Before There Was an Oxford

Before There Was an Oxford. The Oxford Museum. , 15,000 BC , The global climate warms and the ice sheets melt. The Atlantic Ocean rises almost 400 feet, flooding the Susquehanna River valley and forming the early Chesapeake Bay., 11,500 BC , Nomadic Paleo-Indian people follow mammoths, mastodons, giant beavers, and other Ice Age creatures into the region., 3000 BC , The climate continues to warm. As fish and shellfish populations become abundant in the region's rivers, Native groups from seasonal fishing settlements., 1100 AD , Regional Algonquin tribes, the Choptanks and Nanticokes, clear forests to grow corn, squash, beans, and tobacco and create permanent villages., 1500s , Searching for sea routes to China, European nations launch voyages of exploration westward across the Atlantic Ocean., 1607 , The Virginia Company of London constructs a fortified base at Jamestown to trade with Natives and grow tobacco., 1608 , Captain John Smith explores and maps the Chesapeake Bay but does not reach the area that will become Oxford., 1632 , King Charles I of England grants the original charter for Maryland, a colony of about twelve million acres, to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore., 1635 , The first significant land grants on the Eastern Shore are received by English settlers., 1642 , The first 13 enslaved Africans are brought into Maryland and St. Mary's City., 1650 , War and European diseases take their toll on Native peoples, whose population shrinks by 90 percent since 1600., 1659 , 3,050 acres of Eastern Shore land are deeded to Welshman Edward Lloyd and surveyed as a tobacco plantation. Other prominent plantations in this area include Anderton, Plimhimmon, Otwell, Canterbury, and Plain Dealing., 1664 , Under the governorship of Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, the Maryland Assembly rules that all enslaved people and all their children should be held in slavery for life.