St. Mary's County

St. Mary's County occupies the southeastern extremity of the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, forming a peninsula bounded on the southwest by the Potomac River, on the east and northeast by the bay and the Patuxent River, and on the northwest by Charles County. St. Mary's, the first Maryland county, was established in 1637, probably by an order of the provincial governor, Leonard Calvert. The county is named in honor of St. Mary, the mother of Jesus.

At St. Clement's Island, the Ark and Dove, carrying the first Maryland settlers, dropped anchor on March 25, 1634 after a stormy passage across the Atlantic. "This we call St. Clement," wrote Father Andrew White, one of the Jesuit priests who accompanied the expedition, "here we first came ashoare; here by the overturning of a shallop we had allmost lost our mades which we brought along. The linnen they went to wash was much of it lost, which is no small matter in these parts . . . In this place we first offered [the sacrifice of the mass], erected a crosse, and with devotion took solemn possession of the Country."

St. Mary's County abounds with history. The St. Mary's Town Lands, which encompassed the village known as St. Mary's City, have been preserved through the efforts of the St. Mary's City Commission and developed into an outdoor history museum. Here visitors can see the reconstructed State House of 1676, built in 1934 to celebrate the Maryland Tercentenary; the Leonard Calvert Monument marking the site of a mulberry tree near which the settlers from the Ark and Dove are supposed to have assembled to hear the Royal Charter read after their arrival; and nearby St. Mary's College of Maryland, established in 1840 to commemorate the founding of Maryland and the religious toleration practiced throughout most of the seventeenth century.