This ancient corner of St. Mary's City joins lands held by St. Mary's Parish, Trinity Episcopal Church, and the Historic St. Mary's City Commission through a long intertwined history. After Maryland's capital moved to Annapolis in 1695, the original 1676 State House was given to the Anglican, later Episcopal, Church for worship. When it was torn down in 1829, its bricks were reused in the church that serves an active congregation here today, and markers of the original State House location stand in the cemetery. In 1840, Maryland founded St. Mary's Female Seminary as a Monument School of the People, and in 1844 the Episcopal parish sold some of its land to the state so construction could begin. That seminary grew into St. Mary's College of Maryland, a coeducational public honors college. In 1966, the State of Maryland created the Historic St. Mary's Commission to preserve, study, and interpret the history of the first capital. Church, College, and Commission continue to work together as neighbors to protect and care for a site recognized as nationally significant and probably the most intact surviving 17th-century English town in the nation represented entirely by archaeological resources.
