Chaptico

Chaptico. Daring Men and One French Lady. , You are standing at the site of Chaptico's wharf. Despite the Federal forces stationed here, Chaptico's blockade runners carried medicine and other supplies at night down Chaptico Run and across the Potomac River past Union gunships to Confederate Virginia. Charles Clement Spalding, a local merchant who supplied them, was arrested and confined in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. The Chaptico Post Office allegedly had a two-slot mailbox; one for letters going south to Richmond and one for letters going north to Washington. A postal inspector confiscated the box, but the mail delivery continued in both directions., William Charles Love, a Chaptico resident, had the distinction of being the only man in St. Mary's County to vote for Abraham Lincoln during the 1860 presidential election. Other residents joined. the Confederate army. They included George Hayden, mortally wounded in the Battle of Gettysburg and buried in Christ Church Cemetery, and James Waring, captured "Gettysburg and imprisoned at Point Lookout. Waring escaped, hiding beneath cadavers piled on a buckboard and then slipping from under the grisly cargo to flee to Virginia., Long before the war, John Coode, a vestryman at Christ Church; planned the 1689 Protestant Rebellion against Lord Baltimore there. The rebellion concluded with Charles Calvert's loss of the colony and the end of religious freedom until the mid48th century. During the Revolutionary War, smugglers carried supplies from Chaptico's .port to the American army, past British vessels in the Potomac River. The British despoiled. the church and desecrated graves during the Vax of 18 12 when they looted the town., [Sidebar:] , Chaptico's Richard Thomas gained fame as "the French Lady." The son of the speaker of the Maryland House and the nephew of a Maryland governor. Thomas adopted the surname Zarvona afer losing his French lover of that name. Early in the war he led a daring attempt to capture the U.S. sloop Pawnee for the Confederate Navy. Disguised as a French maid, with cutlasses awl carbines hidden in milliner's trunks, be boarded the Baltimore steamer St. Nicholas. At midnight, his accomplices seized it, planning to range alongsidePawnee, then board and capture her but she failed to appear. Zarvona instead took three cargo ships and and delivered them to Fredericksburg., [Caption:] , Potomac River, U.S. Coast Survey map showing Chaptico 1868 Courtesy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Before half of Chaptico Run silted up below Chaptico, the watercourse led to the Wicomoco River and then to the Potomac River., Zarvona and his men seize control of the St. Nicholas Courtesy U.S. Naval Academy