Maryland Historical Magazine, 1986, Volume 81, Issue No. 3
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Maryland Historical Magazine VlEAV OF AX XAIM) LIS 1X 17 @ 7. Ettb r< dwrun/imy !;> m / afContfress in ///c i t-c/r iHti hy Chase .£To mi IN fhc office oftheUhrana ofCbngress <it Wnshinylufz. Published Quarterly by the Museum and Library of Maryland History The Maryland Historical Society Fall 1986 THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY OFFICERS, 1986-1987 William C. Whitridge, Chairman* Robert G. Merrick, Sr., Honorary Chairman* Brian B. Topping, President* Mrs. Charles W. Cole, Jr., Vice President* E. Phillips Hathaway, Treasurer* Mrs. Frederick W. Lafferty, Vice President* Samuel Hopkins, Asst. Secretary/Treasurer* Walter D. Pinkard, Sr., Vice President* Bryson L. Cook, Counsel* Truman T. Semans, Vice President* Leonard C. Crewe, Jr., Past President* Frank H. Weller, Jr., Vice President* J. Fife Symington, Jr.,* Richard P. Moran, Secretary* Past Chairman of the Board* * The officers listed above constitute the Society's Executive Committee. BOARD OF TRUSTEES, 1986-1987 H. Furlong Baldwin Hon. Charles McC. Mathias, Jr. Mrs. Emory J. Barber, St. Mary's Co. Robert G Merrick, Jr. Gary Black Michael Middleton, Charles Co. John E. Boulais, Caroline Co. Jack Moseley Mrs. James Frederick Colwill (Honorary) Thomas S. Nichols (Honorary) Donald L. DeVries James O. Olfson, Anne Arundel Co. Leslie B. Disharoon Mrs. David R. Owen Jerome Geckle Mrs. Brice Phillips, Worcester Co. William C. Gilchrist, Allegany Co. J. Hurst Purnell, Jr., Kent Co. Hon. Louis L. Goldstein, Calvert Co. George M. Radcliffe Kingdon Gould, Jr., Howard Co. Adrian P. Reed, Queen Anne's Co. Benjamin H. Griswold III G Donald Riley, Carroll Co. Willard Hackerman Mrs. Timothy Rodgers R. Patrick Hayman, Somerset Co. John D. Schapiro Louis G. Hecht Jacques T. Schlenger E. Mason Hendrickson, Washington Co. Jess Joseph Smith, Jr., Prince George's Co. T. Hughlett Henry, Jr., Talbot Co. John T. Stinson Michael Hoffberger Bernard C. Trueschler Hon. William S. James, Harford Co. Thomas D. Washburne H. Irvine Keyser II (Honorary) Jeffrey P. Williamson, Dorchester Co. Richard R. Kline, Frederick Co. COUNCIL, 1986-1987 Mrs. Howard Baetjer II J. Sidney King Dr. D. Randall Beirne Dr. Bayly Ellen Marks Dr. George H. Callcott Charles E. McCarthy III Mrs. Charles W. Cole, Jr. James L. Nace P. McEvoy Cromwell Walter D. Pinkard, Sr. Mrs. Charles S. Garland, Jr. George M. Radcliffe Louis G. Hecht Mary Virginia Slaughter Mrs. Jay Katz Jefferson Miller II, Director Barbara Wells Sarudy, Karen A. Stuart, Administrative Director Head Librarian Stiles Tuttle Colwill, Judith Van Dyke, Curator of the Gallery Education Director MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE (ISSN 0025-4258) is published quarterly by the Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument St., Baltimore Md. 21201. Second class postage paid at Baltimore, Md. and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER please send address changes to the MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 201 W. Monument St., Baltimore, Md. 21201. Volume 81, Number 3, Fall 1986. Composed and printed by The Sheridan Press, Hanover, Pa. 17331. © Copyright 1986, Maryland Historical Society. Volume 81 HISTORICAL Number 3 Fall 1986 ISSN-0025-4258 CONTENTS Nancy T. Baker Annapolis, Maryland 1695-1730 191 Charlotte Fletcher King William's School Survives the Revolution 210 Shirley V. Baltz Annapolis on the Threshold 222 MervinB. Whealy "The Revolution is not Over": The Annapolis Convention of 1786 228 Book Reviews Blassingame, et al., eds.. The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series One: Speeches, Debates and Oral Interviews. Volume 3:1855-63, by Benjamin Quarles • Preston, Newspapers of Maryland's Eastern Shore, by Thomas E. Davidson • Scott, Voyages into Airy Regions, by Roger E. Bilstein • Rose and Marti, Arthur Storer of Lincolnshire, England, and Calvert County, Maryland, by Deborah Jean Warner • Currie, The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The First Hundred Years, 1789-1888, by David S. Bogen • Ferrell, Claude A. Swanson of Virginia: A Political Biography, by James Latimer .. 241 MARYLAND MAGAZINE OF GENEALOGY Charles Montgomery Marriages Recorded in Talbot County Newspapers Haddaway, III 1819-1823, 1841-1843, & 1870 249 Book Notes Wise, Ancestral Roots of Sixty Colonists Who Came to New England Before 1623 and 1650, by Robert Barnes • Parks, Index to the 1820 Census of Maryland and Washington, D.C., by Robert Barnes • Hiatt, A Partial View of the Beasman-Baseman Family of Maryland, by Robert Barnes 281 NEWS AND NOTICES 282 MARYLAND PICTURE PUZZLE 284 HALL OF RECORDS LIBRARY ANNAP013, MARYLAND VIEW m ANN AIM) us IN 1707 . VIEW OF ANNAPOLIS IN 1797. ENTERED . 1871 BY CHASE & TOWN . WASHINGTON. Lithograph, printed in colors. 8.1 12.3 cm. From Lossing, American Historical Record (1872)1: front. MdHi. The water color drawing of Compte de Maulevier Colbert, a French visitor to Annapolis in 1797, was the basis for this anonymously lithographed panoramic view (c. 1871). It shows Annapolis as seen looking southeast from Strawberry Hill, now the site of the Naval Academy golf course. The old windmill (torn down 1808), shown at the left, gave its name to "Windmill Point," the small tip of land jutting into the Severn River which was once the site of Fort Severn but is now part of the Naval Academy. The cluster of buildings to its right are the Hammond-Harwood, Chase-Lloyd, and Ogle houses. Farther right, with domes, are McDowell Hall on the campus of St. John's College, and the State House. To the extreme right, with a square tower, is St. Anne's Episcopal Church. Lossing, American Historical Record, 1: 42; "An Old Print of Annapolis, 1797," p. 129. V 52. Lois B. McCauley, Maryland Historical Prints 1752 to 1889 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1975). Annapolis, Maryland 1695-17301 NANCY T. BAKER XXNNAPOLIS, MARYLAND IS BEST KNOWN the present Annapolis. Here the soil was for a short period of great prosperity, its rich, well drained, easily worked and par- "Golden Age," characterized by the ticularly well suited to the growing of the highest in fashion and greatest concen- staple crop, tobacco. Still others took up tration of wealth, social activity and po- equally advantageous tracts along the litical influence that any area of the Chesapeake between the South River and colony ever experienced in the colonial Herring Bay in what became All Hallows period. Popular histories and articles on and St. James Parishes. culture and the decorative arts have so Good soil, readily available water isolated life in the city in the years transportation and relatively high crop 1760-1776 as to make this period appear prices combined with self-sufficiency in unique and largely unrelated to any pat- planting, harvesting and packaging to terns of growth and development over the make tobacco the dominant staple crop in years preceding it. In the last ten years Anne Arundel County well into the eight- this glittering era has been put into eenth century. Unlike grain production, proper perspective,2 been analyzed more which spins off independent support with respect to what followed than what trades (millwrights, wheelrights, carters, led to the phenomenon of economic pros- etc.) and networks in the processing, han- perity. This paper looks at Annapolis dling and marketing phases, tobacco over the years 1695-1730, tracing its stimulates mostly the woodworking early development from an inconsequen- trades like carpentry and cooperage that tial landing to a town of well-defined are easily contained within the indi- limits and proportions with a population vidual plantation unit. As long as tobacco grown in numbers, wealth and diversity production dominated the economy, the in ways that can be measured against Tidewater did not develop population later activity. centers. Anne Arundel County was no ex- ception. The tobacco crop was packed On a spit of land along the north side of where produced and shipped directly the Severn, where the river meets the from the plantation along navigable bay, a small but determined group of rivers out into the open bay. men, women and children landed in De- Like some other early Maryland settle- cember, 1649. These first settlers in Anne ments, Annapolis had its beginnings not Arundel County were for the most part in a tobacco market, but in a boatyard Virginians, modestly properous, who where a shipwright made and repaired came in family groups with some experi- the river craft essential to his planter ence in politics and planting. They came neighbors. Thomas Todd, one of the first not to establish a town, but to plant. The group at "Providence," was a boatwright enclosure that saw them through the first who in 1651 moved the mile or so across winter was abandoned as the settlers the Severn to a sheltered cove where he spread out into the countryside. While carried on his trade for twenty years. He some took up land in Westminster Parish planted as well, served as a local magis- near the "Providence" settlement, others trate, and raised a second family of sons quickly chose land across the Severn to join the older ones he had brought with River, in Middleneck Parish, just south of him from Virginia. These young men 191 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE VOL. 81, No. 3, FALL 1986 192 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE still owned at least four lots along Duke of Gloucester Street near the landing. The first clear picture of the "town land at Proctors" comes in 1684, by which time the site, an officially designated "town," had for several years been called "Arun- delton."3 The provincial legislature hoped to stimulate the development of regional distribution and marketing centers by laying out towns on 100 acre sites, with streets and lots staked out ready to be taken up. Interest in such investment was almost nil at Proctor's landing, and the survey undertaken by Richard Beard and completed in March 16844 is all that FIGURE 1. Late Seventeenth-Century Anne Arundel County remains of this early attempt to en- courage growth.