Archives of Maryland
Historical List
Provisional Government of 1774 - 1776

First Convention: June 22, 1774 - June 25, 1774¹

Source:
Edward C. Papenfuse, et al., Archives of Maryland, Historical List, new series, Vol. 1. Annapolis, MD: Maryland State Archives, 1990.
Edward C. Papenfuse, et al., A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789, Vols. 1&2.  Annapolis, MD: Maryland State
Archives, 1985.

a - appointed; d - died; dcl - declined; dns - did not serve; ds - dismissed; e - elected; ev - election voided; chair - convention chairman;
pres - president of the Senate; pres p. t. - president pro tem of the Senate; psa - post-session appointment; psd - post-session death;
psr - post-session resignation; r - resigned; s - suspended; spkr - speaker of the House; spkr p.t. - speaker pro tem of the House;
(D) - Democrat; (R) - Republican.

1. The Proprietary Assembly that adjourned on April 19, 1774, was the last legislative session of the proprietary government. After that, Governor Eden prorogued the Assembly regularly until he ordered it dissolved on June 12, 1776, and called for a new election.

During the years 1774-1776, the powers of government increasingly came to be exercised by the extra-legal assemblies. In all there were nine meetings of six appointed or duly elected provincial conventions. Apparently neither contemporaries nor subsequent publishers of the extant proceedings were certain how to differentiate separately elected and self-contained conventions from those sessions that were merely a continuation of an adjourned meeting. This confusion partly results from the ambiguity of the surviving journals. On July 3, 1776, the penultimate Convention decreed that its own dissolution date would be August 1, 1776. The last entry on July 6, however, recorded that "the convention adjourns till Thursday the first day of August next..." For convenience each session is designated numerically as a distinct convention, although there were elections only to what are here called the second, fourth, fifth, sixth, and ninth conventions.

The First Convention was an informal meeting of ninety-two delegates from the counties charged with formulating Maryland's response to the Boston Port Act. As the revolutionary movement grew, the conventions evolved into formal assemblies of representatives elected in much the same manner as the proprietary Lower House. These conventions were concerned with financial, legal, and military matters and gradually became the de facto, if not de jure, government.

Governor Eden's authority was acknowledged until June 23, 1776, when he boarded a British ship to return to England. Two days later the Eighth Convention resolved that his call for the election of a new proprietary assembly would not be obeyed and the proprietor's control of Maryland was officially denied.

Formal appointments survive for only those counties marked with an asterisk; the lists of delegates for the other counties are based on attendance at the Convention.

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