Cecil Calvert,2nd Baron Baltimore was an English politician,peer and lawyer who was the first proprietor of Maryland. Born in Kent in 1605,he inherited the proprietorship after the death of his father,George Calvert,1st Baron Baltimore,for whom it had been intended. 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.
Nathaniel Bacon was an English merchant adventurer who emigrated to the Virginia Colony,where he sat on the Governor's Council but later led Bacon's Rebellion. The Rebellion was briefly successful;but after Bacon’s death from dysentery the rebel forces collapsed.
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion held by Virginia settlers that took place from 1676 to 1677. It was led by Nathaniel Bacon against Colonial Governor William Berkeley,after Berkeley refused Bacon's request to drive Native American Indians out of Virginia. Thousands of Virginians from all classes and races rose up in arms against Berkeley,chasing him from Jamestown and ultimately torching the settlement. The rebellion was first suppressed by a few armed merchant ships from London whose captains sided with Berkeley and the loyalists. Government forces arrived soon after and spent several years defeating pockets of resistance and reforming the colonial government to be once more under direct Crown control.
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.
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. 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.
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 was an English merchant,planter,politician and military officer. Born in Tring,Hertfordshire,he subsequently emigrated to the English colony of Virginia,where he became a planter. In addition to serving in the Virginia militia and owning several plantations operated using a combination of indentured and later enslaved labour,Washington also served for many years in the House of Burgesses,representing Westmoreland County. He was the first member of the Washington family who hailed originally from Northeast England to live in North America as well as the paternal great-grandfather of George Washington,the first president of the United States.
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.
Col. Isaac Allerton Jr. was planter,military officer,politician and merchant in colonial America. Like his father,he first traded in New England,and after his father's death,in Virginia. There,he served on the Governor's Council (1687-1691) and for many years in the House of Burgesses,representing Northumberland County and later Westmoreland County.
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).
Major Thomas Brooke Sr.,Esq. was a colonial lawyer,planter and politician of Calvert County,Maryland,where he served in the appointed positions of Burgess,High Sheriff and Chief Justice.
Jesse Wharton was the 7th Proprietary Governor of Maryland during a brief period in 1676. He was appointed by the royally chartered proprietor of Maryland,Charles Calvert,3rd Baron Baltimore. Following his death,Wharton was briefly succeeded by Cecil Calvert,infant son of Charles Calvert,before the next Governor,Thomas Notley,was appointed.
Thomas Notley was the 8th Proprietary Governor of Maryland from 1676 through 1679. Having first moved to Barbados he immigrated to America in 1662. He was the speaker of the legislature in 1666. He and fellow Barbadian immigrant Jesse Wharton passed slave codes similar to those in Barbados that punished those who helped in the escape of a slave or who stole and kept another planter’s slave for themselves.
Richard Bennett was an English planter and Governor of the Colony of Virginia,serving 1652–1655. He had first come to the Virginia colony in 1629 to represent his merchant uncle Edward Bennett's business,managing his plantation known as Bennett's Welcome in Warrascoyack. Two decades later,Bennett immigrated to the Maryland colony with his family,and settled on the Severn River in Anne Arundel County.
The Doeg were a Native American people who lived in Virginia. They spoke an Algonquian language and may have been a branch of the Nanticoke tribe,historically based on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The Nanticoke considered the Algonquian Lenape as "grandfathers". The Doeg are known for a raid in July 1675 that contributed to colonists' uprising in Bacon's Rebellion.
Zekiah Swamp is part of the Potomac River basin in Charles County,Maryland in the United States. The swamp is 21 miles (34 km) of braided stream stretching the length of Charles County and is a tributary of the Potomac River. It sits at an elevation of three feet (0.91 m) and 450 acres (180 ha) of its southern end is protected as the Zekiah Swamp Natural Environment Area. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources has the authority to purchase an additional 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) for the park. Charles County has moved to protect an additional 65,000 acres (26,000 ha) of the wetland. The headwaters of the swamp are protected as part of Cedarville State Forest. It was first accurately surveyed by John Henry Alexander,Maryland's official cartographer,in 1835,as "Allen's Fresh".
Colonel William Digges was a prominent planter,soldier and politician in the Colony of Virginia and Province of Maryland. The eldest son of Edward Digges (1620-1674/5),who sat on the Virginia Governor's Council for two decades but died shortly before Bacon's Rebellion,Digges fled to Maryland where he married Lord Calvert's stepdaughter and served on the Maryland Proprietary Council until losing his office in 1689 during the Protestant Revolution,when a Puritan revolt upset the Calvert Proprietorship. His eldest son Edward sold his primary Virginia plantation to his uncle Dudley Digges. It is now within Naval Station Yorktown. His former Maryland estate,Warburton Manor,is now within Fort Washington Park. Two additional related men with the same name served in the Virginia General Assembly,both descended from this man's uncle and his grandson Cole Digges (burgess):William Digges (burgess) and his nephew and son-in-law William Digges Jr. both represented now-defunct Warwick County,Virginia.
Col. William Travers was a lawyer,early settler and politician of Colonial Virginia.
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.
In the American state of Maryland,the practice of impeachment has existed since its colonial era as the Province of Maryland and has been legally permitted during Maryland's statehood. Impeachment allows a legislative body to remove an official from office after a trial.
