, Benjamin Ball, came into possession of "Long Point," "Long Neck" and "Benjamin's Lot," and prior to 1720 conveyed all of his lands, including the above places, to his brother, Lieut. Thomas Ball, and removed to Kent Island, where he died in 1728. Upon the death of Lieut. Thomas Ball in 1722 the afore- said lands were inherited by his children, John Ball II and Mary Ball, who became the wife of John Kemp, of Bayside.
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"Long Point" was subsequently bought by William Sheild, of Kent County, who had married Rachael Ball, granddaughter of John Ball II, and was occupied by them until the year 1800, when it passed into the possession of the Harrison family of Talbot County, who occupied it for over a hundred years. William Sheild's name appears on the muster roll of Kent County in 1775, he being a private of the first class in the first company of the Thirteenth Battalion. Later he enlisted in Capt. Edward Veazey's Independent Company. In adver- tising "Long Point" for sale in 1799, William Sheild states that the place "is well adapted to grow wheat, corn and tobacco; remarkable for fishing, fowling and oystering and what renders it still more valuable and agreeable is the healthy situation of the place."
The mansion on "Long Point" was built by Ralph Elston and is now over 200 years old and still tenanted. It is a quaint colonial dwelling house, built of brick, two stories and attic, surmounted by a hip-roof. Two enormous chimneys stand one at each end of the house. The second story has dormer windows.
John Ball, the emigrant, settled in Talbot County about 1686 and bought part of the "Hîr Dir Lloyd" manor, situated on the eastern side of Third Haven Creek, from Edward Lloyd and was living there in 1688. He died in 1693. His son, Lieut. Thomas Ball, with Samuel Martin, Francis Harrison, Nicholas Goldsborough, Robert Grundy and other gentlemen of Talbot, was one of the jury selected to determine the value of the land to be purchased for the new town of Oxford when it was laid out.
It may be a circumstance deserving of remark that the Ball family of Talbot, in whose possession "Long Point" remained for so many years, has no apparent immediate connection with the Vir- ginia family of that name. The former belonged to an ancient English family seated in County Devon, whose armorial bearings are quite distinct from those of the Virginia Balls.
Like nearly all of the old homes of the colonial period, this house stands close to the water and around it grow the old boxwood, fig trees, horse chestnut and English walnut trees.
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THE WILDERNESS
SURVEYED 1683
B UILT in 1815 by Daniel Martin, "The Wilderness" house stands upon a small hill on the shore of the Choptank River. From the observatory one may obtain a view of the Choptank for miles, a scene unrivaled for beauty in this country. In the construction of this house care was taken that haste should not affect the solidity of the building nor mar the finish. The bricks were burnt upon the farm and the mortar made of lime from oyster shells taken from the river and sand from the beach. It is said that the floors were allowed to season a year before the house was occupied. Nicholas Martin, the father of Daniel Martin, who had lived in the original house at "The Wilderness" and had inherited it from his father, Daniel Martin, was a man of prominence in the affairs of Talbot County in the Revolutionary period. He was captain of a company of the Thirty- eighth Battalion of Maryland Militia and served during the entire conflict. He was a member of the Lower House of the Maryland Assembly from 1780 to 1795, and held various offices in the county. He died at "The Wilderness" in 1808.
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In 1813, Daniel Martin was a member of the Lower House of the Maryland Assembly and was re-elected to represent Talbot at four succeeding sessions of that body. In 1829 he was elected Governor of the State of Maryland by an anti-Jackson legislature for one year. The succeeding legislature was dominated by a Jackson majority, and chose Thomas King Carroll. The Legislature of 1830, however, again returned to the anti-Jackson side, and elected Martin, January 3, 1831. He died in Talbot, July 11, 1831, in the middle of his second term. Gov. Daniel Martin married, in 1816, Mary Clare Mackubin, of Annapolis. To her and his two daughters Governor Martin left "The Wilderness." One of the daughters, Eveline L. Martin, married, in 1839, John W. Martin, who then bought the place. "The Wilder- ness" is now the home of J. Ramsey Speer, formerly of Pittsburgh, Pa. Mr. Speer has done much to beautify the old estate and restore it to its former fertility and productiveness as a plantation. Mr. and Mrs. Speer are cordial hosts and "The Wilderness" by their hospitality has regained its former place in the social life of Talbot County.
From Chancellor's Point, the extreme southern point of Talbot County, around which the Choptank makes an abrupt turn to the north, to the mouth of the Tred Avon River there extends a long shore line rugged with jutting headlands and their corresponding indentations.
In the days before white men settled in Talbot County this penin- sula was the site of an Indian village and the happy hunting grounds of the tribe that lived there from time immemorial. The ground in places is scattered with their flint arrow heads and other relics. The Indians named the river Choptank, and they named many other rivers of the Eastern Shore. A few years after the coming of the white settlers, these Indians gave up their claims to their lands in Talbot and went to live on a reservation on the south side of the Choptank near the village of Secretary, in Dorchester County. In later years all of the Indians on the Eastern Shore went to other parts of the United States, where they mingled with other tribes of their race and in the Far West their freedom was for years uninter- rupted by the march of civilization.
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7
OTWELL
SURVEYED 1659
T WENTY-ONE years after the landing of the Maryland Pilgrims at St. Mary's one William Taylor came up the Tred Avon Creek and on the south side of what was then called Parrott Branch had surveyed for him, on August 15, 1659, 500 acres of forest- covered land and named that tract "Otwell." This was about three years before Talbot was made a county. In this same year "Hîr Dir Lloyd" was granted to Edward Lloyd; "Grafton Manor," 1,000 acres, to John Harris; "Canterbury Manor," 1,000 acres, to Richard Tilghman; "Tilghman's Fortune," 1,000 acres, to Samuel Tilghman; "Chancellor's Point," 1,000 acres, to Philip Calvert.
These were the earliest grants in Talbot of 1,000 acres or over, and it can be truthfully said of "Otwell" that it was among the pioneer grants of the Eastern Shore, though of less than 1,000 acres, and like all the other grants mentioned has been subdivided from time to time until it is now very much smaller than the original.
Writing of this estate some years ago, the late Dr. Edmund M. Goldsborough states that the loss of original acres detracts not from
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the charm of the colonial house; no unsympathetic hand has inter- vened to despoil the atmosphere of a fragrant past. The house of "Otwell" stands today an exemplification of the tastes and charac- teristics which prevailed among the gentlemen who lived in later colonial times. The substantial lines of the English farmhouse are discernible in the architecture of this early home of the Golds- boroughs, into whose family "Otwell" came many years ago.
Otwell still remains in the family, it being owned by Matthew Goldsborough.
WYE HEIGHTS
This estate of about 1, 100 acres is beautifully situated on the Wye River and was a part of the landed estate of Governor Edward Lloyd of "Wye House." The mansion house, situated on a bluff, overlooks the river and Wye Island on the opposite side. "Wye Heights" is now owned by James Fletcher, who takes pride in keeping the estate, as well as the house and surroundings, in the highest state of improvement.
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RATCLIFFE MANOR
SURVEYED 1659
THIS old manor became the home of Henry Hollyday about 1749, and here he brought his bride, Anna Maria Robins, that year. It is said that he built the present manor house at that time. The first Henry Hollyday died in 1789, and the estate passed to his son, Henry Hollyday; he died in 1850. Richard C. Hollyday, one of his sons, long lived at "Ratcliffe," and was Secretary of State of Maryland under several governors. His widow married the late United States Senator Charles Hopper Gibson.
"Ratcliffe Manor House" is more distinguished in appearance than the majority of homes built at the same period. The rooms are capacious, the ceilings high, and the quaintly carved woodwork delights the connoisseur of the colonial. The harmony of the interior is equaled by the effect of the dark-red brick structure, now almost covered by rich green English ivy. Many plants in the formal garden were brought to "Ratcliffe" in the early days of the Hollydays, and new varieties of ornamental shrubbery have been added by the present owner, A. A. Hathaway, formerly of Wisconsin.
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HAMPDEN
BUILT 1663
H TAMPDEN," the ancestral home of the Martins of Talbot County, was built, it is said, in 1663 by Thomas Martin, the emigrant. The house stands on a branch of Dividing Creek amid a grove of giant trees and, while it is unpretentious, it embodies the substantial lines of the English farmhouse of that day. It is claimed that "Hampden" was the first brick house in Talbot.
Thomas Martin was born in Dorsetshire, England, in 1629, and arrived in the Province of Maryland in 1663. He acquired 200 acres from Edward Lloyd, part of the "Hîr Dir Lloyd" grant, and on it built this house which he named "Hampden," in honor of his friend, John Hampden, of England. In addition to this place Thomas Martin owned several large tracts of land in Talbot County. In 1692 when the parishes were laid out he was selected by the freeholders living in St. Peter's Parish as one of the vestrymen and to the credit of his descendants it is said one or more of them have been members of the vestry for over 200 years of Old Whitemarsh Church, now in crumbling ruins.
-
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MARYLAND'S COLONIAL EASTERN SHORE
In Island Neck Creek many homes were built in the early days of the county and on Dividing Creek nearly opposite to "Hamp- den" is the ancestral home of the Stevens family, "Compton." From the porch of this old mansion down over the well-kept lawns a fine view meets the eye. The quiet waters of Dividing Creek, the swift- flowing current of the Choptank River and the blue-gray shore line of Dorchester present a beautiful picture. Like "Hampden," this home was built of brick.
John Stevens built "Compton" in 1770, and here entertained his friends in lavish style. In 1788 he was a member of the Maryland Convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States of America, his colleagues from Talbot in this convention being Robert Goldsborough, Jr., Edward Lloyd and Jeremiah Banning. In 1794 John Stevens died at "Compton," leaving an only son, Samuel Stevens.
Samuel Stevens became Governor of the State of Maryland in 1822. Like his father, he was a very popular man and his home was the rendezvous of local as well as State celebrities. In 1824 Gov. Samuel Stevens extended an invitation to General Lafayette to again visit Annapolis. The distinguished Frenchman accepted the invita- tion and a public reception and ball was held at the State House in his honor. During General Lafayette's stay at Annapolis, Governor Stevens sent a message to the State Assembly, which was in session at that time, asking that General Lafayette and his male heirs forever be made citizens of the State of Maryland. This was done by unani- mous action on the part of both branches of the Assembly. Governor Stevens remained in office by two re-elections until 1826 and then returned to "Compton," where he spent a long and active life, dying there in 1860. At his death the property passed out of the Stevens family and is now owned by Charles B. Lloyd.
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SOMERSET
1666
[T is an interesting fact that this old county was that part of the 1
Province of Maryland officially known at St. Mary's City from 1661 to 1666 as "The Eastern Shore," while the section north of the Choptank River was known as the "Isle of Kent." Under date of February 4, 1662, John Elzey, Randall Revell and Stephen Horsey were made Commissioners for the territory south of the Choptank River. They held their offices until February 20, 1663, when Elzey and Horsey were reappointed by the Governor and Council, and Ran- dall was succeeded by William Thorne. On the 15th of August, 1663, Elzey, Horsey, Thorne and Capt. John Odber were made "Commis- sioners for that part of the Province newly seated called the Eastern Shore," and on the 26th of May, 1664, Governor Charles Calvert "nominated, constituted and empowered Stephen Horsey, Capt. William Thorne and Mr. William Bozeman, gentleman, or any two of them being within this Province to grant warrants for land during the term of six months ensuing to date hereof upon the Eastern Shore of this Province in any part between the Choptank River and a line drawn east into the Maine Ocean from Watkins Point." A commis- sion was issued August 28, 1665, to Horsey and Thorne "to continue Justices of the Peace on the Eastern Shore," and George Johnson, William Stevens, John White, John Winder, James Jones and Henry Boston were joined with them. These same men were appointed February 23, 1666, Commissioners for the Eastern Shore for one year ; and just six months later, August 22, 1666, the county was created, and a new commission of the peace issued to them.
The boundaries of the new county were set out in the Proprietary's proclamation with all the exactness of the geographical knowledge of the day: "Bounded on the south with a line drawn from Wattkins' Point to the Ocean on the East, Nanticoke River on the north and the
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sound of Chesipiake Bay on the West," and it was given the name of "Sommersett County in honor to our Deare Sister, the Lady Mary Somersett." Somerset, Worcester and Wicomico Counties, as at pres- ent constituted, were within this area.
Many attractions were presented by this territory to the immi- grant. The climate was mild, tempered by ocean and bay, the soil, fertile and kind, responded generously to even the shallowest culti- vation. The Nanticoke, Wicomico, Manokin, Great Annamessex, Little Annamessex, Pocomoke, and other streams traversed or in- dented the county. On the east the Chincoteague Bay made a break between the mainland and the long seashore of sand which stretches from Ocean City to the State line. These waters not only furnished abundant and delicious food, but they were the principal thorough- fares for travel from place to place in this new country where the land, except that adjacent to the navigable waters, was but little more than a pathless wilderness. Along the banks of these water courses the first settlements were made and the first places of worship were near to the rivers. It was a familiar sight to the early colonists to see the rivers dotted with sail boats going to and from the Sunday services held in the primitive churches of the early days of the Province.
Many of the early settlers in Somerset, as in the other counties of the Province, had fled from religious persecution in the Old World. They sought and found in the New World an asylum in Maryland where each one was permitted to worship God as his conscience dic- tated. Here indeed was a new country, rich in opportunities and made famous as the first to offer absolutely free religious worship. Such was the land of which Somerset County was a part. With its natural advantages, its forests abounding with game both large and small, its rivers yielding bountifully of fish, oysters and crabs, it is not sur- prising that Somerset soon became a very important part of Cecilius Calvert's Colony.
Into this part of the Province of Maryland as early as 1661 came John Elzey, Randall Revell, Edmund Howard, Stephen Horsey, William Thorne, Capt. John Odber, George Johnson, William Stevens, John White, Matthew Scarborough, John Winder, William Bozeman, James Jones and Henry Boston, men whose descendants have dwelt
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here in this delightful land for the 250 years that have intervened since those pioneer settlers drove their axes into the trees and made clearings on which to grow grain and tobacco. Some of the early grants in Somerset were: "Bridges' Lot," 1,100 acres, 1663, to Joseph Bridges; "Darby," 3,000 acres, 1663, to Henry Sewall; "Jordan's Point," 1,000 acres, 1662, to Thomas Jordan; "More & Case It," 1,200 acres, 1662, to William Bozeman; "Revell's Grove," 1,500 acres, 1665, to Randall Revell; "Rice's Land," 1,000 acres, 1663, to Nicholas Rice; "Stanley," 1,350 acres, 1663, to Hugh Stanley; "The Strand," 1,000 acres, 1663, to Daniel Jenifer; "Wicomico," 1,000 acres, 1663, to Henry Sewall; "Rehoboth," 1,000 acres, 1665, to Col. William Stevens.
When, in 1742, the Assembly created a new county on the "sea- board side of Somerset"-Worcester-Somerset lost much of its origi- nal territory and about half of its inhabitants. In the erection of Wicomico County in 1867 Somerset again contributed area and popu- lation. She is the "mother" county south of the Choptank, as Kent is north of the river. Edmund Beauchamp was the first "Clerk and Keeper of the Records" of Somerset, and Stephen Horsey became the first Sheriff. In January, 1666, the Somerset County Court met at the house of Thomas Pool in Revell's Neck. A lot for the public buildings on the Manokin River was deeded the Proprietary in 1668 by Randall Revell, where a town was to be laid out for the county- seat, to be called "Sommerton." Soon afterward, however, the court ceased meeting on Revell's place, the town never became an actuality, and the county business was transacted on Dividing Creek. At the March term of the court, 1694, it was ordered that a tract of land not exceeding 200 acres be purchased near Dividing Creek on which a court house was to be built. The order called for a building fifty feet long by twenty feet wide with gable ends of brick. Nothing remains of that court house although its approximate site is still known as "Court House Hill." In 1732 the Assembly authorized the purchase of twenty-five acres, part of the original grant known as "Beckford," the land to be laid out into lots and a town built to be called Princess Anne. Here the court house was built and this old town, laid out in 1733, has been the county-seat ever since.
Princess Anne is on the south side of the Manokin River near its
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headwaters. Its most striking feature is its wide and beautifully shaded streets. At Princess Anne is St. Andrews, the parish church of Somerset Parish, (1692). At Rehoboth, a small hamlet near the Pocomoke River, stands the ruins of one of the first churches built in the Province, the parish church of Coventry Parish. When the four parishes of Coventry, Snow Hill, Somerset and Stepney were laid out in Somerset County the following appeared as vestrymen: John Huett, Richard Chambers, John Painter, Nathaniel Horsey, Miles Grey, Peter Elzey, Francis Jenckins, George Layfield, Thomas Nuball, William Planer, Thomas Dixon, William Coleburn, James Weatherly, John Bounds, Philip Carter, Robert Collier, Thomas Holebrooke, Philip Askue, Matthew Scarborough, William Round, John Francklin, Thomas Pointer, Thomas Selby and Edward Hammond.
A chain of low-lying islands trending north and south divide the Chesapeake Bay from Tangier Sound, in the Somerset area, a beauti- ful salt water sheet that abounds in delicious oysters. Here, too, is to be found the greatest quantities of crabs. The catching of crabs gives occupation to a great many men living at or near Crisfield, a large and thriving town in the southwestern part of the county. From Crisfield soft crabs are shipped to all parts of the United States.
During the session of the Convention of Maryland which lasted from July 26 to August 14, 1775, the names of Somerset patriots were affixed to the Association of Freemen of Maryland, an agreement made with the other American colonies to stand by them in resisting the policy of "taxation without representation" which England had forced upon them. It was at this session also that the resolution was passed that there be forty companies of minute men enrolled in the Province, as soon as may be, each company to consist of one captain, two lieutenants, one ensign, four sergeants, four corporals, one drum- mer, one fifer, and sixty-eight privates. Somerset enrolled one of these forty companies from the men who had previously signed the muster rolls. Prior to this time, the muster rolls show two battalions had been organized in the county. The First Battalion, commanded by Col. George Dashiell, and the Seventeenth Battalion, by Col. Thomas Hayward, were two of the thirty-eight battalions of volun- teers enrolled in Maryland in 1775.
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It is not out of place to mention here the important part Watkins' Point, the southernmost point of land in Somerset, played in the adjustment of the boundary between the Virginia Colony and the Province of Maryland. In the charter which gave the Province of Maryland to Cecilius Calvert this Watkins' Point was the beginning place in the description of the bounds of the Province. The following extract from the description includes reference to the line from Cin- quack to Watkins' Point: "to the First Fountain of the River of Potowmack, thence verging towards the South into the further bank of the said River and following the same on the West and South unto a place called Cinquack situated near the mouth of the said River where it disembogues into the aforesaid Bay of Chesapeake and thence by the shortest line unto the aforesaid Promontory or Place called Watkins' Point." The King, Charles I, had before him when framing the charter a map which Capt. John Smith had made in 1608. On that map Captain Smith had indicated an Indian village lying close to the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay and about six or seven miles south of the mouth of the Potomac River; this was the Indian village called "Cinquack." Several times since the landing of Leonard Calvert with the colonists on March 25, 1634, this line has been the subject of dispute between Maryland and Virginia. Its final adjustment in 1877 terminated the dispute, but not until 1916 was the line between the two States marked by permanent buoys. This latter work was authorized in 1916 by the Maryland Assembly.
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