Global Trade, Local Stories

Global Trade, Local Stories. 📜. , In colonial times, Chestertown was the primary port for the upper Eastern Shore., Bustling wharves lined the waterfront as laborers loaded ships with local crops, such as wheat and tobacco, bound for Europe and the Caribbean. vessels from across the Atlantic brought trade goods, enslaved Africans and British convict laborers., The Custom House, circa 1746 , The large brick building in front of you is traditionally known as the Custom House, although the actual office of His Majesty's Customs was likely in an adjacent building. This mansion was the home of Thomas Ringgold, a merchant and promiment advocate of American liberty. In a cruel paradox, he was also a large-scale transatlantic trader in enslaved people who sold hundreds of abducted Africans , survivors of the infamous Middle Passage , to work the Chesapeake region's plantations., One Teacher's Brave Stand , This spot, where the town's main wharf once stood, was the site of an important civil rights victory. In 1872, Josephine Carr, a Black schoolteacher traveling upriver by steamboat, was violently forced out of the whites-only passenger cabin. She disembarked here in protest. Carr sued the steamboat company and won, with the judge ruling that all public transportation in Maryland must be integrated. Unfortunately, that decision was never enforced, but Carr's brave stand , as a little known 19th-century precursor of Rosa Parks , is still honored today., Historians and students at Washington College's Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, which is located here in the Custom House, work to illuminate the legacies of Carr and the many other local civil rights heroes., A Changing Community , By the Revolutionary War era, Chestertown had become the largest and most important town on Maryland's Eastern Shore, with thriving cultural and educational institutions. In 1782, Washington College , the first college founded in the newly independent United States , was established here., The wharves disappeared over time as the economy changed and the young nation expanded westward. As roads and railways grew, river trade dwindled. Transatlantic sailing ships and Bay steamboats receded into the past. Most of today's ship traffic comes from recreational boating.