Page images
PDF
EPUB

being allready invited." As the witness did not appear, the prisoner was discharged. Right Rev. Edward Fenwick, the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Cincinnati, was a descendant of Cuthbert, lord of this manor, whose only brother, Ignatius Fenwick, married Sarah Taney, of the family that produced Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, of the United States Supreme Court. Many other descendants of the lords of Fenwick Manor are scattered about the Western Shore and in the City of Baltimore. It is likely that the Fenwick loyalists of Nova Scotia are their best representatives.

Little Bretton Manor, granted to William Bretton in 1640, passed to the Jesuit missionaries. The house was built of English brick and is yet standing. It has a commanding position, overlooking St. Clement's Bay and the Potomac River. William Bretton came over from England in 1637 and was a member of the Assembly. His wife, Mary, was daughter of Thomas Tabbs, who came over at the same time. He brought with him, besides his wife and four-year-old son, three servants. For nearly 20 years he was clerk of the Assembly. There were several of this Bretton, or Brittain, family among the officers of the loyalist corps settled at St. John, New Brunswick, having commissions from the Province of New Jersey.

Resurrection Manor, between Town and Cuckold Creeks, was the possession of the Hon. Thomas Cornwaleys in 1650, but it passed soon after into the Snowden family. In 1659 and in 1662 the privy council of the province met there. Captain Cornwaleys came to Maryland with the first expedition and brought with him five servants. He was one of the earliest commissioners of the province. Later he returned to England. The Snowdons came from Wales in 1660 and left many descendants. A leading member of this family, Randolph Snowden, was a loyalist grantee of St. John, New Brunswick.

Portland Manor, in Anne Arundel county, was the lordship of the Darnalls, whose ancestor, Col. Henry Darnell, relative of Lord Baltimore, came over 20 years before the Protestant revolution in England. Woodyard, another residence of this family, in Prince

George's county, is in existence at the present time and is said to be the most interesting family residence in Maryland. This family has many descendants residing in the state. This name is met with in Ontario.

St. Clement's Manor, consisting of St. Clement's Island and part of the adjacent mainland, in 1639 was one of the manors of Dr. Thomas Gerrard, member of the council. It is the only one of the old mansions the records of which are preserved. From 1659 to 1672 court was held there continuously. This Dr. Thomas Gerrard was a strong Catholic, but he married a Protestant lady and became involved in the intrigues of Claibourne against Lord Baltimore. For this he was attainted of treason and was forced to fly into Virginia, in which colony he settled in the County of Westmoreland, where his descendants intermarried largely and perpetuated the name. The family came originally from Lancashire, England, where it had been seated for several generations, but the name is of Germanic origin and is met with quite frequently in localities settled by Saxon and German people. Samuel Gerrard, first president of the Bank of Montreal, was probably of this family.

St. Michael's, St. Gabriel's and Trinity Manors were the dependencies of Leonard Calvert in 1639. In 1707 these manors, with the exception of the Piney Neck estate, had passed by inheritance to the children of George Parker from the line of their mother's family, who was a daughter of Gabriel Perrot. The first of the Parker family mentioned in the annals of Maryland is William Parker, who was one of a committee commissioned during the lord protectorate of Oliver Cromwell in England to have charge of the affairs of the province, the rights of the Lords Balitmore falling in abeyance during that period, as the Lords Baltimore were royalists. There were several Parker loyalists of this family settled in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

St. Elizabeth's Manor, yet another belonging to Hon. Thomas Cornwaleys in 1639, was on Smith's Creek, but it became the property of the Hon. William Bladen, the first "public printer" of Maryland. His

son was Gov. Thomas Bladen, who married Barbara, daughter of Sir Thomas Janssen.

St. Inigoes Manor, in St. Mary's county, was owned by Mr. Thomas Copley, better known as the Jesuit priest, Father Philip Fisher. The property is yet retained by the Jesuits.

St. Joseph's Manor, near Tom Creek, on the Patuxent, has been the lordship of the Edloes and Platers. Both these families were among the early settlers. The name of Joseph Edlow, or Edloe, is preserved among the Maryland archives as the first of that family on American shores in 1634. The Platers were disloyal to the crown in 1776, one of them, George Plater, being quite notorious for this. But probably in the transfer of the manor from one family to another other considerations than that of fealty were principal.

Bohemia Manor, in Cecil county, was conceded to Augustine Herman by Lord Baltimore to reward him for making the first map of Maryland. He was of a respectable family in Bohemia, in Europe, but had settled in the Dutch possessions of New Amsterdam, now New York, where in 1651 he married Jane Varlett. He had visited England and was thought by the Dutch to be altogether too familiar and social with the English to suit their taste. So, on one occasion, when he returned to New Amsterdam, after 1672, he was arrested and imprisoned. An old account says that he was permitted to take his famous gray horse into jail with him -which must have been in a barn-and that he mounted his horse and dashed out and, though pursued closely, he escaped by swimming with his horse the Delaware, his horse dying of exhaustion on reaching the further shore. The Augustine Manor was conceded to Herman also by Lord Baltimore.

Within the manorial domain of Bohemia was the first attempt made in America by a body of men to practice the principles of socialism by the abolition of private property. One of the sons of the lord of the manor joined this body to the great grief of his father, who manifested that grief in a codicil of his will, whereby he put the disposal of his property out of the reach of his visionary son. The families of Thomson, Foreman,

Chambers and Spencer claim descent from the lords of Bohemia Manor, and were among the loyalists who left the Province of Maryland when the ancient regime was overthrown.

Great Oak Manor, in Kent county, was the lordship of Marmaduke Tilden. His ancestors had been lords of Great Tyldens, near Marden, South Kent, England. He was cousin of Sir Richard Tylden, of Milsted. The family had possessed lands in the parishes of Brenckly, Otterden, Kennington, and Tilmanstone in the reign of King Edward III., and William Tylden paid for lands in Kent, England, when the Black Prince was knighted. Sir William Tylden, of Great Tyldens, was the grandfather of Marmaduke Tilden, lord of Great Oak Manor, a direct descendant of Sir Richard Tylden, who was seneschal to Hugh de Lacy, constable of Chester, accompanied King Richard, the Lion Hearted, to the Holy Land and fought under him at the battle of Ascalon against the Sultan Saladin in the year 1190 A.D. One of the sons of Marmaduke Tilden was his heir, also a Marmaduke, and the greatest proprietor in Kent, owning 31,350 acres. He married Rebecca Wilmer and left a numerous posterity. A famous name among the loyalists of Canada.

Eastern Neck Manor, Kent county, owned the sway of Major James Ringgold, whose father, Thomas Ringgold, came to Kent in 1650 in the fortieth year of his age, bringing his two sons, James and John. Major James Ringgold married Mary, daughter of Capt. Robert Vaughan, commander of the county. Among the descendants of this family may be counted the commander of Ringgold's artillery in the war between Mexico and the United States of 1846.

Fort Kent Manor, on Kent Island, belonged to Giles Brent. The Brents were related to the Calverts, Lords of Baltimore. They consisted of the brothers Giles and Foulk, and the sisters, Margaret and Mary, who came into the province in 1638, bringing a considerable number of servants, male and female. Of their descendants Robert Brent married Anna M. Parnham, of the family of Hon. John Pole, of the Privy Council of England; James Fenwick Brent married Laura,

daughter of Gen. Walter H. Overton, of Louisiana, and Gen. Joseph L. Brent married Frances R. Kenner, daughter of Duncan Kenner, of Louisiana. Of his family, also, was Hon. Robert James Brent, one time attorney general of Maryland and an oracle of the Maryland bar. Some also were more decided for the old regime, for nearly all the Maryland gentry favored the royal

cause.

Doughoregan Manor was the seat of the Carrolls, the first of whom in Maryland was Charles, who landed at Annapolis sometime in the seventeenth century. To this family belong two celebrated men in the early history of the United States-Charles Carroll of Carrollten, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Right. Rev. John Carroll, the first vicar general of the United States, as well as the first archbishop in Maryland. The grandson of Charles Carroll of Carrollton John Lee Carroll-was one time governor of Maryland. Two of a junior branch of this family were among the loyalists to Nova Scotia.

Stokley Manor, whose lord was Jeremiah Laton, in 1675 bequeathed it to the "first Protestant minister who might settle in Baltimore county,' so great was his desire to hear the Word spoken as it had been spoken in Massachusetts, from where he had emigrated. A branch of this family were among the settlers of King's county, Nova Scotia, in 1760, after the expulsion of the Acadian French.

St. Barbary's Manor belonged to the Carvile family, the first of whom was the Hon. George Carvile, attorney general of the province. A person of great consequence in the romance of history has been made the subject of a recent novel, "Richard Carvel," and supposed to belong to this family. In the City of St. John's, New Brunswick, Canada, a mansion house called Carvell Hall, belonging to a family of that name, being likely of Loyalist origin and mayhap from the Western Shore of Maryland.

Beaver Dam, West St. Mary's and Chaptico, with 20 other unoccupied manors, belonged to Lord Baltimore's kin until the American Revolution, when, as they were Loyalists, true to the crown, their property with

« PreviousContinue »