Discover St. Mary's County 2009 - (Page 13) A fter 375 years, Maryland has many tales to tell and her story begins here, at Historic St. Mary’s City—site of the fourth permanent colony in British North America and home to the state’s first capital. Voices from the past drift upon the rolling waterways that spill into the Chesapeake Bay and are cradled within the ghost frames that mark plots where homes once stood in sandy fields ploughed by hand. The words of those who came before are written in the wake of the water and deep within the land. Today, Historic St. Mary’s City is the state’s premiere outdoor living history museum, encompassing more than 800 acres, and is recognized nationally as one of the best preserved 17th century archaeological sites in America. For nearly 40 years, researchers have unearthed and reconstructed the past through historical and archaeological evidence. Their discoveries have given us a wealth of information about early colonial American life, as well as Maryland’s vital role in the creation of a young nation. III In 1632, King Charles I of England granted land north of Virginia on the Chesapeake to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Lord of Baltimore and son of George Calvert (George Calvert, the original petitioner, died before the charter could be granted). The Province of Maryland— Terra Maria, named in honor of Charles’ wife, Queen Henrietta Maria—was a business investment, but Cecil, like his father, had other motives for establishing a colony in the New World. The Calverts were Roman Catholic in days when the religion was condemned in Protestant England, and they sought to establish a community where Catholics, as well as those of other faiths, could worship freely—a place where one’s beliefs were “tolerated.” The Ark and the Dove set sail from England in November 1633. Led by Cecil’s brother, Leonard, Maryland’s 1st Governor, 140 passengers sailed into the Chesapeake, eventually landing at St. Clement’s Island on March 25, 1634. A wooden cross was erected on the small island and Father Andrew White, a Jesuit Priest, presided over the first Roman Catholic Mass in British North America. After negotiating with the Piscataway and Yaocomaco Indian tribes, the colonists acquired land further down the Potomac River and called this settlement St. Mary’s. In the six decades that St. Mary’s served as the state’s capital, the one-time “…metropolis of Maryland…” compiled an impressive and unique résumé of colonial firsts. Mathias de Sousa was the first man of African descent to vote in a colonial legislature. Margaret Brent was the first woman to ask Maryland leaders for the right to vote, and William Nuthead became the first printer in the Southern Colonies. The first permanent Catholic Church in the British New World, the red Brick Chapel of 1667, was erected in St. Mary’s. And Maryland would become the first successful proprietary, or privately owned, colony in British North America (Jamestown and Plymouth were company owned). Arguably, Maryland’s greatest contribution was to the ideas and principles that formed the foundation of our country’s democracy. A century before the 1st Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution, Maryland established the first freedom of conscience policy in America and was the first colony to attempt to separate church and state. Symbolically, this idea is evident in St. Mary’s layout, the first baroque plan used to develop a city in America. Plotted on two symmetrical triangles, four main streets converge at the town center with the Brick Chapel at one end of a triangle and the State House at the opposite end. III Maryland’s capital moved to Annapolis in 1695, and the population followed. St. Mary’s began to literally disappear into the land; its story buried within the fields turned to pasture. www.Maryland375.com 13 http://www.Maryland375.com
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