History
In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, England began efforts to develop a New World empire in North America. The beginnings were financed by allowing entrepreneurs, some of them joint stock companies, some of them individual proprietors, to establish colonies along the Atlantic seacoast. In 1632, Cecil Calvert, the second Baron of Baltimore, was granted a charter to what is now the state of Maryland.
Cecil’s father, George Calvert, had been King James I’s principal Secretary of State, at a time when conflict between Catholic Europe and Protestant England was serious. Calvert championed a marriage between the King’s son Charles and a Spanish princess but the effort failed. Soon afterward, George Calvert resigned as Secretary and converted—or returned—to Catholicism (he had been Catholic until the age of 12 when he was forced to become Anglican). That the Protestant king granted the colony of Maryland to the Catholic George Calvert was remarkable—and Maryland was Calvert’s second land grant. His first was Avalon in Newfoundland, but after one exceptionally harsh winter, Calvert opted to return to England and lobby for land in a more temperate clime.
In the Maryland charter, largely written by Calvert, the king granted the Calverts princely rights, with the power to raise an army, collect taxes, make laws, and give away land. Clearly, the King held George Calvert in high regard, despite his religious convictions.
George Calvert had a long-standing interest in colonization. He invested in the Virginia Company and other early efforts. He applied lessons learned in these ventures to plan the Maryland colony. The preponderance of the investors in Maryland were Catholic and the majority of workers the investors transported to build the colony were Protestant, creating potential religious conflict that could destroy Maryland. To avoid this, the Calverts instituted a progressive policy of liberty of conscience, allowing people of varied faiths to freely worship in Maryland. Related to this was another revolutionary decision that the colony would have no official established religion, neither Catholic nor Protestant.
George Calvert did not live to see the founding of the colony. His son,Cecilius, inherited the charter. His second son, Leonard, led the adventurers who set off for the Chesapeake on the Ark and the Dove in November 1633, while Cecilius stayed in England to defend the charter. In 1634, the colonists established the first settlement and new capital of the colony, which they called St. Mary’s City. The Calvert’s hold on the fledgling colony was tenuous at best as Virginians, religious suspicions, the English Civil Wars, and political intrigues threatened or temporarily disrupted their efforts.
The second half of the century was St. Mary’s heyday, marked by a strong tobacco economy and growth in population that warranted construction of public buildings. For a time, the colony offered remarkable opportunities for economic and social advancement to those endowed with the ability to work hard and a bit of luck. But political and religious animosity again arose late in the century and a group of disgruntled Protestants led a revolution against Lord Baltimore in 1689. The crown appointed royal governors and they moved the capital from St. Mary’s City to Annapolis in 1695. The colonial statehouse was turned into a Protestant (Anglican) church in the same year; and in 1704 the principle of liberty of conscience was dramatically overturned when Catholic churches and schools were closed in accordance with “An Act to Prevent the Growth of Popery within this Province.” Abandoned for the most part, St. Mary’s City sank back into the soil from which it had arisen and by the time of the American Revolution, little of Lord Baltimore’s capital was left but memories of its former importance.
Today, everything that once stood on the 17th-century town lands has disappeared-at least above ground. Fortunately, there was very little later development to destroy the site of what was once the first capital. Early in the 20th century, interest in the ancient city revived and historical research and archaeological excavations began to uncover the 17th-century settlement. Because the old city had remained relatively undisturbed over the years, the area is one of the finest 17th-century colonial archaeology sites in the nation. St. Mary's City has been recognized as a National Historic Landmark since 1969,
Decades of research are the foundation of exhibits at Historic St. Mary's City, the state museum that commemorates the state's founding. The museum’s archaeological collection of over 5 million artifacts is a internationally significant resource for professional archaeologists and other scholars. Dr. Lois Green Carr, staff historian since the inception of the research program in 1967, is broadly considered the dean of early Chesapeake studies. Dr. Carr's work has distilled the human spirit from the archival records and has greatly augmented the discoveries of archaeologists led by Director of Research
Learn more about Maryland's founding and you will discover a story ripe with drama--replete with heroes and villians, philosophers and entrepreneurs, grand plans and heartbreaking disappointments. Discover the people and events that shaped Maryland's first years and the ways scholars reveal the past by exploring material on these pages and visiting the museum at Historic St. Mary's City.
