Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, was an English nobleman, also often known as Cecilius Calvert, who was the first Proprietor of the Province of Maryland, ninth Proprietary Governor of the Colony of Newfoundland and second of the colony of Province of Avalon to its southeast. His title was "First Lord Proprietary, Earl Palatine of the Provinces of Maryland and Avalon in America". He received the proprietorship after the death of his father, The 1st Baron Baltimore, for whom it had been intended. Cecil, Lord Baltimore, established and managed the Province of Maryland from his home, Kiplin Hall, in North Yorkshire, England. As an English Roman Catholic, he continued the legacy of his father by promoting religious tolerance in the colony.
Baron Baltimore, of Baltimore, County Longford, was a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1625 and ended in 1771, upon the death of its sixth-generation male heir, aged 40. Holders of the title were usually known as Lord Baltimore for short.
St. Mary's City is a former colonial town that was Maryland's first European settlement and capital. It is now a large, state-run historic area, which includes a reconstruction of the original colonial settlement, and a living history area and museum complex. Half of the area is occupied by the campus of the public honors college, St. Mary's College of Maryland. The area also contains a community of about 933 residents.
The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S. state of Maryland. Its first settlement and capital was St. Mary's City, in the southern end of St. Mary's County, which is a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay and is also bordered by four tidal rivers.
Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, inherited the colony of Maryland in 1675 upon the death of his father, Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, (1605–1675). He had been his father's Deputy Governor since 1661 when he arrived in the colony at the age of 24. However, Charles left Maryland for England in 1684 and would never return. The events following the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 would cost Calvert his title to Maryland; in 1689 the royal charter to the colony was withdrawn, leading to direct rule by the British Crown. Calvert's political problems were largely caused by his Roman Catholic faith which was at odds with the established Church of England. Calvert married four times, outliving three wives, and had at least two children. He died in England in 1715 at the age of 78, his family fortunes much diminished. With his death he passed his title, and his claim to Maryland, to his second son Benedict Leonard Calvert, 4th Baron Baltimore (1679–1715), his eldest son Cecil having died young. However, Benedict Calvert would outlive his father by just two months, and it would fall to Charles' grandson, Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore (1699–1751), to see the family proprietorship in the Province of Maryland restored by the king.
Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, was a British nobleman and Proprietary Governor of the Province of Maryland. He inherited the title to Maryland aged just fifteen, on the death of his father and grandfather, when the colony was restored by the British Monarchy to the Calvert family's control, following its seizure in 1688. In 1721 Charles came of age and assumed personal control of Maryland, travelling there briefly in 1732. For most of his life he remained in England, where he pursued an active career in politics, rising to become Lord of the Admiralty from 1742 to 1744. He died in 1751 in England, aged 52.
John Washington (1633–1677) was an English merchant who emigrated across the Atlantic Ocean and became a planter, soldier and politician in colonial Virginia. In addition to leading the local militia, and running his own plantations, Washington also served for many years in the House of Burgesses representing Westmoreland County, Virginia. He was the first member of the Washington family to live in America as well as the patrilineal great-grandfather of George Washington, general of the Continental Army and first president of the United States of America.
Margaret Brent, was an English immigrant to the Colony of Maryland, settled in its new capitol, St. Mary's City, Maryland. She was the first woman in the English North American colonies to appear before a court of the common law. She was a significant founding settler in the early histories of the colonies of Maryland and Virginia. Leonard Calvert, Governor of the Maryland Colony, appointed her as the executrix of his estate in 1647, at a time of political turmoil and risk to the future of the settlement. She helped ensure soldiers were paid and given food to keep their loyalty to the colony, thereby very likely having saved the colony from violent mutiny, although her actions were taken negatively by the absentee colonial proprietor in England, Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, and so ultimately she paid a great price for her efforts and was forced to leave the colony.
John Henry Alexander was a noted scientist, civil engineer and businessman.
Lieutenant-General Josias Fendall, Esq., was the 4th Proprietary Governor of Maryland. He was born in England, and came to the Province of Maryland. He was the progenitor of the Fendall family in America.
Colonel Thomas Brooke Jr. of Brookefield was President of the Council in Maryland and acting 13th Proprietary Governor of the Province of Maryland. He was the son of Major Thomas Brooke Sr. and Esquire (1632–1676) and his second wife Eleanor Hatton (1642–1725) who later remarried Col. Henry Darnall (1645-1711).
Andrew White was an English Jesuit missionary who was involved in the founding of the Maryland colony. He was a chronicler of the early colony, and his writings are a primary source on the land, the Native Americans of the area, and the Jesuit mission in North America. For his efforts in converting and educating the native population, he is frequently referred to as the "Apostle of Maryland." He is considered a forefather of Georgetown University, and is memorialized in the name of its White-Gravenor building, a central location of offices and classrooms on the university's campus.
Thomas Greene of Bobbing, Kent, 2nd Proprietary Governor of Maryland was an early settler of the Maryland colony and second Provincial Governor of the colony from 1647 to 1648.
Richard Bennett was an English planter and Governor of the Colony of Virginia, serving 1652–1655. He had first come to the colony in 1629 to represent his uncle Edward Bennett's business interests, managing his plantation known as Bennett's Welcome in Warrascoyack.
Maryland Dove is a re-creation of the Dove, an early 17th-century English trading ship, one of two ships which made up the first expedition from England to the Province of Maryland. The modern Dove was designed by the naval architect and naval historian William A. Baker. The Dove was a trading vessel that could be sailed by a crew of seven. The much larger Arc, was a passenger ship, and was sailed by a crew of 40 or more. The Dove was left behind as a local trading vessel to facilitate commerce between Maryland and the other colonies.
Colonel Nicholas Spencer, Jr. (1633–1689) was a merchant, planter and politician in colonial Virginia. Born in Cople, Bedfordshire, Spencer migrated to the Westmoreland County, Virginia, where he became a planter and which he represented in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Spencer later served as Secretary and President of the Council of the Virginia Colony, and on the departure of his cousin Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper in 1683, was named Acting Governor (1683–84), in which capacity Spencer served until the arrival of Governor Lord Howard of Effingham. Spencer's role as agent for the Culpepers helped him and his cousin Lt. Col. John Washington, ancestor of George Washington, secure the patent for their joint land grant of the Mount Vernon estate.
The Battle of the Severn was a skirmish fought on March 25, 1655, on the Severn River at Horn Point, across Spa Creek from Annapolis, Maryland, in what at that time was referred to as the Puritan settlement of "Providence", and what is now the neighborhood of Eastport.
Benedict Swingate Calvert was a planter, politician and a Loyalist in Maryland during the American Revolution. He was the son of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, the third Proprietor Governor of Maryland (1699–1751). His mother's identity is not known, though one source speculates that she was Melusina von der Schulenburg, Countess of Walsingham. As he was illegitimate, he was not able to inherit his father's title or estates, which passed instead to his half brother Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore (1731–1771). Benedict Calvert spent most of his life as a politician, judge and planter in Maryland, though Frederick, by contrast, never visited the colony. Calvert became wealthy through proprietarial patronage and became an important colonial official, but he would lose his offices and his political power, though not his land and wealth, during the American Revolution.
Edward Bennett, was an English merchant based in London, and a free member of the Virginia Company. A Puritan who had lived in Amsterdam for a period, he established the first large plantation in the colony of Virginia in North America, in what became known as Warrosquyoake Shire.
Mary Kittamaquund, daughter of the Piscataway chieftain Kittamaquund, helped establish peaceful relations between English immigrants to the Maryland and Virginia Colonies and their native peoples.
