Nottingham, formerly known as Mattapany Landing, occupied fifty-five acres along the Patuxent River about five miles south of Charles Town near the former site of an American Indian village called Wosameus, and records from Captain John Smith's 1608 exploration of the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers indicate the town was located there. In 1706, the Maryland General Assembly's "An Act for the Advancement of Trade" named Nottingham one of five new towns in Prince George's County. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Nottingham was a bustling port where ocean-going sailing ships docked at shore wharves, merchants sold West Indies rum, muscovado sugar, and European and East Indian goods, enslaved Africans were imported and sold to supply labor for local tobacco plantations, and ships bound for Europe collected large quantities of tobacco. In 1747, the Tobacco Inspection Act designated Nottingham as the site of an inspection house, and between 1791 and 1801 more than 8,340 hogsheads of tobacco were shipped from the town. Nottingham also hosted British and American soldiers during the War of 1812. As large cargo vessels began to bypass towns like Nottingham and sail-powered boats gave way to bay steamers, the town survived much of the nineteenth century with help from the Weems steamboat line, which brought staple goods and carried farm produce to Baltimore. Although some businesses, including the Woodfield Canning Factory, were established during the twentieth century, Nottingham declined considerably by the 1930s, and by the late 1900s its population had fallen to fifty or sixty residents, leaving very little of the once important Patuxent River town.