Lesson 3

Grade Level:

• 4th & 5th-grade students studying Maryland history.
  

Objective:

• Students will gain an understanding of daily life in the city of St. Mary's and the role of a prominent citizen in early Maryland society.
  

• Students will read primary source documents in order to gain an understanding of writing, literacy, and recordkeeping in 17th-century Maryland, and to make connections between these documents and what we know about our history today.

Materials:

• Procedures
  
• Background Information for Teachers
  
• John Halfhead: Citizen of St. Mary's (reading for students) (.pdf)
• 17th-Century Spelling (.pdf)
• Excerpts from Lord Baltimore's Instructions to the Colonists (.pdf)
• Signature Marks from 17th-Century Maryland (.pdf)
• Make Your Mark (.pdf)
• Quill Pens and Ink (.pdf)
• Feathers (optional)
  
• Berries, salt, and vinegar for ink (optional)
  

Please use the .pdf (Portable Document) files provided above to print material for students.  If you do not have Adobe Acrobat you can easily download a free copy from the Adobe web site.

Procedures:

Background Information for Teachers

Fortunately for us, John Halfhead was present in the early days and years of Maryland and witnessed some of the most significant events as the colony struggled to become established. In the first lesson in this series, titled Meet John Halfhead, Halfhead was just arriving in the New World as an indentured servant. In the second lesson, John Halfhead, Plantation Master, he was the owner of a newly established tobacco plantation, facing the struggles of adapting to his new home. In this lesson, Halfhead has become a prominent member of St. Mary's City, dealing with the courts and government on a regular basis. The records of these interactions are very important to historians today. The lesson focuses on how the documents were created, who used them, what they can tell us about life in early Maryland, and some of the challenges involved in studying them. Subsequent lessons will follow John Halfhead through the 17th century.

The student reading, John Halfhead, Citizen of St. Mary's, should be introduced by way of stating . . . if you could travel back in time to the 17th century and talk to John Halfhead, this is what he might say to you.


Literacy in 17th-century Maryland
On a day-to-day basis in 17th-century Maryland, most men, even those who owned land, spent their time cultivating tobacco, building and repairing their houses and barns, tending animals, and occasionally traveling to town to take care of government and court business or to trade. In an agricultural society, there was little need to read or write. Gentlemen such as Leonard Calvert, first governor of Maryland, and John Lewger, secretary of the colony, would have been educated in Europe. However, only a few men in Maryland received a gentleman's education. Some colonists probably had basic reading, writing, and math skills. Most, however, were not literate. In Maryland. . .at the Beginning, historians Lois Green Carr, Russell Menard, and Louis Peddicord state that nearly all the matters of daily life were conducted by word of mouth. Surviving election returns of 1639 show only 25 of 52 voters were able to sign their names. The others made marks on their ballots. From this, it appears that at least half of the colonists who were not gentlemen or priests lacked a basic literacy.

The difficult tasks of building a new colony and maintaining labor-intensive tobacco plantations left little time to establish formal schools. Parents may have passed along reading and writing skills to their children, but there were few options for formal education in 17th-century Maryland.

Some people have fallen through the cracks of history because there is no surviving written record of their life. John Halfhead used a signature mark in government documents instead of writing out his name. However, we still have many records about his life. His affairs were documented in court proceedings, inventories, and records of Assembly meetings. Provincial court records are very helpful, but St. Mary's County court records, which would have dealt with lesser, everyday matters, burned in the 19th century. Historians have only the remaining documents on which to base their interpretations. Other documents, such as letters, journals, and maps have also survived. Researchers have studied these primary source documents, culling every bit of information in order to learn more about life in Maryland in the 17th century. It is as a result of this painstaking research that we know what we know about John Halfhead today.


Challenges for Historians
Studying primary sources is by no means an easy task. English in the 17th century was very different than English today. Vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and pronunciation have changed greatly since the 17th century. Then, there was no standardization of spelling or punctuation. The same word could, and often did, appear on the same page spelled a variety of ways. Even proper names, including John Halfhead's, were spelled many different ways during one's lifetime. These inconsistencies can cause confusion when studying the records, as can the drastically different styles of handwriting. Using quill pens, writers in the 17th century often abbreviated to save time, ink, and paper. Decoding the penmanship and abbreviations, as well as different word usage, spelling inconsistencies, and grammatical quirks of the 17th century can be quite a challenge. Many documents have been transcribed several times over, which can lead to further discrepancies in information. Through careful study and analysis, historians are continuing to piece together the details of life in 17th-century Maryland.


Using Primary Sources with Students
It may seem counterintuitive that elementary school students should be able to study these same documents that are so problematic for historians. However, research has shown that students can gain an appreciation of the process of doing history by walking through the same processes historians use. (See In Search of America's Past: Learning to read history in elementary school by Bruce VanSledright for more information on such research.) This lesson is designed to help students begin to learn to read primary source documents from early Maryland, to gain an understanding of writing, literacy, and recordkeeping in 17th-century Maryland, and to make a connection between the creation of these documents and what we know about our history today.

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Student reading

John Halfhead, Citizen of St. Mary's Good day! 'Tis Master John Halfhead here. The last we chatted I had just started me own plantation. Tobacco remains a difficult crop to tend, but I have learned much over these past years. Not only have my crops and my profit grown, but me family as well! Me wife, young son John, and indentured servant help me in my duties as master of this plantation. Before long it will be young John's turn to take care of his own house and land.

'Tis not only tobacco that keeps me hard at work these days. The small town of St. Mary's has grown quite a bit since first we arrived at the shores of this river. Each week, it seems, a new building is being framed, or a new proprietor opens an ordinary or an inn. The fine large house in the center of town that was once Master Calvert's is now where the Assembly meets. Me own house is not quite so grand, but it serves me well. The business of tobacco, the government meetings, and the dealings in court keep St. Mary's an interesting town, indeed. Very often I must travel to the court to settle debts, register papers, or appraise an estate. Appraisal, you see, is when the worth of goods is determined. For instance, if a man dies, which is all too common what with the seasoning, other men must write down all that he owns and how much it is worth. Then his debts can be settled. Trading with tobacco is no easy task. We cannot hand hogsheads of tobacco back and forth to each other each time something is bought or sold. Nay, instead we exchange papers, or bills, that state how much we owe. Once a year or so, we settle all those debts and the tobacco changes hands. Most of the time, it is a fine system, but there are disputes,some of them are ugly, indeed. I have been called upon to give my testimony in more than a few instances.

When these disputes come about, a court case is almost always the way they are settled. The parties involved will come together and tell the judge their side of the story, and the judge will decide if tobacco is owed. The clerk writes down all that is said in the record. The clerk has to know his letters in order to do this, of course. Most people in Maryland simply sign a mark on documents. When we spend so much time in the fields, who has the time to spend learning letters? I learned a trade in England, so only need to sign my mark on occasion. Me wife, also, signs her mark when need be. Those few men who run an ordinary or an inn or a storehouse also write and read, but they are few.

'Tis quite pleasing to see so many businesses here, though. It seems as though we have carved quite a nice little settlement out of the wilderness. Why, when I arrived there were trees, rivers, and but a few Indian dwellings. Now, a true town has begun. It fills me with pride to know that I have risen from humble beginnings to owning me own land, having a family, and taking part in the goings-on of government business, all opportunities I could never have dreamed of in England. This small town has become so busy that I am thinking of purchasing land farther out, along a nearby river called the Patuxent. It is a magnificent river, leading into the bay called Chesapeake. Ah yes, even though near twenty years have passed, this land is still bursting with opportunity. It is my great hope that I will continue to prosper here in Maryland, and when my time has passed, that me son will do just as well. Being born here in Maryland, he never had to endure the horrors of the seasoning. And he has grown to a healthy young fellow, eating Indian corn rather than English grains. He will never spend even an hour as an indentured servant. Nay, he will work hard to be sure, but his youth will be a good deal better than mine. And one day, he will inherit my land, my house, my goods, and my servant. These twenty years in this new colony have been quite good to me and that is more years than most live to see here. But only time will tell how the rest of my days will play out. Back to top

Many words in the 17th century were spelled differently than we spell them now. Some of them were even spelled differently by the same person! There were not as many standard rules for spelling like there are today. Also, when the colonists learned words from the American Indians, new spellings had to be invented because the American Indians did not use a written language. If you heard an unfamiliar word and had to figure out how to spell it, you might change your mind about it over time.

These 17th-century spellings are taken from The Calvert Papers, a collection of primary documents from the early days of the Maryland colony. Imagine that you are a historian studying documents from the 1600s. You have come across some unfamiliar words. Can you translate the following words into modern English?

Answers: months, value, Chesapeake (a word with American Indian origins), Potomac (a word with American Indian origins), friendship, Baltimore, glory, journey, house.

Make Your Mark

Name: _________________________________

• If you were to make your own signature mark, what would it look like? Design it below.
  
  
• Your signature mark should be something that would be easy to write with a quill pen and handmade ink.
  
  
• It should be easy for you to remember. Colonists may have had to sign their mark on many occasions.
  
  
• It can be based on your initials, but it does not have to be.