Maryland; stories of her people and of her history

Front matter

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Preface

The author cannot enumerate all the various sources from which he has gathered the materials for the following stories from Maryland history, nor is it necessary to do so, since in most cases of direct quotation the authority is given. Most of the sources are well known, some of them less so, while in some cases information is derived from a course of miscellaneous reading that has no obvious connection with the History of Maryland.

The author takes pleasure, however, in acknowledging his indebtedness to Dr. Philip R. Uhler, of the Peabody Institute, for criticism of the story dealing with the Indians, and to Mr. George W. McCreary, Assistant Secretary and Librarian of the Maryland Historical Society, for his kind assistance in securing many of the illustrations. The author has received much valuable criticism from Mrs. Laura Hollingshead, Miss Clara Tucker and other teachers in the public schools of the State, but especially, he wishes to express his thanks to Mr. Albert S. Cook, Secretary to the School Board of Baltimore County, for reading and criticising the work.

The book is intended as a supplementary reader, and the author's first object has been to make the stories interesting to children. Fictitious persons and imaginary

PREFACE

scenes have been introduced, but, the author ventures to hope, without sacrifice of historical accuracy. He has aimed to present events in proper perspective and has striven to surround the descriptions of earher periods with the atmosphere of those times.

The author has endeavored, also, to lay more stress on the quiet progress of peaceful times than on war by land and sea, while at the same time doing full justice to the latter. And in the personages mentioned, the object has been to be representative not exhaustive, so that many names of equal importance with those given are necessarily omitted.

It will give the author great pleasure if he can know that he has instilled into the children of Maryland some of his own interest in the history of his native State, and some of his own feeling of loyalty to her.

Contents

PAGE

I. The Ark and the Dove 19

II. The Indians . 29

II

IF a canoe full of Indians had paddled across theAtlantic Ocean three hundred years ago they would have found different peoples on the various parts of the coast of Europe. To the north they would have found Dutchmen. To the south of these were the French. And still farther south w^ere the Spaniards.

Just so the settlers who sailed then to the eastern coast of North America found three great stocks or families of Indians there. They were called the Algonquins, the Muscogees and the Iroquois. Each of these families was divided up into tribes having many different names. The tribes were divided into clans.

The clans were often named after some animal. There was the Wolf clan, the Turtle clan, and the clan of the Eagle. The picture of this animal was called a ''totem," and was a sort of coat-of-arms of the clan. The Indians of a clan thought that they were all descended from their particular animal. , They believed that, ages before, a turtle or an eagle had been the animal from which that clan had sprung.

In Maryland most of the Indians belonged to the Algonquin stock. These were the ones whom the settlers first met. There was also a tribe called the Susquehannoughs which belonged to the Iroquois family. We shall tell about them after a while, and will first speak of the others.

The Indians around St. Mary's belonged to the Piscataway tribe. There was a powerful chief at their head, and Governor Calvert thought he would try to win this chief's friendship. So he sailed up the Potomac River in the Dove and another small pinnace to pay the chief a visit. The Indians along the shore were afraid of the ships, and fled away from the river. Their own canoes they hollowed out of the trunk of a single tree. And they thought these great '^canoes" were made in the same way. Where could such huge trees grow, they wondered. And they thought the people who cut down such trees and made canoes of them could not be mere men like themselves.

At length Governor Calvert reached a village governed by Archihu, an uncle of the King. The King himself was only a youth and was still too young to govern the tribe. Here the Englishmen landed, and Father Altham, who was with them, went ashore and preached to the Indians. He told them that the Englishmen had come, not to make war, but to teach them and to live with them like brothers. At this the Indians were glad, and Archihu said, ''It is good. We will use one table. My people shall hunt for my brother, and all things shall be in common between us."

Of course the Englishmen and the Indians could not understand each other's talk. But there happened to be in the village a certain Captain Henry Fleete, an Englishman, who understood the Indian language. He acted as Governor Calvert's interpreter.

Leaving this village Governor Calvert went on up the river to Piscataway. Here he found five hundred armed Indians who would not let him land. But he made signs of peace to them, and at length the chief himself came on board the pinnace.

In the course of a few years many of the Indians became Christians. Several chiefs, with their wives and daughters, were baptized.

One chief sent his little seven-year-old daughter, whom he dearly loved, to live with the English, and after she had been taught, to be baptized.

What kind of people were these Indians, and how did they live? You must not think that they were always fighting and roaming about. No indeed, they lived in villages along the water-side almost as quietly and peacefully as you and I do, except when the Susquehannoughs attacked them.

They caught fish in the bays and streams, and had

INDIAN SQUAW AND PAPOOSE fields in which they grew corn, beans and tobacco. We can hardly call them farmers. They did not have ploughs and harrow^s drawn by horses or oxen. Indeed, there were no horses or cattle in America until the Europeans brought them. Columbus himself brought some cows over. The Indians dug up the earth with rude hoes made of stone or hard wood. They could only cultivate small fields where the ground was rich and not very hard to dig. But, of course, they soon bought iron hoes from the Englishmen.

V.AMPUM BELT

Remember that until the English settlers came these Indians had no metals. Think of all the things that we have made of iron — axes, hatchets, knives, nails, hoes — the list would be almost long enough to fill a book. And remember that most of these the Indians did not have at all. And those they did have, such as axes, hatchets, arrow-heads and such things, were made of hard and sharpened stones. Their fish-hooks were made of bone.

The Indians had no kettles to boil their vegetables and meats in. They had no frying-pans. But you will ask, how did they cook their food? Let us see. Tah-gahjute goes into the forest and shoots a fine wild turkey with his stone-tipped arrows. He does not have to go far to find one as they are very plentiful. His wife dresses it, spits it on a hard stick, and roasts it over a fire of twigs on the ground.

Another day he catches a fine fish. His wife has kept a good fire going, and has heated some stones very hot. Then she wraps the fish in leaves, places it on the stones, and covers it over with hot ashes. If she wishes to boil something she carefully drops the hot stones into a clay pot full of water. Do you wonder that Tah-gah-jute and his friends were willing to sell their houses and fields, their furs and skins to the Englishmen for steel axes and knives, and iron kettles?

The houses in which the Indians lived, and w^hich Governor Calvert had bought with the land, w^ere oblong huts but little higher than a man. The only opening, besides the door, was a hole in the roof through which the smoke of the fire passed out. At night the Indians slept on the floor around the fire. The chiefs' houses were larger and more comfortable, and contained beds made of skins stretched on sticks.

At places along Chesapeake Bay are found ^'kitchen-middens," which are a sign that many years ago there was an Indian village nearby. All the inhabitants of a village, after eating their oysters, would throw the shells into the same heap. Year after year the heap grew larger, and in time became covered with earth. Seeds fell into the soil until at length the mound was covered with grass and shrubs and trees. These overgrown hillocks of oyster shells are what are called ^^kitchen-middens."

BARTER WITH THE INDIANS Ff From the mural painting by C.

For clothing the Indians wore the skins of deer and other animals fastened around their shoulders, and aprons about their waists. Their ornaments were strings of beads and feathers. In later years they used a kind of money, called ''peak" or ''wampum," made of clam or mussel shells. Small cylindrical beads were cut from the shells and strung on cords or made into flat belts. This i SOUTHERN MARYLAND, 1634 the Court House at Baltimore

Copyright 1905, ly Edward B. Fu6tu..o money was paid out hij the yard. It was of two colors, purple and white, the purple being worth twice as much as the other.

These Indians were noble and kind. They v^re firm and generous friends to the whites. But they themselves had enemies, the fierce Susquehannoughs, who lived to the north of them, along the Susquehanna River.

The Susquehannoughs were hunting Indians, wild, fierce and warlike. They roamed about through the forests in search of the deer, bears, turkeys and other game on which they lived. They were noble looking men. One of the early settlers says they were seven feet tall and large in proportion. He says their voices were '^ large and hollow, as ascending out of a cave."

He says, too, that they ate the prisoners they took in war. This is very likely true. Many tribes of Indians did so. An Indian thought that if he ate his enemy all that enemy's bravery and strength passed into himself.

These Susquehannoughs, as we have said, were a branch of the Iroquois stock, but they had separated from it and had become the bitter enemies of the rest of that family. They were very warlike and had overcome the more peaceful tribes around them. They were fierce and cruel. They scalped their prisoners, and tortured them with knives and tomahawks and fire. The men did nothing but hunt in the season and fight. The women did all the work. They would bring the skins and furs of the animals they killed to the English settlements to trade them for blankets, beads, knives and other things.

Year after year the peaceful tribes in southern Maryland were attacked by the Susquehannoughs. The English settlers did what they could to protect their quiet neigh-

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CO e o .S bors. Treaties of peace were made with them, and their wives and children were allowed to come to the settlements of the whites for safety when their enemies

were on the warpath. But in spite of all they gradually died out. Many were killed, some wandered away into the wilderness.

At one time some of them came to make a new treaty of peace for their tribe.

They said they were sorry, but so few of them were left that they could not even bring a suitable gift to the governor, and that all they wanted was to live in peace and to have the protection of the English. The governor treated them kindly, told them to have no fear and promised to protect them as long as any of them were left. Thus these peaceful Indians gradually disappeared.

The Susquehannoughs did not come to so peaceful an end. They fought with the peaceful Indians south of them, and sometimes even with the English. But their

INDIAN WRITINGS hardest fighting was against their own relations. For ten years they fought the Senecas and the Cayugas, two tribes of the Iroquois stock.

At length a dreadful plague of smallpox broke out among the Susquehannoughs. Hundreds of their warriors were killed by it. They were so weakened that the Senecas routed them and drove them into Virginia.

The Senecas pursued them, and while on the war-path damaged the plantations of the whites and murdered several settlers. The English laid the blame for this on the Susquehannoughs, followed them, and surrounded them in an old fort where they had taken refuge. The Indians declared they were innocent, and showed the English leaders a silver medal and papers given them by Governor Calvert as a safe-conduct. In spite of this some of their chiefs were killed. The remainder, after holding the fort until their food was all gone, escaped during the night.

In their flight they murdered many settlers. The Virginians pursued them and almost destroyed the tribe. The few that were left returned to their old home on the Susquehanna River and submitted to their Indian enemies. About a hundred years later the very last of them were massacred by the whites in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

On the Eastern Shore the chief tribe was that of the Nanticokes. They were not very friendly to the whites, but were not so unfriendly as the Susquehannoughs.

They gave the early settlers but little trouble as they were separated from them by Chesapeake Bay. By the time that settlements were made on the Eastern Shore the colony was so strong as not greatly to fear the Indians any longer. About one hundred years after the first settlement, many of the Nanticokes left Maryland. Some went to Pennsylvania, some to New York, and some even as far as Canada.

Ill

GEORGE CALVERT and Cecilius Calvert should be remembered and honored by every loyal boy and girl of Maryland. We should remember them because they founded our State. We should honor them for the noble purpose with which they founded it. We shall see presently what that noble purpose was. But first let us learn something of the lives of these two great men.

The Calvert family, as we know it, began with Leonard Calvert, the father of George. He was a country gentleman who lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth of England, and who married Alicia Crossland, who was George Calvert's mother.

On his father's estate of Kiplin, in Yorkshire, George was born in 1579. He went to college at Oxford, and to finish his education traveled in Europe. When he was only twenty-six years old Oxford gave him the degree of Master of Arts. This took place in the presence of the King and many great nobles who were visiting Oxford.

Receiving this degree was a great honor to him, and showed that he had already begun to distinguish himself. Even now men who win renown by their learning, or by great deeds and noble lives, are honored in the same way.

A few years before, George Calvert had met Sir Robert Cecil, who became his firm friend and patron, and who made him his private secretary. Besides this he was elected to Parliament, and was appointed to an important office in Ireland by the King.

King James soon became as much Calvert's friend as Sir Robert Cecil, and sent him on important missions to Ireland and the Continent. In 1617 Calvert was knighted and two years later was made Principal Secretary of State by the King.

This was a very high office, like that of a prime minister. He at length became so trusted by King James that, so the French ambassador says, ''the control of all public affairs really rested in the Duke of Buckingham and Calvert." This ambassador describes George Calvert as ''an honorable, sensible, well-minded man, courteous toward strangers, . zealously intent upon the welfare of England."

GEORGE CALVERT

From a pastel portrait in the possession of the Maryland Historical Society

At that time both France and Spain wanted the friendship of England. The King favored Spain, but the EngHsh people and Parliament favored France. Calvert, partly out of friendship for the King and partly because he thought it best for England, favored the Spanish alliance. This made Calvert somewhat unpopular, but he was a man of such integrity of character that even those who took the other side admired and respected him.

King James rewarded the services of his faithful friend by giving him a manor of 2300 acres in County Longford, Ireland. This manor of Baltimore gave Calvert his title of Baron of Baltimore. Just before he received his title Calvert confessed to the King that he had been converted to the Catholic Church. He resigned his public offices but did not lose the friendship of the King, who kept him a member of his Privy Council. When King James died a few weeks afterwards Lord Baltimore retired altogether from public life, although the new king, Charles L, wanted him to remain a member of the Council. For fifteen or tw^enty years before, George Calvert had taken great interest in the settlement of America. And now that his public duties were ended, he gave his time and thoughts to plans for founding a colony in the New World. He had already received a grant of a part of Newfoundland, which he called Avalon, but had not been able to give much thought to his colony there. Now, however, he determined to go out himself to put the settlement in order and to try to make it prosper.

When he arrived at Avalon he found the land hilly, rugged and barren. But he was not discouraged. He returned to England for the winter, and in the following summer sailed again to Avalon with his wife — his first wife had died — all his famil}^, except his eldest son Cecilius, and about forty colonists.

Trouble met him almost as soon as he arrived. He was attacked by three French cruisers. These he drove off with two ships, the same Ark and Dove in which the settlers of Maryland afterwards sailed. But a worse enemy than the French appeared. This was the long, cold, stormy, northern winter. Sickness and starvation fell upon the little settlement, and at last Lord Baltimore sailed away, leaving behind only a few fishermen.

He went first to Jamestown in Virginia, where he was not kindly received, and from there back to England. He did not give up his idea of founding a colony in the New World, although King Charles wished him to remain in England. He succeeded in getting the King to grant him a tract of land lying north of Virginia and along Chesapeake Bay, but before he could receive the grant he died, on April 15, 1632.

He was succeeded in his title by his eldest son, Cecilius, wdio was named after Sir Robert Cecil. He had nine other children, of whom Leonard and George took part in the founding of Maryland. Leonard Calvert was the leader of the first expedition, which sailed in the Ark and the Dove, and was the governor of the colony for more than ten years. Both he and his brother George died in America.

CeciHus Calvert went on with his father's work of founding a colony, and soon received the charter of Maryland. The colony was called a palatinate, and Cecilius Calvert the Lord Palatine. He had powers which made him almost a king. He wished to go to the New World himself, but his colony had so many enemies in England that he had to remain at home.

There were two chief reasons for this enmity to Lord Baltimore's colony.

The first of these reasons we shall learn about in the next story. The second reason for the opposition to the colony was that Lord Baltimore was a Catholic.

In those days Catholics and Protestants did not live peaceably together as they do now, but hated and tried to harm each other. The first Lord Baltimore, and his son Cecilius also, saw how wrong this was. They wanted to make Maryland a land where all men might live in happy peace and quiet, no matter what their religion

CECILIUS CALVERT

From a print in the possession of the

EDICT OF TOLERATION OF 1649. LORD BALTIMORE

From the mural painting by Edv

might be. This is the noble purpose of which we have spoken, and for which George and Cecilius Calvert deserve so much honor.

Lord Baltimore's enemies, knowing that he was a

\G HIS PEOPLE TO WISDOM,

dd, in the Court House at Baltimore

JUSTICE AND MERCY

Catholic, pretended that he was founding a colony for those of his own church and where others would be persecuted. This was not true, for Cecilius Calvert wanted his colony to be free to all religions alike. Not many years after the first settlement was made, was passed his famous Toleration Act, which made it the law that no one should be troubled or molested because of his religious belief.

Cecilius Calvert was a son worthy of his father. He lived at a time when England was troubled by religious persecutions and by civil war, but he took no active part in either. He gave his attention to his own private affairs, and watched over the welfare of his colony. George Calvert spent most of his life in working for his country and his sovereign, and had but little time to give to his colony in America. But his was the idea of founding the colony. Cecilius Calvert it was who carried out that idea earnestly and faithfully.

As far as his enemies would let him Cecilius Calvert lived at peace. He had trials and troubles and dangers to pass through, and his enemies gave him much anxiety about his colony in the New World. But he was patient and prudent, and by not taking sides too warmly he kept safe his own rights and those of the colonists over whom he watched. While he was Proprietor, the one settlement of about three hundred persons had grown to many settlements having nearly twenty thousand inhabitants. The colony not only grew and prospered, but also set an example to the whole world of Protestants and Catholics living peacefully together. Cecilius Calvert was born in 1606 and died in 1675.

Many letters were written by the early Governors of

Maryland and Cecilius Calvert to each other. For a long time nothing was known of these letters. But a few years ago they were discovered, packed away in an old chest, in the house of an English gentleman. For more than two hundred years they had lain there forgotten.

They were purchased and brought to America, and now, in the rooms of the Maryland Historical Society at Baltimore, we can see the very letters written by the founder of our State.

Let us read some of these letters together.

We learn that Lord Baltimore wanted some Indian mats to carpet a room, and that Governor Leonard Calvert had trouble in getting

them. But he says, in a letter written in 1638, ''I am sure my Brother Porttobacco, now Emperor of Paskattaway, will assist me in it as much as he can for he is much your friend and servant." In the same letter he says he had had a ''red bird" and a 'Mion" for Lord

THE CALVERT ARMS

From a cast in the possession uf the Ma'i'yland Historical Society

Baltimore, but that a servant had let the bird out of its cage and the lion had died.

Of course these letters, for the most part, tell about the government of the colony, about public affairs. In them we read of the troubles on Kent Island and of William Claiborne. We shall speak of these things in the story after this. But the letters tell us also of private matters, and some of them speak of gifts that were exchanged between England and America.

In 1664, in a letter to his father Lord Baltimore, Governor Charles Calvert says, '^ My Cozen William's sister arrived here and is now att my house, and has the care of my household affaires. . . . There came with her two maids [and] ... I received likewise a light summer druggat suit, a pewter still, 2 Copper stew panns and in them 20 lb. of yellow wax."

Messages passed between '^ little Cis," son of Governor Charles Calvert, and his grandfather in England. In one of his father's letters ^4ittle Cis" thanks his grandfather for a present of a cap, feather, sword and belt. Some years later Governor Calvert thanks his father for '' my mother's picture which will be a great Ornament to my Parlor."

At a time when Charles Calvert's children were in England his letters speak often of them and of his anxiety for their welfare. The colonists were anxious at times about other things in England besides their children. In a letter to his brother-in-law Governor Calvert says,

''My wife your Sister earnestly entreats you that great Care may be taken of a great trunck which stands in her Chamber betwixt the bedd and the Chimney there being in it severall bottles of Cordiall AVaters and Likewise some fient glasses."

These letters help us to remember that the early settlers were men and women and children like ourselves. They were real live people. The men and boys worked in the fields planting and harvesting corn. In the forests they cut wood for their fires and shot game for their food. The women cooked and sewed and milked the cows that the boys drove in from the pasture.

As the years passed by not only did new settlers come from England, but little children, who never had seen England, were born in the colony. They grew up to be men and women, married, and had children of their own. The little make-believe Dick and Betty of our first story would have been more than fifty years old at the time when Cecilius Calvert died.

IV William Claiborne, Lord Baltimore's Enemy

YOU must not think that William Claiborne was the only enemy Cecilius Calvert had. There were many others. But Claiborne probably gave Lord Baltimore more trouble than any other man he met with during his whole life.

It was not through any fault of Lord Baltimore, for we shall see that he tried to live at peace with this man and to be on friendly terms with him. We promised, in the story before this, to tell of the enemies who prevented Lord Baltimore from coming to Maryland. Claiborne was the chief of these, and we shall now see what he did.

The whole trouble arose over Kent Island, a large island that lies about halfway up Chesapeake Bay and opposite Annapolis. On this island, a year or two before the settlers landed at St. Mary's, Claiborne had established a trading post.

It was not really a settlement. It was only a station where a few Englishmen lived and kept a stock of goods with which to buy furs and skins from the Indians. They did not grow any crops. At one time their food gave out ,and they were near to starvation. And they were so weak that they feared the Susquehannough Indians would come and murder them all.

WILLIAM CLAIBORNE

Claiborne himself did not live there. He owned large estates in Virginia on which he lived, and he said that Kent Island was a part of that colony. The Virginia Council supported him in this claim. But, you will ask, what right had Virginia to claim any part of Lord Baltimore's colony?

By their old charter the King of England had given the Virginia Company the land for two hundred miles north of Old Point Comfort. But before George Calvert had even thought of settling in Maryland the

King had taken this land away from them. But the Virginians still said it belonged to them. They did not like Lord Baltimore's colony anyhow, especially because it was a settlement of Catholics. They were glad of an excuse to give him trouble.

LOCATION OF KENT AND WATSON ISLANDS

Lord Baltimore knew of this post on Kent Island before he sent out his first company of settlers. He wrote a letter of instructions which he gave to his brother Leonard Calvert on board the Ark.

In this letter he told Governor Calvert to ''write a letter to Cap: Clayborne as soone as conveniently [he could] after their arrivall in the Countrey ... to invite him kindly to come unto them." And further, that ''if he come unto them, then that they use him courteously and well," . . . and "to lett him know that his Lordship is willing to give him all the encouragement he cann to procede" in his plantation.

Furthermore, "that they assure him in fine that his Lordship intends not to do him any wrong, but to shew him all the love and favor that he cann." But if Claiborne should refuse to come to Governor Calvert, then "that they lett him alone for the first yeare" until they receive instructions from Lord Baltimore how to act. Thus it is clear that Lord Baltimore wished to live at peace with Claiborne and to treat him kindly.

Governor Calvert sent word to Claiborne that he would have to take out a trading license from Lord Baltimore's government. Claiborne refused. This brought trouble on himself, because the Marylanders presently captured one of his vessels for trading without a license. Then Claiborne armed a small boat, the Cockatrice, and sent it out with thirty men, under the command of Lieutenant Ratcliffe Warren, with orders to seize any vessels belonging to Lord Baltimore's settlement.