Traveling across the country in a small van

What type of colony was Maryland? – It was a proprietary colony of Cecil Calvert the second Lord Baltimore. Like other settlements in the New World the Maryland Colony was established as a religious refuge. Although it was created as a haven for English Catholics many of the original settlers were Protestants.

Where was Maryland Colony located?

Pre-Colonial History – George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, applied to Charles I for a royal charter for what was to become the Province of Maryland. After Calvert died in April 1632, the charter for “Maryland Colony” was granted to his son, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, on June 20, 1632.

The colony was named in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I. Led by Leonard Calvert, Cecil Calvert’s younger brother, the first settlers departed from Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, on November 22, 1633 aboard two small ships, the Ark and the Dove. Their landing on March 25, 1634 at St.

Clement’s Island in southern Maryland, is commemorated by the state each year on that date as Maryland Day. This was the site of the first Catholic mass in the Colonies, with Father Andrew White leading the service. The first group of colonists consisted of 17 gentlemen and their wives, and about two hundred others, mostly indentured servants who could work off their passage.

1. After purchasing land from the Yaocomico Indians and establishing the town of St.
2. Mary’s, Leonard, per his brother’s instructions, attempted to govern the country under feudalistic precepts.
3. Meeting resistance, in February 1635, he summoned a colonial assembly.
4. In 1638, the Assembly forced him to govern according to the laws of England.

The right to initiate legislation passed to the assembly. In 1638, Calvert seized a trading post in Kent Island established by the Virginian William Claiborne. In 1644, Claiborne led an uprising of Maryland Protestants. Calvert was forced to flee to Virginia, but he returned at the head of an armed force in 1646 and reasserted proprietarial rule.

Maryland soon became one of the few predominantly Catholic regions among the English colonies in North America. Maryland was also one of the key destinations where the government sent tens of thousands of English convicts punished by sentences of transportation. Such punishment persisted until the Revolutionary War.

The founders designed the city plan of the colonial capital, St. Mary’s City, to reflect their world view. At the center of the city was the home of the mayor of St. Mary’s City. From that point, streets were laid out that created two triangles. Located at two points of the triangle extending to the west were the first Maryland state house and a jail.

Extending to the north of the mayor’s home, the remaining two points of the second triangle were defined by a Catholic church and a school. The design of the city was a literal separation of church and state that reinforced the importance of religious freedom. The largest site of the original Maryland colony, St.

Mary’s City was the seat of colonial government until 1708. Because Anglicanism had become the official religion in Virginia, a band of Puritans in 1642 left for Maryland; they founded Providence (now called Annapolis). In 1650, the Puritans revolted against the proprietary government. They set up a new government prohibiting both Catholicism and Anglicanism.

In March 1655, the 2nd Lord Baltimore sent an army under Governor William Stone to put down this revolt. Near Annapolis, his Roman Catholic army was decisively defeated by a Puritan army in the Battle of the Severn. The Puritan revolt lasted until 1658, when the Calvert family regained control and re-enacted the Toleration Act.

The Puritan revolutionary government persecuted Maryland Catholics during its reign. Mobs burned down all the original Catholic churches of southern Maryland. In 1708, the seat of government was moved to Providence, renamed Annapolis in honor of Queen Anne.

1. St. Mary’s City is now an archaeological site, with a small tourist center.
2. Just as the city plan for St.
3. Mary’s City reflected the ideals of the founders, the city plan of Annapolis reflected those in power at the turn of the 18th century.
4. The plan of Annapolis extends from two circles at the center of the city – one including the State House and the other the Anglican St.

Anne’s Church (now Episcopal). The plan reflected a stronger relationship between church and state, and a colonial government more closely aligned with the Protestant church. Tobacco was the main export crop in the colonial era; it involved a great deal of hand labor, usually done by slaves, the original royal charter granted Maryland the Potomac River and territory northward to the fortieth parallel. This was found to be a problem, as the northern boundary would have put Philadelphia, the major city in Pennsylvania, within Maryland.

The Calvert family, which controlled Maryland, and the Penn family, which controlled Pennsylvania, decided in 1750 to engage two surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, to establish a boundary. They surveyed what became known as the Mason–Dixon Line, which became the boundary between the two colonies.

The crests of the Penn family and of the Calvert family were put at the Mason–Dixon line to mark it. Later the Mason–Dixon line was used as a boundary between free and slave states under the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

What was the colony of Maryland known for?

Review Questions – 1. Maryland was founded by

1. James Oglethorpe
2. Roger Williams
3. Anne Hutchinson
4. Cecil Calvert

2. Maryland was founded as a haven for

1. Jews
2. Quakers
3. Catholics
4. Puritans

3. One major result of the English Civil War was

1. the execution of King Charles I by Parliament
2. the placement of a Catholic on the throne of England
3. the pope’s control of the Anglican church
4. the execution of key Puritans such as Oliver Cromwell

4. Maryland’s Act of Toleration in 1649 did which of the following?

1. Protected the free practice of all religions in Maryland
2. Protected the free practice of all sects of Christianity in Maryland
3. Required all non-Christians to pay a tax to practice their religion in Maryland
4. Ensured Puritan rule of Maryland for the next forty years

5. From 1649 to 1660, the rule of England under Oliver Cromwell

1. was based upon Puritan beliefs and discrimination against Catholics
2. granted religious freedom to all Christians in England
3. tolerated non-Puritans
4. reduced religious tensions in England and Ireland

6. As a result of the Glorious Revolution in England in 1689, what action was taken in Maryland?

1. Slavery was banned in the colony.
2. The Act of Toleration was revoked.
3. Virginia conquered Maryland and took possession of the Chesapeake Bay.
4. All Catholic landholders were forced to forfeit their possessions.

7. Who came to the throne of England as a result of the Glorious Revolution in 1689?

1. King James II
2. Oliver Cromwell
3. William and Mary
4. Charles I

8. Which of the following documents set colonial America on a path toward religious freedom, which later became a cornerstone of U.S. democracy?

1. Mayflower Compact
2. “City Upon A Hill” sermon by John Winthrop
3. “Sinners in The Hands of an Angry God” sermon by Jonathan Edwards
4. Maryland’s Act of Toleration

9. Which of the following statements about colonial Maryland is most accurate?

1. Although Maryland started as a haven for Catholics, Protestants quickly became the majority.
2. Maryland became the first colony to outlaw the use of slave and indentured labor.
3. Maryland’s economy was based on subsistence farming and the shipbuilding industry.
4. Maryland merged politically with the colony of Virginia during the English Civil War.

What colony settled in Maryland?

English settlers, led by Leonard Calvert, set sail on Ark and Dove from Cowes, England, for Maryland. Calvert had been appointed Maryland’s first Governor by his brother, Cecil Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore, following grant of Maryland Charter by Charles I, King of Great Britain and Ireland.

Where was Maryland first settled?

Maryland – The colony In 1608 the English explorer Capt. sailed into and stayed for several weeks to map the shoreline. With reference to the countryside around the bay, Smith exclaimed, “Heaven and earth seemed never to have agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation.” In 1632 Cecilius Calvert was granted a charter for the land as a in which his fellow Roman Catholics might escape the restrictions placed on them in England.

• The first governor of the,, the younger brother of Cecilius, landed the founding expedition on St.
• Clements Island in the lower Potomac in March 1634.
• The first settlement and capital was St.
• Marys City.
• Aware of the mistakes made by first colonists, Maryland’s settlers, rather than hunt for gold, made peace with the local Native Americans and established farms and trading posts, at first on the shores and islands of the lower Chesapeake.

The field hands included indentured labourers working off the terms of their passage and, after about 1639, African slaves. The most important crop was tobacco. Roads and towns were few, and contact with the English-model manor houses was largely by water.

The Calvert family provided for religious freedom in the colony, and this was formalized by the General Assembly in 1649 in an Act Concerning Religion, later famous as the Act of Religious Toleration. It granted freedom of worship, though only within the bounds of Trinitarian Christianity. One of the earliest laws of religious liberty, it was limited to Christians and repealed in 1692.

Commercial disputes with Anglican Virginia and boundary quarrels with Quaker Pennsylvania and Delaware did not affect this tolerance. ascendancy in England (1648–60) caused only brief turmoil. A 1689 rebellion by Protestants overthrew the officers, leading to an interval of crown rule in the royal colony of Maryland (1692–1715).

• During that period the was formally established.
• In 1715 Maryland once again became a proprietary colony of the Calverts, who had converted to Protestantism.
• Maryland nonetheless remained a haven for dissidents from sectarian rigidity in other colonies.
• By the 1660s the Protestant majority in Maryland came to resent the colony’s Roman Catholic leadership in St.

Marys City. As the population centre shifted to the north and west, the capital was moved to Protestant-dominated Anne Arundel Town (now Annapolis) in 1694. In 1729 Baltimore was founded. Maryland’s dominant “country party” early resisted British efforts to make the colonies bear more of the costs of government.

1. Frederick county the in 1765, and in 1774, the year after the, a ship loaded with tea was burned at an Annapolis dock.
2. The long-standing dispute between Maryland and over their common border was settled in 1767 when Great Britain recognized 39°43′ N as the legal boundary.
3. The boundary was named the for its surveyors.

Thereafter, this line came to be regarded as the traditional division between the North and the South. Marylanders took an active part in the, Maryland is sometimes called the “Old Line State” in honour of the Maryland troops who served with Gen. Among the most-reliable troops in the Continental Army, they were often given difficult tasks; called them “The Maryland Line.” The, often on the move to avoid British troops, spent a winter in Baltimore.

At the close of the war, it in Annapolis, where it accepted Washington’s resignation from the army and ratified the Treaty of Paris (1783), which acknowledged the independence of the colonies. Postwar problems included the of confiscated loyalist property, the struggle for paper money, and debtor relief.

Maryland’s controversy with Virginia over the use of the Potomac and lower Chesapeake Bay, resulting in the Compact of 1785, led toward the (1787), as did the of 1786, at which Maryland was not represented. distinguished himself as a representative of Maryland at the Convention.

Maryland ratified the on April 28, 1788, the seventh state to do so. It also ceded territory and advanced money for public buildings to help form the (1791). When harassment on the and other factors brought on the, s, sailing as privateers, dealt more than equal punishment to British ships. In 1814 the British troops who had burned the principal government buildings in Washington, D.C., were repulsed in their attempts to inflict similar punishment on Baltimore.

, a Georgetown lawyer and an eyewitness to the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British in Baltimore’s harbour, wrote the four eight-line stanzas that, set to existing music, became the, “,” in 1931. With peace, Maryland and the rest of the concentrated on making improvements in transport and communication.

The, or National Road, the first road to cross the, was completed to, Virginia (later West Virginia), in 1818. In 1828 workers began construction on the first U.S. passenger railroad, the, and on the, from Washington to Cumberland. The following year, the, long under construction across the northern part of the, was completed.

It connected the to Chesapeake Bay. The country’s first intercity telegraph line was constructed between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore in 1843–44. In 1845 the U.S. Naval Academy was founded on the in Annapolis. The Civil War, however, arrested Maryland’s progress.

Landed gentry and residents of the Eastern Shore supported the secessionist South, while workingmen and western Marylanders stood up for the Union; a third faction favoured neutrality. In 1861 federal troops occupied Baltimore and Annapolis, and was imposed in this border state. Confederate armies mounted three major invasions of Maryland territory in successive summers; they were checked at, they met full defeat at, Pennsylvania, and their threat to Washington, D.C., was dissipated in 1864.

The constitution of 1864 abolished slavery and removed power from the rural, The more-cautious constitution of 1867 remains in force. : Maryland – The colony

What was the geography and climate of the Maryland Colony?

Climate – Maryland has highly variable regional climates for a state of its size, dependent on many variables, such as proximity to water, elevation, and protection from northern weather due to downslope winds. The eastern half of Maryland lies on the Atlantic Coastal Plain, with very flat topography and very sandy or muddy soil. Sunset over a marsh at Cardinal Cove, on the Patuxent River. Beyond this region, the Piedmont lies in the transition between the humid subtropical climate zone and the humid continental climate zone (Köppen Dfa ), with hot, humid summers and moderately cold winters where significant snowfall and significant subfreezing temperatures are an annual occurrence.

• This region includes Frederick, Hagerstown, Westminster, Gaithersburg and northern and western greater Baltimore.
• Extreme western Maryland, in the higher elevations of Allegany and Garrett Counties lies completely in the Humid continental climate (Köppen Dfa ) due to elevation (more typical of inland New England and the Midwestern United States ) with milder summers and cold, snowy winters.

Some parts of extreme western Maryland are in the cool summer humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb) zone, with summer average temperatures below 71°F. Maryland’s annual rainfall ranges from 40-45 inches (1000-1150 mm) in virtually every part of the state, meaning nearly every part of Maryland receives about 3.5-4.5 inches (95-110 mm) per month of precipitation.

Snowfall varies from 9 inches (23 cm) in the coastal areas to over 100 inches (250 cm) annually in the western mountains of the state. Because of its location near the Atlantic Coast, Maryland is somewhat vulnerable to hurricanes, although the Delmarva Peninsula, and the outer banks of North Carolina to the south provide a large buffer, so a strike from a major hurricane (category 3 or above) is not very likely.

Maryland gets the remnants of tropical systems that have already come ashore bringing heavy rainfall. The state averages around 30-40 days of thunderstorms and around 6 tornadoes annually. The 2003 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map for the state of Maryland Maryland’s plant life is abundant and healthy. High annual precipitation helps to support many types of plants, including seagrass and various reeds at the smaller end of the spectrum to the former giant Wye Oak which fell in June 2002, a large variant of White oak, the state tree that can grow in excess of 70 feet (20 m) tall.

Maryland also possesses an abundance of pines and maples among its native trees. Many introduced species are cultivated in the state like the Crape Myrtle, Italian Cypress, and live oak in the warmer parts of the state, and even hardy palm trees in the warmer central and eastern parts of the state. USDA plant hardiness zones in the state range from Zone 5 in the extreme western part of the state to 6 and 7 in the central part, and Zone 8 around the southern part of the coast, the bay area, and most of metropolitan Baltimore.

The state harbors a great number of deer, particularly in the woody and mountainous west of the state; overpopulation can become an occasional problem. The Chesapeake Bay provides the state with a huge cash crop of blue crabs, and the southern and eastern portion of Maryland is warm enough to support a tobacco cash crop.

Why was the Maryland Colony settled?

The Maryland Colony was established between the years 1634 and 1775. Founded as a haven for English Catholics to worship and conduct business without fear of persecution, many came for religious freedom and economic opportunity.

What was the land like in Maryland Colony?

CSMH History / Maryland Geography Maryland Geography Maryland is a Southern Colony. The land is a good mixture between mountains, hills and flat low area. Maryland is located near the Chesapeake Bay and borders Virgina, Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virgina.

• The geography of Maryland was very important to its survival.
• Rivers flowed into the Chesapeake Region from the Eastern and Western shores of the colony.
• In this area farmers grew tobacco.
• Wheat and corn were grown in the Piedmont region.
• Maryland is hot in the summer which made for good crops.
• The mountain regions were settled by farmers and immigrants looking for good land.

Forts were also constructed in the mountain region to protect Maryland from Native American attacks. Maryland’s terrain is comprised of mountains, plains, plateaus and rivers. The geography of Maryland was important to the way the people lived their life.

• Without the good low fertile farm land everyone in the colony would go hungry.
• They would have to depend solely on imported goods from other colonies and Europe.
• The Chesapeake Bay was also a major benefit to the people.
• The bay provided a constant water source for crops, animals and people.
• If the bay wasn’t there everybody and all the wildlife would suffer.

The proximity of the bay also helped support Maryland’s shipping industries and of course it was the main source of fish and crabs for the fishing industry. Maryland’s natural features affected everything. It’s trees and iron resources resulted in thriving lumber and iron mining businesses.

This a map of the Colony of Maryland Other Pages:

: CSMH History / Maryland Geography

What was it like in the Maryland Colony?

Thirteen Colonies – A Southern Colony The Province of Maryland was an English colony in North America that was founded in 1632. It began as a proprietary colony of Lord Baltimore, who wanted to create a haven for English Catholics in the New World, and to demonstrate that Catholics and Protestants could live together harmoniously.

Although Maryland was an early pioneer of religious tolerance in the British colonies, religious strife between Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers was common in the early years. A Royal Charter Charles I of England granted a charter for about twelve million acres to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore on June 20, 1632.

The charter had originally been granted to Calvert’s father, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, but he died before it could be executed, so it was granted to his son. Cecil had converted to Catholicism, which was a severe stigma for a nobleman in 17th century England.

Catholics were considered enemies of the crown and traitors to their country. The Lords Baltimore were the only Catholics in the history of the British Empire to have or obtain a proprietary colony—a type of settlement in which favorites of the British Crown were awarded huge tracts of land in the New World to supervise and develop.

Most of the American Colonies were financed and settled by joint stock companies, in which investors owned shares. The charter created a state ruled by Lord Baltimore, who owned all of the land granted in the charter, and had absolute authority over it.

Settlers were required to swear allegiance to him rather than to the King of England. The charter also created an aristocracy—Lords of the Manor, as they were called—who bought 6,000 acres from Baltimore and held greater legal and social privileges than the common settlers. Early settlement The Calvert family recruited Catholic aristocrats and Protestant settlers for Maryland, luring them with generous land grants and a policy of religious toleration.

Of the 200 initial settlers who traveled to Maryland, the majority were Protestant. In fact, Protestants remained in the majority throughout the history of colonial Maryland. The ships Ark and the Dove landed at St. Clement’s Island on March 25, 1634. The new settlers were led by Lord Baltimore’s younger brother Leonard Calvert, whom Baltimore had delegated to serve as governor of the new colony.

• The 150 or so surviving immigrants purchased land from the local Native Americans.
• One of the highlights of the early days of Maryland was the Act Concerning Religion, which guaranteed people in Maryland the freedom to practice whatever religion they wanted.
• This law attracted members of many different faiths, including Quakers, Presbyterians, Puritans, and Episcopalians Maryland was a southern colony.

Despite early competition with the colony of Virginia, the Province of Maryland developed along very similar lines as Virginia. Its early settlements clustered around the rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay. Native Americans The Yaocomico were a Native American tribe who lived along the north bank of the Potomac River near its confluence with the Chesapeake Bay.

• The first settlers of the Maryland Colony purchased the land for their settlement at St.
• Mary’s City from the Yaocomico, who had a settlement there.
• European settler accounts claim that the Yaocomico were content to sell the land to the Maryland colonists because they were being threatened by tribes to the north.

The Maryland settlers continued to maintain good relations with the Yaocomico, going so far as to write language protecting them into treaties with other neighboring tribes. However, the Yaocomico disappeared by the 1670s or 1680s, possibly as a result of the European diseases that had begun wreaking havoc on native populations.

Maryland and the English Civil War In 1654, after the Third English Civil War, Protestant Parliament forces assumed control of Maryland, and Governor William Stone went into exile in Virginia. Stone returned the following spring at the head of a Catholic force and marched on Annapolis. In what is known as the Battle of the Severn, on March 25, 1655, Stone was defeated, taken prisoner, and replaced him as Governor.

Puritan rebels briefly seized control of the Province by the Protestant King of England in 1688, but it was restored to the family when Charles Calvert, the 5th Baron Baltimore, swore publicly that he was a Protestant. The Plantation Economy Like its larger neighbor, the Colony of Virginia, Maryland developed into a plantation colony.

• In the 17th century, most Marylanders lived in poor conditions on small family farms.
• They raised a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, and livestock, but the cash crop was tobacco, and it soon dominated the economy.
• Tobacco was sometimes used as money.
• The colonial legislature passed a law requiring tobacco planters to raise a certain amount of corn as well, in order to ensure that the colonists had enough to eat.

Slavery in Maryland Maryland’s economy quickly became centered around the cultivation of tobacco for sale in Europe. The need for cheap labor led to the rapid expansion of indentured servitude and, later, forcible immigration and enslavement of Africans.

Barbados was the first British possession to enact restrictive legislation governing slaves in 1644, and other colonial settlements quickly adopted similar rules modeled on it. With the success of tobacco planting, African Slavery was legalized in Maryland in 1664, becoming the foundation of the Southern farming economy.

In the 1690’s, slave prices dropped, and the owning of slaves became more common. By 1755, about 40% of Maryland’s population was African. Maryland planters also made extensive use of indentured servants and convict labor. An extensive system of rivers facilitated the movement of produce from inland plantations to the Atlantic coast for export.

Baltimore was the second-most important port in the eighteenth-century South, after Charleston, South Carolina. King Charles II and his brother James disregarded the grant their father had made to Lord Baltimore, and conveyed to William Penn a large portion of his territory, which became Delaware. James, after he became king, was about to deprive Baltimore of his charter altogether when he was driven from the British throne.

In 1691, Maryland became a royal province, but Lord Baltimore was still permitted to receive revenues in from the colony. In 1692, the first royal governor arrived. But in 1716, the heir of Lord Baltimore was reestablished in his rights, and the proprietary form of government was restored; Colonial Maryland was larger than the present-day state of Maryland.

1. The Province lost some of its original territory to Pennsylvania in the 1760s, when the Mason-Dixon Line was drawn to resolve a boundary dispute between the two colonies.
2. Maryland also ceded some territory to create the new District of Columbia after the American Revolution.
3. Maryland and the American Revolution In the later colonial period, the southeastern part of the Province continued to grow tobacco, but as the revolution approached, northern and central Maryland increasingly became centers of wheat production.

This helped drive the expansion of interior farming towns like Frederick and the major port city of Baltimore. The Province was an active participant in the events leading up to the American Revolution, and hosted its own tea party similar to that in Boston.

Was the Maryland Colony successful?

Maryland Colony Facts: Religious Conflict – The Maryland Colony was begun with the idea that Catholics and Protestants could co-exist with each other. While they had success in that endeavor, there was still conflict. Dissension among Anglicans, Puritans, Roman Catholics, and Quakers was common and at one point the Puritans seized control of the colony.

By 1649 Maryland passed the Maryland Toleration Act which mandated religious tolerance. This was the first law passed that required religious tolerance in the New World. Over time Protestants outnumbered Catholics in the region and the Great Awakening increased that number. By the time of the American Revolutionary War, Maryland was almost exclusively Protestant.

However, they did supply the only Catholic delegate to the Continental Congress, Charles Carroll of Carrollton,

What did the Maryland Colony produce?

Maryland ‘s colonial economic history is marked by a heavy reliance on the tobacco crop. Though it would remain a slave state until the end of the Civil War, it was not until the 1700s that labor began to drive agricultural production in the colony. The colonial-era would also see Maryland begin early industrialization and urbanization, experiment with different monetary systems, and make efforts to diversify its economy.

Landing initially on St. Clement’s Island on March 25, 1634, Maryland’s first settlers would establish their colony around St. Mary’s City, Where they successfully grew enough food to prevent starvation and to export back to Britain. In these early days, the majority of settlers were indentured servants,

Though Lord Baltimore initially hoped to establish a “landholding aristocracy” through the provision of affordable land, the colony’s land system promoted the creation of a large number of small farms. Many were owned by former indentured servants. By the late 1600s, more than two-thirds of farmers in the colony held estates worth less than £100.

Was Maryland in the middle or Southern colonies?

Map of DeSoto’s 1539-43 exploration through the Southeast Virginia was the first successful southern colony. While Puritan zeal was fueling New England’s mercantile development, and Penn’s Quaker experiment was turning the middle colonies into America’s bread basket, the South was turning to cash crops.

• Geography and motive rendered the development of these colonies distinct from those that lay to the North.
• Immediately to Virginia’s north was Maryland,
• Begun as a Catholic experiment, the colony’s economy would soon come to mirror that of Virginia, as tobacco became the most important crop.
• To the south lay the Carolinas, created after the English Civil War had been concluded.

In the Deep South was Georgia, the last of the original thirteen colonies. Challenges from Spain and France led the king to desire a buffer zone between the cash crops of the Carolinas and foreign enemies. Georgia, a colony of debtors, would fulfill that need. The Southern colonies included Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. English American Southerners would not enjoy the generally good health of their New England counterparts. Outbreaks of malaria and yellow fever kept life expectancies lower. The economy of growing cash crops would require a labor force that would be unknown north of Maryland. Slaves and indentured servants, although present in the North, were much more important to the South. They were the backbone of the Southern economy.

What country does Maryland belong to?

Maryland, one of the 50 US states, is located in the Mid-Atlantic region in the northeast of the United States.

What was Maryland Colony Geography?

CSMH History / Maryland Geography Maryland Geography Maryland is a Southern Colony. The land is a good mixture between mountains, hills and flat low area. Maryland is located near the Chesapeake Bay and borders Virgina, Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virgina.

• The geography of Maryland was very important to its survival.
• Rivers flowed into the Chesapeake Region from the Eastern and Western shores of the colony.
• In this area farmers grew tobacco.
• Wheat and corn were grown in the Piedmont region.
• Maryland is hot in the summer which made for good crops.
• The mountain regions were settled by farmers and immigrants looking for good land.

Forts were also constructed in the mountain region to protect Maryland from Native American attacks. Maryland’s terrain is comprised of mountains, plains, plateaus and rivers. The geography of Maryland was important to the way the people lived their life.

Without the good low fertile farm land everyone in the colony would go hungry. They would have to depend solely on imported goods from other colonies and Europe. The Chesapeake Bay was also a major benefit to the people. The bay provided a constant water source for crops, animals and people. If the bay wasn’t there everybody and all the wildlife would suffer.

The proximity of the bay also helped support Maryland’s shipping industries and of course it was the main source of fish and crabs for the fishing industry. Maryland’s natural features affected everything. It’s trees and iron resources resulted in thriving lumber and iron mining businesses.

This a map of the Colony of Maryland Other Pages:

: CSMH History / Maryland Geography