St. Inigoes, Maryland | |
---|---|
Unincorporated settlement | |
Coordinates: 38°08′52″N76°23′28″W / 38.14778°N 76.39111°W | |
Country | United States |
State | Maryland |
County | St. Mary's |
Time zone | UTC-5 (EST) |
• Summer (DST) | UTC-4 (EDT) |
ZIP code | 20684 |
Area codes | 301, 240 |
St. Inigoes, sometimes called St. Inigoes Shores, is a small, rural, unincorporated farming, fishing and crabbing community at the southern end of St. Mary's County in the U.S. state of Maryland that is undergoing a transition to small residential subdevelopment plots. [1] [2] Its western side is bordered by a number of coves and creeks that are connected to the St. Marys River, a brackish tidal tributary, near where it feeds into the mouth of the Potomac River and close to its entry point into the Chesapeake Bay.
It is a part of the site of the first colonial settlement in Maryland (along with neighboring St. Mary's City) and is also therefore part of the fourth colonial settlement in North America. [3]
St. Inigoes is also the site of the oldest Catholic parish in the United States, dating back to the 1640s. [3] St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church, which is located in St. Inigoes, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. [4] The parish is still active today.
It also hosts a small naval air facility called Webster Field, as well as Coast Guard Station St. Inigoes, and is the site of the USS Tulip Civil War monument. [5] [6]
St. Inigoes also has a small commercial area with a general store, a pool hall and a gas station. [7] On the western side of St. Inigoes is a small waterfront park and a public boat landing. [8]
St. Inigoes is part of the site of the first colonial settlement in Maryland [3] (along with neighboring St. Mary's City) and is where the Jesuit priests who came with the first Maryland settlers created their first farm and mission. They brought with them 20 indentured servants and soon established a tobacco plantation in St. Inigoes in order to fund the mission. [3]
Archaeological excavation of Priest's Point in St. Inigoes in the 1980s included investigation of the ruins of St. Inigoes manor house, demolished after an 1872 fire. Artifacts discovered among the rubble of the house include trash connected to the missionaries living there. [9]
Archeologists based in the neighboring Historic St. Mary's City research complex believe that the leader of Maryland's first colony, who also became its first colonial governor, is buried somewhere in St. Inigoes. The most likely spot has been narrowed down to somewhere on Webster Field, now a small U.S. Naval Aircraft facility located on the water on the Western side of St. Inigoes. Several archeological digs have been conducted but the grave has yet to be discovered.
Members of the Calvert family in the settlement were known to be buried in lead coffins. It is not known if this is how Leonard Calvert was buried. His death, due to disease, happened suddenly and unexpectedly after a period of religious warfare had wracked the colony. Soon after his death, one of the first laws requiring religious tolerance was written and enacted in the colony, further codifying its original proprietarial mandate of religious tolerance and reestablishing peace.
St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church in St. Inigoes is the oldest continuously operating U.S. Catholic parish in English speaking North America. [10] [11] In 1637, the Calverts gave the Jesuits the St. Inigoes plantation, which comprised 2,000 mainland acres and a thousand acres on St. George's Island in the St. Mary's River. [12] St. Inigoes was, along with nearby St. Mary's City, one of the earliest places in America to legislate religious tolerance, [10] [13] [14] beginning with the earliest mandates for the colony set by the first Lord Baltimore and his sons. [10] [13] [14]
In December 1784, Father James Walton ordered the enslaved people residing at the St. Inigoes Jesuit-owned plantation to begin building a new church after the destruction and chaos caused from the American Revolutionary War. [12] In 1785, Father John Carroll laid the building's cornerstone. [12] Francis Neale, a future president of Georgetown College (later Georgetown University), presided at the church's dedication. [12]
This church is now a designated historic site [11] that includes a graveyard dating to 1641. [15]
The parish also includes part of one of the nation's oldest known African American Catholic communities, which has an even larger presence in neighboring Ridge.
The church contains relics from the original Ark and Dove sailing ships which bore the first settlers to the Maryland colony. [10]
A spot in Western St. Inigoes was the site of St. Inigoes Fort, overlooking the St. Marys River. This was during the era of colonial St. Marys City. It was a strategic protection spot for defending water access to the city, which was under threat from anti-Catholic militias from later Maryland settlements and also Virginia colony militias, as the Virginia colony proprietors were opposed to the Maryland colony. The erosion-prone quality of the shoreline caused the fort to be undermined by waves and the area collapsed into the St. Marys River before the 1800s.
The site is now under water, and just offshore from modern day St. Inigoes, but a few cannons were recovered in the 1820s. One of these cannons is now on display on the grounds of Historic St. Marys City immediately next to the campus of St. Mary's College of Maryland, near the brick reconstructed statehouse. It has been treated and heavily painted to prevent further corrosion.
The area is open to the public and the cannon can be viewed at any time.
St. Mary's County was one of the hot spots of the war, and British troops were known for terrorizing local residents. Although heavily outgunned, the citizens of St. Mary's County nevertheless put up a determined resistance for 18 months.
During 1813, a secret pony express was run through St. Inigoes from a clandestine American intelligence force in Point Lookout. The service operated for months, its messengers riding relay and evading British troops all the way to Washington, D.C., to give intelligence on British naval movements in the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac and Patuxent rivers. Operations ceased when the British finally seized Point Lookout later that year. [16]
On 30 October 1814, the sloop HMS Saracen was at Saint Mary's River. A raiding party from Saracen landed at St. Inigoes and proceeded to plunder the Jesuit mission and plantation, known as St. Inigoes Manor, including St. Ignatius Church, which was a part of the manor at the time. When the raiding party returned, Commander Alexander Dixie, captain of Saracen sent one of his lieutenants under a flag of truce to return what had been taken and to convey a letter of apology to the priests and residents of the settlement there. [17]
A few former pre–Civil War plantations are also located in St. Inigoes; some still have ruins of former slave quarters. One slave plantation, "The Villa", was operated by a local order of Jesuits. [3] In the 18th century, visitors to these Maryland plantations—including St. Inigoes and nearby Newtown plantation, also in St. Mary's Country—documented the Catholic clergy's dependence on slavery in order to subsist, and the violence that routinely occurred on the plantations. [12] One visitor, Irish priest Patrick Smyth, published a treatise that accused the Maryland Catholic clergy of abusing the enslaved people, providing ample evidence and first-hand testimony from the enslaved people. [12] For example, Granny Sucky was a ninety-six-year-old enslaved woman at the time of her interview, who shared that Father John Bolton of St. Inigoes beat her when she was a child (in the mid-18th century) for interrupting his self-flagellation. [12] In addition to violence, child mortality was also high at St. Inigoes and other Jesuit plantations. [12]
Most of these historic sites are not publicly accessible, and all but one are on private land. There are no public facilities for displaying or interpreting this part of local history.
Another former plantation, also on private land, Cross Manor, was listed as a historic landmark with the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. [4]
St. Inigoes is home to Webster Field, a small naval annex and secondary naval airfield, which is used for the development of electronic avionics. Webster Field is attached to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Lexington Park. [18]
Coast Guard Station St. Inigoes is located near the naval facility and is charged with rescue, law enforcement, safety education and protecting citizens in area waters. It operates under the command of Coast Guard Sector Maryland-National Capitol Region and is also operationally attached to the PAX River Naval Air Station in the event of need of personnel for wartime duties. [19]
St. Inigoes is also home to the USS Tulip monument, located a short walk from near the end of Cross Manor Road. USS Tulip was a Union gunship that exploded off the shore of St. Inigoes in 1864 as a result of a boiler accident. Forty-nine sailors were killed, and there were only eight survivors. The monument is listed as the smallest U.S. federal cemetery. The Tulip was originally commissioned as a Chinese naval vessel but was acquired by the U.S. Navy in 1863 for use in the Potomac flotilla during the Civil War. [5] [6]
There is a small public park and recreational-boat landing managed by the St. Mary's County Recreation Division on Beachville Road. It has a small facility for picnics and barbecues. Fishing and crabbing are also allowed in designated areas. No overnight camping is allowed. [8]
There are some boat landings and docks on various coves and creeks in St. Inigoes, which support a now-dwindling population of traditional St. Mary's County "watermen" (oyster and crab fisherman). Beginning in the 1990s, the ongoing near-collapse of the Chesapeake Bay crab and oyster fisheries have devastated this community. [20]
The small farming community is quite old, and some local farm families have roots in the area going back hundreds of years. These include people of English, Irish and African-American descent (in that order of relative population size). Some tracts of farmland are on parcels of larger, former slave plantations and still produce tobacco, corn and soy crops yearly. [21]
St. Inigoes is one of the few remaining places in St. Mary's County where older families retain hints of the speech of the area's original English and Irish colonial settlers. Although not as strong as the better-known Smith Island accent still found across the Chesapeake Bay from St. Mary's County, the St. Inigoes accent bears many similarities with the accents of Smith Island and other relic bay communities. The local speech also features some fragments of dialect and sayings unique to St. Mary's county. [22] The less-well-documented local African-American accent and dialect also appears to bear some locally unique forms. These accents are in the process of dying out with the decline of the fishing community, the conversion of farmland to residential development and the influx of new residents. [22]
The growth of the St. Mary's County population has brought change to St. Inigoes, and the number of tiny residential developments have grown since the late 1980s, especially along waterfront and cove areas. Many of these include private docks and pleasure-boat moorings. Residents include many current and retired Navy-associated families, St. Mary's College faculty and staff families and students; long-distance Washington, D.C. commuters, and other retirees. There is also a small community of traditional St. Mary's County watermen (fishermen and crabbers) and their families that remains interspersed throughout parts of the newer development.
A novel Rob of the Bowl: A Legend of St. Inigoe's, by John Pendleton Kennedy, was published in 1838. [23] Set in 17th-century St. Inigoes and neighboring St. Mary's City, the book is a work of historical fiction that also, in some aspects, is very close to the real history of the original Maryland Colony, as it does describe certain historical events that did occur in St. Inigoes and also in St. Mary's City. It is set against the backdrop of the struggle for religious tolerance and religious freedom in the early colony. [23] [24]
St. Mary's County, established in 1637, is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 census, the population was 113,777. Its county seat is Leonardtown. The name is in honor of Mary, the mother of Jesus. St. Mary's County comprises the California-Lexington Park, Maryland Metropolitan Statistical Area, which also is included in the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA Combined Statistical Area. It is part of the Southern Maryland region. The county was the home to the first Maryland Colony, and the first capital of the Colony of Maryland. Settled by English Catholics, it is considered to be the birthplace of religious freedom in North America, at a time when the British colonies were settled primarily by Protestants. The county is home to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station and St. Mary's College of Maryland. Traditionally, St. Mary's County has been known for its unique and historic culture of Chesapeake Bay tidewater farming, fishing, and crabbing communities. But with the advent of the military bases, growth of an extensive defense contractor presence, and the growth of St. Mary's College of Maryland, as well as increasing numbers of long-distance Washington, D.C. commuters, it has been undergoing a decades-long transformation which has seen the county's population double since 1970. The county is part of the Southern Maryland region of the state.
Lexington Park is a census-designated place (CDP) in St. Mary's County, Maryland, United States, and the principal community of the Lexington Park, Maryland Micropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 11,626 at the 2010 census.
Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore was an English peer, politician, and lawyer who was the first proprietor of Maryland. Born in Kent, England in 1605, he inherited the proprietorship of overseas colonies in Avalon (Newfoundland), along with Maryland after the 1632 death of his father, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (1580-1632), for whom it had been originally intended in a vast land grant from King Charles I. Young Calvert proceeded to establish and manage the Province of Maryland as a proprietary colony for English Catholics from his English country house of Kiplin Hall in North Yorkshire.
The Patuxent River is a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay in the state of Maryland. There are three main river drainages for central Maryland: the Potomac River to the west passing through Washington, D.C., the Patapsco River to the northeast passing through Baltimore, and the Patuxent River between the two. The 908-square-mile (2,352 km2) Patuxent watershed had a rapidly growing population of 590,769 in 2000. It is the largest and longest river entirely within Maryland, and its watershed is the largest completely within the state.
St. Mary's City is a former colonial town that was founded in March 1634, as Maryland's first European settlement and capital. It is now a state-run historic area, which includes a reconstruction of the original colonial settlement and a designated living history venue and museum complex. Half the area is occupied by the campus of St. Mary's College of Maryland. The entire area contains a community of about 933 permanent residents and some 1,400 students living in campus dorms and apartments.
The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America from 1634 until 1776, when the province was one of the Thirteen Colonies that joined in supporting the American Revolution against Great Britain. In 1781, Maryland was the 13th signatory to the Articles of Confederation. The province's first settlement and capital was in St. Mary's City, located at the southern end of St. Mary's County, a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay bordered by four tidal rivers.
William Claiborne also, spelled Cleyburne was an English pioneer, surveyor, and an early settler in the colonies/provinces of Virginia and Maryland and around the Chesapeake Bay. Claiborne became a wealthy merchant and planter, as well as a major political figure in the mid-Atlantic colonies, and the founder of one of the First Families of Virginia. He featured in disputes between the colonists of Virginia and the later settling of Maryland, partly because of his earlier trading post on Kent Island in the mid-way of the Chesapeake Bay, which provoked the first naval military battles in North American waters. Claiborne repeatedly attempted and failed to regain Kent Island from the Maryland Calverts, sometimes by force of arms, after its inclusion in the lands that were granted by a 1632 Royal Charter to the Calvert family. Kent Island had become Maryland territory after the surrounding lands were granted to Sir George Calvert, first Baron and Lord Baltimore (1579–1632) by the reigning King of England, Charles I.
Leonard Calvert was the first proprietary governor of the Province of Maryland. He was the second son of The 1st Baron Baltimore (1579–1632), the first proprietor of Maryland. His elder brother Cecil (1605–1675), who inherited the colony and the title upon the death of their father George, April 15, 1632, appointed Leonard as governor of the Colony in his absence.
Southern Maryland, also referred to as SoMD, is a geographical, cultural and historic region in Maryland composed of the state's southernmost counties on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. According to the state of Maryland, the region includes all of Calvert, Charles, and St. Mary's counties and the southern portions of Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties. It is largely coterminous with the region of Maryland that is part of the Washington metropolitan area. Portions of the region are also part of the Baltimore Metropolitan Area and the California-Lexington Park Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2020 Census, the region had a population of 373,177. The largest community in Southern Maryland is Waldorf, with a population of 81,410 as of the 2020 Census.
Maryland Day is a legal holiday in the U.S. state of Maryland. It is observed on the anniversary of the March 25, 1634, landing of the first European settlers in the Province of Maryland, the third English colony to be settled in British North America. On this day settlers from The Ark and The Dove first set foot onto Maryland soil, at St. Clement's Island in the Potomac River. The settlers were about 150 in number, departed from Gravesend on the Thames River downstream from London. Three Jesuit priests were collected from Cowes on the Isle of Wight in England where they avoided having to give the oath of allegiance and supremacy to the King. The colony's grant was renewed to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, (1605-1675), two years prior by Charles I of England, after first being given to his father Sir George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, (1574-1632), along with the title of "Lord Baltimore", and a first grant of the Province of Avalon, in the Newfoundland Colony,, who had served the King in many official and personal capacities as Secretary of State, 1619-1625. In thanksgiving for the safe landing, Jesuit Father Andrew White celebrated the Mass for the colonists led by the younger brother of Lord Baltimore, Leonard Calvert, (1606-1647), who served as the first governor, and perhaps for the first time ever in this part of the world on the first landing at Blackistone Island, later known as St. Clement's Island off the northern shore of the Potomac River, which was the new border between the new colony and the earlier English settlements in Virginia) and erected a large cross. The landing coincided with the Feast of the Annunciation, a holy day honoring Mary, and the start of the new year in England's legal calendar. Maryland Day on 25 March celebrates the 1634 landing at St Clements. Later the colonists and their two ships sailed further back down river to the southeast to settle a capital at St. Mary's City near the point where the Potomac flows into the Chesapeake Bay.
The Piscataway Indian Nation, also called Piscataway Indian Nation Inc. is a state-recognized tribe in Maryland who identify as descendants of the historic Piscataway people. At the time of European encounter, the Piscataway was one of the most populous and powerful Native polities of the Chesapeake Bay region, with a territory on the north side of the Potomac River. By the early seventeenth century, the Piscataway had come to exercise hegemony over other Algonquian-speaking Native American groups on the north bank of the river. The Piscataway nation declined dramatically before the nineteenth century, under the influence of colonization, infectious disease, and intertribal and colonial warfare.
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.
The Yaocomico, also spelled Yaocomaco, were an Algonquian-speaking Native American group who lived along the north bank of the Potomac River near its confluence with the Chesapeake Bay in the 17th century. They were related to the Piscataway, the dominant nation north of the Potomac.
Andrew White, SJ was an English Jesuit Catholic missionary who was involved in the founding of the Maryland colony. A chronicler of Colonial Maryland, his writings remain a primary source on the land, the Native Americans and the Jesuit mission in North America.
Thomas Greene was an early settler of the Maryland colony and the 2nd Proprietary Governor of Maryland from 1647 to 1648.
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 the Kingdom of England to the Province of Maryland. The 1978 Dove was designed by the naval architect and naval historian William A. Baker. The namesake Dove was a trading vessel that could be sailed by a crew of seven. The much larger Ark, 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.
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. It was an extension of the conflicts that formed the English Civil War, pitting the forces of Puritan settlers against forces aligned with Lord Baltimore, then Lord Proprietor of the colony of Maryland. It has been suggested by Radmila May that this was the "last battle of the English Civil War."
St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church, also known as St. Inigoes Church or The Cove Church, is a historic Catholic parish located in St. Inigoes, St. Mary's County, Maryland. It is a direct descendant of Maryland's first Catholic chapel, in St. Mary's City, whose communicants formed the first nucleus of American Catholicism. The parish fell under the umbrella of the first establishment of religious freedom in America by George Calvert and his sons, who established the Maryland colony as a refuge for persecuted Catholics.
St. Thomas Manor (1741) is a historic home and Catholic church complex located near Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland. Known as St. Ignatius Church and Cemetery, the manor house complex is the oldest continuously occupied Jesuit residence in the world. The mission settlement of Chapel Point was established in 1641 by Father Andrew White, S.J., an English Jesuit missionary. Father White ministered to the Potapoco Native Americans, some of whom he converted to Catholicism. Established in 1662, this is the oldest continuously active Roman Catholic parish in the American Thirteen Colonies. With the consecration in 1794 of Bishop John Carroll, St. Thomas became the first Roman Catholic see in the United States.
Mary Kittamaquund was a Piscataway woman who played a role in the establishment of the Maryland colony. The daughter of the Piscataway chieftain Kittamaquund, she was sent by her father as an adoptee to be raised by the English governor. Her life helped establish peaceful relations between English immigrants to the Maryland and Virginia Colonies and their native peoples.
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