Edmondson's Reserve

The Caroline County 4-H Park, Delmarva Girl Scout Camp, and the farms bordering Detour Road occupy part of a former 1,050-acre tract called Edmondson's Reserve, a privately owned Indian reservation patented in 1668 by licensed Maryland Indian trader John Edmondson to protect his Indian clients. Edmondson traded with local Algonquin-speaking tribes such as the Choptanks, who survived by hunting and gathering. A private reservation was needed because Native Americans, despite using the land for millennia, had no property rights under Maryland colonial law, and after the east, or south bank of the Choptank River was opened to settlement in 1659, English newcomers patented not only village sites but also vital hunting and gathering lands. In 1668 the reserve offered ideal Indian habitat, abutting the fresh waters of Cokiases Creek, now Williston Pond, and containing edible freshwater plants called Tuckahoe, a nut-bearing oak-hickory forest, fur-bearing animals such as beaver, and freshwater-spawning fish. It also had nearby lithic resources, small stone cobbles used to make arrowheads, and was crossed by the Choptank Indian Trail, an important migration and trade route running from the Chesapeake Bay near Cambridge to New Castle, Delaware, on Delaware Bay.

Maryland · United States