Volume 175, Page 35 View pdf image (33K) |
MARYLAND MANUAL 35
1694). This last was the prelude to the opening of King William's School, the third institution of its sort in the colonies. As the new century appeared, about 35,000 people made up the population of Maryland. Nearly twenty per cent of these were Negro slaves—slavery having been established within five years after settlement. Another large group were "bound men," or indentured servants. Many of the latter soon became "redemptioners" and often, in time, the owners of extensive property. After the "Restoration" With the restoration of proprietary rights, April 15, 1715, Charles Calvert, Fifth Lord Baltimore, resumed con- trol of the colony. Since he was a minor at that time, and in later life primarily interested in English politics, devel- opment in Maryland lacked rigorous control from without. Furthermore, a strong "Country," as separate from a Pro- prietary, party manifested itself in the General Assembly. Significant among the expansionist movements in Charles Calvert's time were the establishment of a town called Bal- timore Town in 1729 and the opening up of Western Mary- land. Swedes and Dutch on the Delaware River, having found the Maryland charter's geographical limits vague, pressed for a boundary line. In 1732 this was established for Delaware, but other final boundary judgments had to wait till the early twentieth century. One of the conse- quences of dispute with Pennsylvania was a survey be- tween 1763-67 by two Englishmen, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, for whom the line marking the northern boundary of Maryland was named. Frontier Development and Warfare In Western Maryland, boundary disputes bred violence; therefore, Thomas Cresap, Maryland's heroic frontiers- man, figures as an outlaw in Pennsylvania's history. In this same quarter warfare flared, not only sporadically with Indians, but also systematically when the French, making claim to Western Empire, began to drive out the traders of the Ohio Company. As this trading venture was largely Virginian in character, the Maryland Assembly was stern against Governor Horatio Sharpe and refused to vote funds or raise troops. Edward Braddock, the British general deputed to drive back the French, operated within Western Maryland, but even his rout and death in 1755 |
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Volume 175, Page 35 View pdf image (33K) |
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