Southern Maryland's Historic Landmarks

Christopher R. Eck

• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781439657430
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Amérique du Nord

Southern Maryland is made up of a collection of peninsulas covered in low rolling hills, fields, forests, swamps, and waterways leading to the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. As such, this area enjoyed relative isolation and small population for over three centuries despite its proximity to cities such as Alexandria, Annapolis, Baltimore, and Washington. Those who did settle here developed a close connection to its farms, waterways, and natural remoteness. Southern Maryland, known for the state's earliest Colonial settlements, is composed of three of the state's oldest counties: St. Mary's, Charles, and Calvert. Although largely agricultural and maritime in outlook, this region was also the birthplace of the nation's ideal of religious freedom and many of its greatest citizens, including leaders of the Revolution, the early national government, and the state. Many of their homes and churches survive as historic landmarks, or their existence has been documented and preserved for posterity.

One

ST. MARY’S COUNTY

On March 25, 1634, the English colonists aboard the Ark and the Dove landed on St. Clement’s Island, named for the saint whose feast day was the day that the ships departed from England. Known after 1669 as Blackistone Island for the family that acquired it, the island was a British base during the War of 1812, and its lighthouse was damaged by Confederates in the Civil War.

After negotiating with the local Yaocomico tribe for a site to establish their settlement, the colonists sailed to what would become St. Mary’s City, about 20 miles southeast and down the Potomac River from St. Clement’s Island and 5 miles north up the St. Mary’s River. This replica of the Dove is docked at Historic St. Mary’s City, a living history museum at the site of Maryland’s first settlement.

In the cemetery of Trinity Episcopal Church is this monument to Leonard Calvert (1606–1647), the first proprietary governor of Maryland and the second son of George Calvert (1579–1632), the 1st Baron Baltimore, whose desire it was to establish an American colony that would provide religious freedom for English Catholics. After Lord Baltimore’s colony at Avalon, Newfoundland, had failed, Governor Calvert successfully pursued his father’s dream in Maryland.

Rebuilt as part of Maryland’s 300th anniversary commemoration in 1934, the statehouse originally stood in the nearby Trinity Episcopal Church cemetery. Architects Herbert G. Crisp and James R. Edmunds Jr. of Baltimore and Horace W. Peaslee of Washington designed the reconstruction using archaeological and historical data. The original was built in 1676 and used until the capital was moved to Annapolis in 1694. It was demolished in 1829.

In 1667, Jesuit priests built a brick chapel on the site where another chapel had stood before being burned by Protestant rebels during the English Civil War. Closed by the royal governor in 1704, the Jesuits dismantled it. In 1990, prior to its reconstruction (2002–2009), archaeologists found the lead coffins of Philip Calvert (1626–1682), Lord Baltimore’s youngest son; his wife, Anne Wolsey Calvert; and an unidentified child in the church floor.

Trinity Episcopal Church was built in 1829 using bricks salvaged from the demolition of the 1676 statehouse. Following the departure of the government to Annapolis in 1694, the former statehouse, which originally stood in the cemetery, was given to the parish in 1720. Though renovated over time, the Victorian Gothic style of the present church is among the earliest in the region.

With the loss of the Calvert family’s proprietorship of Maryland in the Glorious Revolution (1689), the Anglican Church was made the colony’s official religion, with its first royal governor Sir Lionel Copley (1648–1693). Arriving in the colony in 1692 and working at the statehouse, Copley became sick and died and his remains are in this tomb in the Trinity churchyard along with his wife, Anne Boteler Copley, who died in 1692.

North of St. Mary’s City is this monument to Rev. Andrew White, SJ, or the “Apostle to Maryland.” Father White (1579–1656) was the Jesuit priest who accompanied the colonists aboard the Ark and the Dove and who served as a missionary to many local Indian tribes. This monument was first erected in 1934 by the Order of the Alhambra, a Catholic fraternal organization, in a nearby park that has since closed.

The two-and-a-half-story brick Cross Manor is believed to incorporate the original homesite of settler Thomas Cornwaleys (Cornwallis), who came to Maryland with Gov. Leonard Calvert in 1634 and who suffered greatly in raids during Richard Ingle’s revolt of 1644–1645. The earliest part of the house was built in the 1760s, then expanded in the 1790s, and a frame wing was added between 1828 and 1840. (E.H. Pickering, HABS.)

In 1637, Rev. Thomas Copley, SJ, acquired the Jesuit manor lands south of St. Mary’s City along St. Inigoe’s Creek where St. Ignatius Catholic Church would be built after the American Revolution, once Catholics could freely worship again. The main block of the church was constructed of brick from 1783 to 1785, with a brick sacristy added in 1817 and a wooden entrance vestibule added in 1886. (Charles E. Peterson, HABS.)

Among the graves of early parishioners, there is a section of the St. Ignatius churchyard that is dedicated to the 28 members of the order who labored in the Maryland province and who were buried here between 1637 and 1891.

Located on the grounds of the Naval Electronic Systems Engineering Base (Webster Field) in St. Inigoes is the Priest’s Manor House, an early-18th-century residence. Although once part of the Jesuit-owned St. Inigoe’s Manor, it was not a true manor house. The one-and-a-half-story wood structure had a detached kitchen that joined the residence through a 19th-century hyphen. (FBJPC, LOC.)

Built on Maryland’s first land grant acquired by Capt. Henry Fleet in May 1634 and then acquired by Governor Calvert’s councillor Thomas Cornwaleys in 1640, West St. Mary’s Manor in Drayden was not the first house on the property. However, it is an early one-and-a-half-story brick and frame home with a central hall and four rooms built between 1700 and 1730. (FBJPC, LOC.)

On the estate acquired by Thomas Cornwaleys in 1650, the house known as Resurrection Manor and documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1940 was built on the portion of the pro...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. St. Mary’s County
• 2. Calvert County
• 3. Charles County