Interpreters help visitors bring Historic St. Mary's City back to life

By Lara Lutz

Godiah Spray, a 17th century plantation master in St. Mary's City, MD, was having a bit of trouble with his 21st-century guests.

They needed help with their bows and curtseys.

They called him a "farmer," instead of a "planter."

And they seemed to have very little understanding of what it would take to survive in this new settlement along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

Spray was happy to help. He offered some advice: A man should include a flourish with his bow. A lady should lower her eyes when she curtsies.

"I'm a planter, not a farmer," he explained. "A planter owns his land. A farmer merely rents it."

But learning to live, let alone thrive, in St. Mary's City would take time. Success would require skills and luck-and large crops of tobacco.

Spray, portrayed by Aaron Meisinger, is a fictional settler at Historic St. Mary's City, a member of the National Park Service's Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network, a system of natural, historical and cultural sites that highlight Chesapeake region heritage.

St. Mary's City was settled in March of 1634 along the St. Mary's River, in what is now southern Maryland. Approximately 140 English colonists under the leadership of Leonard Calvert arrived at the site after they and their supplies crossed the Atlantic on the Ark and the Dove.

Theirs was the first city in Maryland and the first successful colony in North America owned by an individual, instead of a company. It was also the first to avoid starvation. Maryland colonists produced enough crops within their first six months to export surplus corn to New England.

"The Calverts were very much aware of what was going on in other colonies," said communications director Susan Wilkinson. "Many of the people who came here were recruited as indentured servants, people brought for their ability to work and carve a settlement out of the wilderness."

Calvert planned to arrive in the spring, at the start of the planting season, and brought large provisions of food and seed. He required each colonist to provide clothing for one year, as well frying pans, muskets, nails, shovels and saws.

They camped on a Potomac River island while searching for a place to settle. They soon learned about a riverfront village that the Yaocomaco natives planned to abandon. The settlers gained both the site and the village-including cleared land, shelter, and fields sown with corn.

Some of the Yaocomaco even stayed behind to help with the harvest and teach the colonists to catch oysters and hunt game.

But the natives never imagined how one local crop would soon define the lives of these newcomers.

Natives used tobacco mostly for ceremonial purposes, but Europeans believed it was good for everything from pleasure to relieving womanly pains and constipation.

As a result, everyone and everything at St. Mary's City was focused on tobacco. Tobacco profits, even more than religious freedom, drew people to its shores.

Early buildings were small and simple because settlers invested their energy in little beyond tobacco fields. Cows and pigs were the preferred livestock because they foraged for food and didn't require crops for sustenance. In fact, colonists were so reluctant to plant anything but tobacco that leaders passed a law to protect the colony's food supply.

Those who didn't grow tobacco made their living in trades that supported it. Coopers crafted large barrels for shipping tobacco across the Atlantic. Taverns and dock hands served the waterfront traffic. All other needs were met through trade, with tobacco as currency.

Planters' homes improved over time, but remained simple. Tara-style mansions didn't exist.

"This was the frontier of the world," Meisinger said. "Running a plantation didn't mean you were rich, owned slaves, or had big white columns in front of your house."

In 1695, the colony's capital moved to Annapolis and St. Mary's City began to collapse.

But as Maryland's first city and one of the earliest permanent English settlements, St. Mary's is steeped in so many "firsts" that it ranks among the most historic sites in the United States.

Religious tolerance at St. Mary's resulted in the first Catholic chapel built in English America. Matthias de Sousa, a man of African descent, participated in the assembly and cast the first black vote in America there in 1642.

Margaret Brent, a St. Mary's business woman, was the first woman in America to request a vote. Her request was refused.

Today's visitors walk colonial paths amid house frames that give a ghostly presence to Maryland's first citizens, while skilled interpreters like Meisinger bring select areas to life. The state house, reconstructed in 1934, is a centerpiece of the grounds, and a brick chapel is rising on the site of the original sanctuary. The Maryland Dove, glorious at the dock and even more so under sail, introduces visitors to life on board a recreated colonial trading ship.

The visitor center displays artifacts that include earrings, body armor, thimbles, bells, pottery, glassware, Catholic religious medals, and a lead coffin unearthed from the chapel floor.

For Maryland's first colonists, St. Mary's City was a place of hard work but boundless opportunity. Planters like Spray saw few limits to the bounty before them. Tobacco would deplete the soil in a field in as little as three to five years, but he wasn't worried.

"It's not a concern," Spray said with a shrug. "The land here goes on and on. We'll never run out."

"It's not a concern," Spray said with a shrug. "The land here goes on and on. We'll never run out."