St. Mary's County MD Archives History - Books .....Chapter VIII 1921
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Alice Brosey http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00015.html#0003503 May 15, 2009, 11:29 am

Book Title: Potomac Landings

CHAPTER VIII

Towns on Tidewater —- Paper Towns -— The Provincial Capital at St. Mary's, Its
Rise and Fall -— Kinsale, Leonardtown, Port Tobacco, Dumfries, Colchester, and
Occoquon -- Piscataway and the Annapolis Players -- Historic Alexandria --
Georgetown at the Head of Navigation.

THE plantations, as will be seen, were communities sufficient each unto itself.
Such was the depth of water and the continual series of natural harbours for
sailing vessels in the creeks throughout tidewater Potomac, that the ships as a
rule came to the planter's own landing and he had no need for ports. The river
valley from the first remained the home of agriculture and fishing, to the
exclusion of manufacturing, which would have stimulated town building. Except at
the head of tidewater, where later the vessels put off their consignments for
settlements in the hill country beyond their reach, only a few towns survive.
This is not because the effort and, in at least the case of St. Mary's, the
cause were wanting.

The old records and papers are full of references to "towns." Most of these were
"paper towns," or perhaps a landing head with a tobacco warehouse and a store,
for it has been said, "the settlers call /town/ any place where as many houses
are as individuals required to make a riot; that is twenty."

St. Mary's City was the pioneer in town life on the Potomac as it was in
colonization. But its example and its results in town making were not so
effective nor so permanent as in colony making. To-day the landing at St. Mary's
heads on a quiet shore almost as innocent of habitation as on the first spring
day when Captain Henry Fleete led Governor Calvert and his pilgrims up to its
beautiful green sweeps.

Yet here for over half a century stood the capital and only town of the whole
province of Maryland. Hither, to attend court and to sit in the Assembly, and to
adjust their taxes and other county business, the settlers came sailing down the
Potomac from as far as Anacostin Indian Town opposite the site of the present
national capital and down the Chesapeake from distant Kent Island and the mouth
of the even more distant Susquehannah. Here Governor Calvert and his kinsman,
Lord Baltimore, held a court and a control with princely powers over a territory
equalling a principality. It is a unique instance in all American history of a
colonial capital which has perished and left no trace of itself above the fields
to which time has levelled it.

For thirty years after the arrival of the pilgrims St. Mary's made little real
civic progress. It was Charles Calvert, later Lord Baltimore, who raised the
little capital to its highest distinction. In 1668 it was incorporated into a
"city" with municipal officials and the privilege of holding a weekly market and
an annual fair. Thomas enumerates the civic improvements of St. Mary's at its
highest stage of development as the "fort, or palisado, which though a rude
structure compared with those of more modern date, was solidly built and well
enough mounted to protect the inhabitants against the warfare of that day; its
massive and dignified State House, with its thick walls, tile roof, and paved
floors; its stout jail, with its iron-barred windows; its market-house,
warehouses, and several ordinaries; its unique brick chapel, the victim of the
persecution of the Roman Catholics of later times; its quaint Protestant church;
its pretentious and fortress-like executive mansion; which, with its offices,
private houses, and shops—of varied architectural design—numbering, it is said,
about sixty, and scattered over the elevated but level plain, studded as we are
told, with primeval forest trees, constituted the picturesque little metropolis
of early Maryland."

At the west end of Middle Street, on the point where Horseshoe Bend begins,
stood the Great Mulberry Tree which saw the rise of the capital as well as its
decline and obliteration, and became, in the isolation of its endurance, a
traditional landmark in Maryland akin to Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. It
survived until 1876 when some of its wood was worked into the decorations of
near-by Trinity Episcopal Church, and smaller cuttings went, the way of General
Washington's coach, into canes, gavels, and other souvenirs. It is said that
relic hunters found crude nails embedded deep in the wood of the old mulberry,
used, no doubt, in the early days to post Calvert's proclamations and other
public notices for the enquiring gaze of the colonists. Almost within the shade
of the historic tree stood the jail on the east in "Gallow's Green" and the
state house on the south. The fort was still farther south where Key's Branch
joins the St. Mary's.

The heart of the capital lay between this branch and St. John's Creek on the
other side of Middle Street with its taverns, chapel, coffee house, and homes of
the various dignitaries. Charles, Lord Baltimore, when governor, lived in the
Palace of St. John which overlooked the St. Mary's from the north side of St.
John's Creek. South of Middle Street was the town house of Leonard Calvert and
then, along the St. Mary's in succession, beyond the Branch, "the White House"
of Treasurer Giles Brent, "Sisters Freehold" of Margaret and Mary Brent,
"Greene's Rest" of Governor Thomas Greene, the home of Chancellor Philip Calvert
on Chancellor's Point, and the home of Daniel Wolstenholme, Royal Collector, at
the junction of St. Mary's with St. Inigoes. The Collector's house survived in
part as beautiful Rose Croft which burned away only a few years ago. It may be
identified by the curious reader as "the Collector's House" in Kennedy's romance
of early Maryland, "Rob of the Bowl."

All the while the little city was building, however, there were forging the
weapons which were soon to strike it to the heart. Unwisely Calvert had placed
his capital at the uttermost end of the province. With every shipload of
immigrants the centre of population ebbed farther away. Moreover, the
unqualifiedly Catholic character of the capital city alienated it from the
Protestant settlers farther north and across the Bay on the Eastern Shore.

There were two temporary removals of the capital before the final stroke. When
the Puritan Commonwealth came into power in England its colonial partisans in
1654 seized the documents and records at St. Mary's and moved them to Mr.
Preston's house on the Patuxent River. The city's ancient rights were restored,
however, in 1659. A calm of twenty years succeeded. Then, in obedience to
popular clamour for a capital nearer the centre of the province, the courts and
offices were removed to "The Ridge" in Anne Arundel County. One session of the
Assembly was held here when the peripatetic capital, after a three-days' session
at Battle Creek on Patuxent, returned to its original home on the Potomac. When
William of Orange mounted the English throne in 1689 and Protestantism again
became the established religion, the Catholic capital was doomed. The renewed
proposal to wrest the capital from St. Mary's provoked a bitter controversy, but
in the end the northern party won and ever since then the Maryland Assembly has
sat at Annapolis on the Severn.

Bereft of all that gave it life St. Mary's City succumbed to the inevitable and
peacefully passed away. All of it that is known to survive are the scattered
fragments of the old Mulberry Tree, the bricks from the Catholic Church said to
have been used in building the Manor of St. Inigoes a few miles away, and at
Georgetown University, the council table, and the bell which in 1681 was hung in
the State House the more economically to convene the Assembly and Court which
formerly had gathered at the drummer's roll.

All but a few other towns on the Potomac refused to blossom. Community life kept
to the private basis of the plantation. The situation pleased the planter. He
was practically a feudal lord. Besides his family, he controlled his white
indentured servants as completely as his black slaves who were his personal
property. Yet, when towns refused to sprout spontaneously these same planters in
Assembly struck the soil with the wand of legislation and ordered towns to
spring forth.

Virginia led the way in legislating towns. In 1679 the Burgesses ordered that
each county should purchase fifty acres of land. The price allowed was ten
thousand pounds of tobacco and cask. It was directed that all goods for
exportation should be brought to the towns and all servants, chattels, and other
importations should be landed at the towns. Certain curious immunities were
offered prospective residents, among them was that by which tradesmen and
mechanics who took up permanent residence in the towns were to be free from
arrest or seizure of their estates for debts contracted previously elsewhere.
William Fitzhugh wrote optimistically to "Capt. Fras. Partis, near East
Smithfield, London": "We are also going to make towns, if you can meet with any
tradesmen that will come in and live at the Town they may have large privileges
and immunitys."

Thus spurred, Maryland, as time ambled in those days, quickly followed
Virginia's suit. Let there be towns, declared the Assembly at St. Mary's four
years later, in 1683. "They shall be ports and places where all ships and
vessels, trading in this province," declared the act as finally passed, "shall
unlade and put on shore, and sell, barter and traffic away."

The three town sites selected on the Virginia shore were, in the original terms:
"In Northumberland County, Chicacony," now Coan River Landing; "In Westmoreland
County at Nominie on the land of Mr. Hardwicke"; and "In Stafford County at
Pease Point at the mouth of Aquia on the north side." Maryland ordered just
double that number in 1683. The sites selected were: "The City of St. Maries,
Brittons Bay, Between the Mouth of Chaptico Bay and Westwood house, In
Wiccocomoco River in or near Hattons Point, in Port Tobacco Creek near the
Mouth, and At Chingo Muxen." The following year she added: "And at the mouth of
Nanjemoy Creek att or neare Lewisses Neck." But of the making of paper towns on
this side there seems to have been no end for at least three others were added
in 1686 and two more two years later. Scraps of paper all, torn up by time.
There are places at which, said Thomas Jefferson, "the /laws/ have said there
shall be towns; but /Nature/ has said there shall not."

Virginia's legislation touching the river seems to have been an example to
Maryland in other things besides ordering towns. For when the southern colony
established ports in 1691 for the collection of all import and export duties,
the northern colony followed suit in 1706. Again when Virginia established eight
public warehouses for the inspection of tobacco on her shore in 1730, Maryland
was spurred to order half a dozen similar warehouses on her side of the river.
Those on the Maryland side were brick. This creeps out of the records. Perhaps
the old Virginia tobacco warehouses were of brick also. There are no apparent
remains to contradict a theory.

Among the legislated towns only a few seem to have had more than a paper
existence. Kingsale then, Kinsale now, on the West Yeocomico, though never more
than a village, brisk at boat-time, served as a public landing for a settled
inland neighbourhood. Leonardtown, at the head of Bretton Bay, fell heir to the
court house of St. Mary's and survives as the leading trading point of southern
Maryland.

Port Tobacco once rivalled St. Mary's. It enjoyed a fine harbour, a protected
position surrounded by prosperous plantations, and was on one of the most
favoured colonial routes between the North and the South. Weld wrote of it, in
the beginning of its decline in 1795: "Port Tobacco contains about eighty
houses, most of which are of wood and very poor. There is a large Episcopalian
church on the border of the town, built of stone, which formerly was an ornament
to the place; the windows are all broken, and the road is carried through the
church-yard, over the graves, the palings which surround it having been torn
down." Nearly all the eighty houses have long since gone the way of those at old
St. Mary's, but the few remaining, with their mossy brick and sagging roofs and
crazy chimneys, compose a unique and very quaint specimen of a derelict colonial
town.

The thrifty Scots who sailed up the river and came to anchor in Quantico Creek
discovered near its mouth a beautiful meadow and there founded a substantial
town which they named Dumfries. Evidences remain of the handsome stone-trimmed
brick buildings which ornamented the place. It was for a while the centre of a
considerable trade. These same Scots divided and some of their number settled on
the Maryland shore farther up river. They left their mark in the name of one of
the early (1696) political divisions, New Scotland Hundred, which included
within its limits the present territory of the District of Columbia.

Before Parson Weems went to Belle Air to live he made his home at Dumfries. Here
he had his book shop and his base of supplies whence he travelled up and down
both sides of the river preaching, fiddling, and peddling. A more dignified
figure was that of William Grayson who practised law in Dumfries after he
returned from across seas from his studies at Oxford. He was one of Washington's
most active supporters before and during the Revolution though he sided with
George Mason in opposing the Constitution as adopted. However, when the nation
was duly constituted, Virginia chose Grayson as one of her first two United
States Senators. The other earliest Senator from Virginia was, as already noted,
another Potomac man, Richard Henry Lee of Chantilly.

At the head of Occoquon Bay, where it meets the creek of the same name, at the
waterside once stood the little town of Colchester whose reason for being was
the ferry at that point which united the roadways north and south on the
Virginia shore. Later an arched stone bridge supplanted the ferry, itself in
turn to crumble and disappear. But in its heyday Colchester was a lively
junction point for travellers who sampled its tavern's delicacies while the
stable boys shifted the horses. "On this side the bridge stands a tavern," wrote
rhapsodic Davis in 1801, "where every luxury that money can purchase is to be
obtained at a first summons."

The same Davis spent some months a few miles up the creek where stood, and still
stands, the village of Occoquon. He doesn't mince matters in the description:
"No place can be more romantic than the view of Occoquon to a stranger, after
crossing the rustic bridge, which has been constructed by the inhabitants across
the stream. He contemplates the river urging its course between mountains that
lose themselves among the clouds; he beholds vessels taking on board flour under
the foam of the mills, and others deeply laden expanding their sails to the
breeze; while every face wears contentment, every gale wafts health, and echo
from the rock multiplies the voices of the waggoners calling to their teams." It
would seem after this as if nothing more remains to be said of this town.
However, attention should be called to the fact that the "mountains that lose
themselves among the clouds" are nowhere above two hundred feet high, and Davis
himself naively admits elsewhere that, in addition to two mills, "Occoquon
consists of only a house built on a rock, three others on the riverside, and a
half a dozen log huts scattered at some distance."

Piscataway Town, which took its name from the creek of that name, has at least
one distinction. As already noted it was here, and one wonders where in a little
colonial river village, the troupe of actors from the theatre in Annapolis
presented one of the plays of their classic repertoire in 1752. This appears to
have been the first theatrical performance ever given on the Potomac. It is
possible that among the audience gathered for so distinguished an event were
seen the Hansons and Addisons and Digges from near-by manors, perhaps
entertaining their Virginia neighbours, George Mason and his lady of Gunston
Hall and a certain eligible young man of twenty years, recently heir to his
brother's Mount Vernon.

The two river towns which evolved from natural causes, and hence grew to
importance and survived, were Alexandria on the west bank and Georgetown on the
east bank, and only about seven miles apart. They took root near the head of
tidewater Potomac where focussed (sic) the journey's end of most of the ships
with cargoes for inland settlements to the north and west.

Among the public warehouses ordered in 1730 was one to stand at "Great Hunting
Creek, on Broadwater's land." Here, or at least near by, grew a settlement at
first called Belhaven, later the city of Alexandria. Its old streets and houses
are rich in history. Especial interest attaches to the fine mansion which
Colonel John Carlyle built near the shore on a high terraced foundation, in
1752. Three years later in this house five royal colonial governors met General
Braddock, who had recently arrived to take command of the British forces in
America, and evolved plans for the campaigns against the French and Indians on
the west. Out of this meeting grew, it is said, the British determination to tax
the colonies, which taxation in turn fermented the Revolution. It was from
Alexandria that Braddock made his start on his fatal campaign beyond the
mountains on this occasion. He gave George Washington a commission as
aide-de-camp on his staff in Colonel Carlyle's house. Braddock took Washington
with him, but he did not take his advice, and acknowledged his mistake as the
breath left his body. When Washington returned and married and settled at Mount
Vernon as a planter he made Alexandria his market town, driving up there
occasionally to worship at Christ Church, more regularly after the Revolution,
to vote, and to attend the balls and routs, among them the first public
celebration of his birthday. Here again in the Carlyle house an eventually
significant conference was held in 1785, attended by General Washington and the
Governors of Virginia and Maryland, to settle certain disputes between the two
commonwealths. This meeting adjourned to Mount Vernon and from it sprang the
call for a meeting of delegates from all the commonwealths in 1787. This
convention met in Philadelphia and framed the Constitution of the United States.
In Alexandria, in comparatively early days, was built the first permanent
theatre on the river, not reputed to have been a handsome structure, and the
resident companies at Annapolis came to Alexandria in the eighteenth century to
repeat their plays. It became the metropolis of the northern end of tidewater
Virginia.

Georgetown rose apparently on the site of the Indian town of Tohogae, visited by
Captain Fleet in 1632. Its position at the head of tidewater, below but near the
falls, was a natural position for a shipping point in the days of almost
exclusive water transportation. Similar natural conditions established and
maintained Richmond at the head of tidewater on the James, Fredericksburg at the
head of tidewater on the Rappahannock, and Baltimore at the head of tidewater on
the Patapsco.

There was a ship's landing at Georgetown at least as early as 1703. Then and
thereafter estates were fast developed back on the hills to the north, as well
as south and east over the site of the future national capital. Georgetown was
incorporated in 1751; and immediately became an important little metropolis. It
was the main stopping place between Fredericksburg and Baltimore Town on the
colonial highway from South to North. A continual round of celebrities were
entertained in the coffee rooms and tap rooms of the ordinaries whose courtyards
resounded with the pleasant excitement of shifting coach horses and exchanging
coachmen and passengers. When the Federal Capital first came to the Potomac, it,
too, was for a time largely a paper town, and the foreign ministers established
their legations in the mansions on the heights of Georgetown. Its union with
Washington City has destroyed neither its individuality nor its charm.

The rise and development of the Capital City at the head of tidewater Potomac is
living history, the topic of a considerable literature, another story apart from
this brief chronicle of the river.

With this glance at the location and at the fate of these towns on the river the
survey of the general development of life along the Potomac is completed. The
native Indian has been seen to give way to the explorers, and the explorers to
the planters. In the planter group are the dominating and determining figures in
the story of life along the shores. Established in their seats above their
landings, be they manor houses of Maryland or mansions of Virginia; with an
ordered civil life developed; with parishes laid off and churches built;
interest may now attach to more intimate features of the planter's daily
existence, the domestic and social life of his home and neighbourhood.



		
	

Additional Comments:
From the book "Potomac Landings" published 1921 by Paul Wilstach.

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