Before the American Revolution, Lower Marlborough, later officially changed to Marlboro in the 19th century, was a thriving port town with large homes, inns, stores, warehouses, a sawmill, a tobacco inspection station, and the British tariff office. As sails gave way to steam power, it remained the premier port on the upper Patuxent River, and by the early 20th century a steamship landing with two large tobacco warehouses stood at the center of the town’s social and economic life. As roads and railroads spread around the Chesapeake watershed, the commercial port became a residential community, and the last steamship arrived when the Western Shore Steamboat Company ended service on the Patuxent River in 1938. The town’s south end, called Swampoodle, was known for standing water after heavy rain and frequent flooding of the post office and blacksmith shop. During the War of 1812, in the summer of 1814, about 160 British Royal Marines and some 30 Black Colonial Corps raided Lower Marlboro. In mid June, after militia and townspeople fled, the British took quiet possession of a large quantity of tobacco valued at $125,000 in 1814 dollars, and newspaper accounts reported that they opened feather beds, broke doors and windows, tore up houses, and marched three miles into the country, where a British officer and five men stole thirteen slaves from a widow and damaged furniture at other places. In August, the British fleet again anchored at Lower Marlboro, and local tradition holds that several British soldiers who died of swamp fever and battle wounds were buried in the town. Local folklore also tells of a boy who tricked British officers into taking a hornet’s nest as a rare hummingbird nest, after which residents supposedly saw Admiral Cockburn and a dozen officers dive overboard when the nest was opened on a ship in the Patuxent River.