Maryland Began Here

Maryland Began Here. The Colonists Arrive. , Two ships arrive. The 400-ton Ark and the 40-ton Dove landed almost 200 English settlers here in March of 1634. After a stormy passage from England, the 20-year-old Governor Leonard Calvert brother of Lord Baltimore, was looking for a safe place to plant his colony. They found a haven on this island, with "infinite swarms of Herons," while the governor searched for permanent place for settlement.,

"The ground is heare, as in very many places, covered with pokiberries, (a little wilde walnut hard of shell, but with a sweet kernel), with ackhornes, black walnut, cedar, saxafras, vines, salad-herbes, and such like. It is above 400 acres, and therefore too little to seat upon for us; therefore they have designed it for a fort to command the [Potomac] river, meaneing to raise another on the maine land against it, and soe to keep the river from forraigne trade, here being the narrowest of the river." , Initial description of the island by Ark passenger and Jesuit missionary Father Andrew White in Voyage to Maryland

, The man who founded Maryland. When the first Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, died in 1632, his 27-year-old son, Cecil Calvert, ably carried out his plan to settle Maryland. The second Lord Baltimore stayed in England and protected his Maryland interests for over 40 years. He holds a map of Maryland as his grandson and namesake points to the colony., The oldest map of Maryland. The Maryland settlers named this island after St. Clement, the Catholic patron saint of sailors and seas. It became "Blackistone Island" when settler Nehemiah Blackistone married Elizabeth Gerrard and acquired her property in 1669. The State of Maryland renamed it St. Clements when it took possession in 1960.