A Little About Maryland…
The Capital of Maryland is Annapolis, founded in 1649. Annapolis is the home of the United States Naval Academy and is Americas Sailing Capital.
Maryland was named so to honor Henrietta Maria, wife of England’s King Charles I . According to historians, George Washington bestowed the nickname “Old Line State” and thereby associated Maryland with its regular line troops, the Maryland Line, who served courageously in many Revolutionary War battles. (History of Maryland)
The Maryland flag contains the family crest of the Calvert and Crossland families. Maryland was founded as an English colony in 1634 by Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore. The black and Gold designs belong to the Calvert family. The red and white design belongs to the Crossland family. This flag was adopted 1904.
The Baltimore Oriole is the official Maryland bird. The female oriole’s feathers are brownish-olive and dull orange, but the male’s plumage is black and golden orange. The Black-Eyed Susan has been the official Maryland flower since 1918. They are perennial daisies or coneflowers, members of the sunflower family. The flower is commonly found in fields and on roadsides, they bloom between May and August, reaching 2 to 3 feet in height.
Agriculture in Maryland consists mainly of seafood, poultry and eggs, dairy products, nursery stock, cattle, soybeans, and corn. The industry in Maryland is primarily electric equipment, food processing, chemical products, printing and publishing, transportation equipment, machinery, primary metals, coal, and tourism.
Jousting became the official sport of Maryland in 1962. Maryland was the first state to adopt an official sport.
Some of Marylands larger cities include Baltimore, Frederick, Gaithersburg, Bowie, Rockville, Hagerstown, Annapolis, College Park, Salisbury and Cumberland.
Restaurants in Rockville Maryland as listed by Yelp.com
Maryland History:
The first humans to arrive in the area that would become Maryland appeared around the 10th millennium BCE, about the time that the last ice age ended. They were hunter-gatherers organized into semi-nomadic bands. They adapted as the environment changed, developing spears for hunting as smaller animals, such as the deer, became more prevalent and by about 1500 BCE. Oysters were an important food resource.
With the increasing supply of food sources, Native American villages and settlements started. By about 1000 BCE pottery was being produced. With the eventual rise of agriculture more permanent Native-American villages were built. But even with the advent of farming, hunting and fishing were still major sources of food. The bow and arrow were first used for hunting in the area around the year 800.
Europeans did not encounter Maryland’s indigenous people until the early 1600s. At that time, the main tribes in the state spoke Algonquian languages. These tribes included the Nanticoke on the Eastern Shore, and the Accohannock and Powhatan on the Western shore. Within about a century of first contact, the state’s Native Americans were all but gone, having been pushed out by the European settlers. The Shawnee were the last major tribe in the state, and they left Western Maryland in the 1740s.
Early European Exploration- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There was an Italian sailing under the English flag, was the first European to explore the area. In 1498 he sailed along the Eastern Shore, off present-day Worcester County. The next notable European to visit the area occurred in 1524 when Giovanni da Verrazano, another Italian, who sailed under the French flag, passed the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The bay itself was explored in 1572 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the Spanish governor of Florida, and in 1608 by John Smith.
Colonial Maryland- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore applied to Charles I for a new royal charter for what was to become the Province of Maryland. George Calvert died in April 1632, but a charter for “Maryland Colony” (in Latin, “Terra Maria”) was granted to his son, Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, on June 20, 1632. Some historians view this as a form of compensation for his father’s being stripped of his title of Secretary of State upon announcing his Roman Catholicism in 1625. The colony was named in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria.
Lord Baltimore was a staunch Catholic, which was extremely stigmatic for a nobleman in 17th century England, where Roman Catholics were widely regarded as enemies of the crown and of the country. Baltimore’s two goals were to create a haven for British Catholics, but at the same time turn a profit. Without Protestant settlers to provide the backbone of the colony’s population, it would most likely fail. For this reason, Lord Baltimore instructed his brother Leonard Calvert, who was to be the colony’s governor, to keep the religion of the Catholic settlers quiet to avoid dissension.
The first settlers, led by Leonard Calvert, Cecil Calvert’s younger brother, departed from Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, on November 22, 1633 aboard two small ships, the Ark and the Dove. Their landing on March 25, 1634 is commemorated by the state each year on that date as Maryland Day. The first group of colonists consisted of 17 gentlemen and their wives and about two hundred others. After purchasing from the Yaocomico Indians and establishing the town of St. Mary’s, Leonard, per his brother’s instructions, at first attempted to govern the country under feudalistic precepts. However, this met resistance and, in February 1635, he had to summon a colonial assembly. In 1638, the assembly forced him to govern according to the laws of England, and subsequently the right to initiate legislation passed to the assembly.
In 1638, Calvert seized a trading post in Kent Island established by the Virginian William Claiborne. In 1644, Claiborne led an uprising of Maryland protestants. Calvert was forced to flee to Virginia, but he returned at the head of an armed force in 1646 and reasserted proprietorial rule.
Maryland soon became one of the few predominantly Catholic regions among the English colonies in America. Maryland was also one of the key destinations for tens of thousands of British convicts punished by sentences of transportation, which carried on until independence. The Maryland Toleration Act, issued in 1649, was one of the first laws that explicitly tolerated varieties of religion (as long as it was Christian), and is sometimes seen as a precursor to the First Amendment.
St. Mary’s City was the largest site of the original Maryland colony, and was the seat of the colonial government until 1708. After Virginia made the practice of Anglicanism mandatory, a large number of Puritans migrated from Virginia to Maryland, and were given land for a settlement called Providence (now called Annapolis). In 1650, the Puritans revolted against the proprietary government and set up a new government that outlawed both Catholicism and Anglicanism. This lasted until 1658 when the Calvert family regained control and re-enacted the Toleration Act.
During the persecution of Maryland Catholics by the Puritan revolutionary government, all of the original Catholic churches of southern Maryland were burned down. St Mary’s City is now an archeological site, with a small tourist center. In 1708, the seat of government was moved to Providence, renamed Annapolis in honor of Queen Anne.
Originally, based on an incorrect map, the royal charter granted Maryland the Potomac River and territory northward to the fortieth parallel. This was found to be a problem, because the northern boundary would put Philadelphia, the major city in Pennsylvania, within Maryland. The Calvert family, which controlled Maryland, and the Penn family, which controlled Pennsylvania, decided in 1750 to engage two surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, to survey what became known as the Mason-Dixon line which would form the boundary between their two colonies. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 would later create political conditions which made the Mason-Dixon line important to the history of slavery, whose expansion was only permitted in territories south of the line.
The Revolutionary Period- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maryland did not at first favor independence from Great Britain and gave instructions to that effect to its delegates to the Continental Congress. During this initial phase of the revolutionary period, Maryland was governed by the Assembly of Freemen, an Assembly of the state’s counties. The first convention lasted four days, from June 22 to June 25, 1774. All sixteen counties then existing were represented by a total of 92 members; Matthew Tilghman was elected chairman.
The eighth session decided that the continuation of an ad-hoc government by the convention was not a good mechanism for all the concerns of the province. A more permanent and structured government was needed. So, on July 3, 1776 they resolved that a new convention be elected that would be responsible for drawing up their first state constitution, one that did not refer to parliament or the king, but would be a government “…of the people only.” After they set dates and prepared notices to the counties they adjourned. On August 1 all freemen with property elected delegates for the last convention. The ninth and last convention was also known as the Constitutional Convention of 1776. They drafted a constitution, and when they adjourned on November 11th, they would not meet again. The Conventions were replaced by the new state government which the Maryland Constitution of 1776 had established. Thomas Johnson became the state’s first elected governor.
On March 1, 1781 the Articles of Confederation took effect with Maryland’s ratification. The articles had initially been submitted to the states on November 17, 1777, but the ratification process dragged on for several years, stalled by an interstate quarrel over claims to uncolonized land in the west. Maryland was the last hold-out; it refused to ratify until Virginia and New York agreed to rescind their claims to lands in the Ohio River valley. All of the colonies rebelling against Britain ratified it by 1781.
No significant Battles of the American Revolutionary War occurred in Maryland. However, this did not prevent the state’s soldiers from distinguishing themselves through their service. General George Washington was impressed with the Maryland regulars who fought in the Continental Army and, according to some historians, this lead him to bestow the name “Old Line State” on Maryland. Today, the Old Line State is one of Maryland’s two official nicknames.
The state also filled other roles during the war. For instance, the Continental Congress met briefly in Baltimore from December 20, 1776 through March 4, 1777. Furthermore, a Marylander, John Hanson, served as President of the Continental Congress from 1781 to 1782. Hanson was the first person to serve a full term as President of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation.
From November 26, 1783 to June 3, 1784, Annapolis served as the United States capital and the Continental Congress met in the Maryland State House. (Annapolis was a candidate to become the new nation’s permanent capital before Washington, D.C. was built). It was in the old senate chamber that George Washington famously resigned his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army on December 23, 1783. It was also there that the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, was ratified by Congress on January 14, 1784.
1789-1849- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In a small way, the story of the United States Constitution began in Maryland, as it was in Annapolis that delegates from five states (not including Maryland) first met to call for a Constitutional Convention to correct the problems with the Articles of Confederation. This meeting, called the Annapolis Convention, met from September 11 to September 14, 1786, but the commissioners felt that there were not a sufficient number of states represented to make any substantive agreement. However, the meeting did result in having a Constitutional Convention called.
While Maryland was the last state to ratify the Articles of Confederation, it was the seventh state to ratify the Constitution, which it did by a vote of 63-11 on March 28, 1788. The document would take effect about a year later, on March 4, 1789 after it had secured the ratifications of all states except North Carolina and Rhode Island, which would both ratify shortly.
One of the first issues which the new government had to decide upon was the site for a permanent capital for the young nation. A Southern site for the capital was agreed at a sit-down dinner between Thomas Jefferson, who wanted the capital located in the south, and Alexander Hamilton, who wanted support for his banking and federal bond plans. They worked together and each got what he wanted. The actual site of the District of Columbia on the Potomac River was chosen by President Washington. Washington may have chosen the site for its natural scenery, its location near the center of the new country, in the belief that the Potomac had the potential to be a great navigable waterway, or even in the hope of increasing the value of his land holdings in the area. In the end, Virginia ceded about 39 squares miles and Maryland ceded about 61 square miles to the federal government for the District of Columbia. (The Virginian portion of the District would be retroceded back to that state in 1846)