The Colony of Maryland

By

Clara

     In the 1600s and 1700s some people did not get along because they didn’t have the same religion.  Catholics could be thrown in jail or killed because of their religion. Sir George Calvert, a rich Englishman, had wanted to create some place where the Catholics could live freely without people who didn’t have the same religion bothering them. 

     Europeans who were looking for a new life settled in America.  Calvert decided that he would live there too.  In 1632, King Charles I of England gave Calvert’s family a charter to start a colony to the north of Colonial Virginia.  Calvert’s family used their money to start the colony, and they made the laws. 

     The colony was going to be called Maryland after King Charles’s wife Henrietta  Maria. George Calvert died before he got to go to Maryland. Calvert's oldest son, Cecilius wanted to stay in England, so he sent his brother Leonard on the first voyage to the colony. Leonard and two hundred other colonists sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and ended up in Maryland on March 25,1634.  Twenty-five out of two hundred colonists were rich enough to pay to go on the trip to America. Those people paid for the others who would become their servants. Calvert gave the land to the rich colonists.  Each of the landowners was called a lord of manor.  Most of the lords were Catholics. Most of the first settlers were bond servants. When a lord of manor paid for his servants they had to work for the lord for seven years. That time for the servants was called indenture. Many bond servants never became free.

     Life in the colonial Maryland was very hard in the 1600s. Colonists were still learning how to grow food in this different soil. Colonists went hungry most of the time. Insects that filled Maryland's swamps had caused some sicknesses . Almost every child lost one parent. Most parents remarried if a husband or a wife died. 

    Maryland's business was farming. People called yeoman farmers worked on their own farm. They fenced their cornfields, but their pigs and cows roamed everywhere.  The yeoman farmers worked on small farms while lords had huge plantations. Bond servants worked on plantations until the lords wanted to use slaves. George Calvert made slavery illegal in early Maryland because he thought you shouldn't own people. 

     Maryland people were having a hard time from 1644 to 1646. In England people were fighting. Calvert had to leave and return to England. There was no one in charge for two years.  (to be continued)

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