At the place where St. Leonard Creek meets the Patuxent River, people lived and events took place that helped shape the region’s and America’s history. Nearby are Solomons, the town of Broomes Island, and across the river in St. Mary’s County, Sotterly Plantation. St. Leonard Creek contains several historical landmarks. Thomas Johnson III, the first governor of Maryland, was born in 1733 at the Brewhouse. This property was bought by the Mackalls in the 1840s, and Mackall’s Wharf was one of the two steamboat landings on the creek until the early 1900s, while the second landing, Sollers Wharf, was located across the creek. The point was also associated with capital punishment: John Dandy, a blacksmith and gunsmith whose skills were important to early Maryland despite his reputation for violence, was convicted of killing an Indian servant and had his sentence commuted to seven years of public service, including acting as the colony’s executioner. In 1657 he was found guilty of murdering a second servant after the corpse bled when he touched it, and he was hanged on an island at the mouth of St. Leonard Creek, probably this point.