Maryland Began Here!

In March 1634, the 400-ton Ark and the 50-ton Dove landed almost 150 English settlers on this island after a stormy passage from England. The 28-year-old Governor Leonard Calvert, brother of Lord Baltimore, sought a safe place to plant the colony and found a haven here with "infinite swarms Herons" while he searched for a permanent settlement site. Frightened by the Ark, which they saw as a "Canoe as big as an island," the Piscataway Nation built "great fires over all the country" and "drew together 500 bowmen," but Calvert sailed upriver and met a friendly emperor of the Piscataway who "gave leave to us to set down where we pleased." After his return, he and other Catholics set aside March 25 to erect a cross and celebrate mass, and within a few days the settlers sailed down the Potomac River and planted "our town we call St. Maries." The colony had been planned by the first Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, and after his death in 1632 his 27-year-old son Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, carried out the settlement plan from England and protected Maryland interests for more than 40 years. Father Andrew White, an Ark passenger and Jesuit missionary, described the island as covered with pokeberries, wild walnuts, acorns, black walnut, cedar, sassafras, vines, and salad herbs, and wrote that its more than 400 acres were too little to settle upon, so it was intended for a fort commanding the Potomac at its narrowest point, with another on the mainland opposite it to keep the river from foreign trade. An early map created to publicize the new Maryland Colony showed the Potomac River, Saint Clement's Island, called Heron's Island, and St. Mary's City.

Maryland · United States