Saint Michaels
Chestertown Cambridge Salisbury and Oxford
The Eastern Shore of Maryland
is comprised of nine counties with a population of nearly 450 thousand. The
term Eastern Shore distinguishes a
territorial part of the State from the land west of Chesapeake Bay.
The
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was a shallow canal with locks after
its construction in 1829; it was deepened in the early 20th century
to sea level. The north-south section of the Mason-Dixon Line forms the border
between Maryland and Delaware. The border was originally marked every mile by a
stone, and every five miles by a crownstone.
It was surveyed as a compromise solution to a century-long wrangle between the
Penn and Calvert families. Commercial east-west ties between Delaware and
Maryland towns were culturally significant in Colonial and Early American
periods despite the border line. Trade with Philadelphia was conducted by
overland routes to Delaware towns like Smyrna and Odessa; these cultural connections
continue to this day.
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Saint Michaels derives its
name from the Episcopal Parish established in 1677 which attracted settlers
that grew tobacco and engaged in shipbuilding. The town's tourist industry has
roots in the 19th century with steamboats from Baltimore and summer
guest cottages opening for weeklong rentals. The opening of the maritime museum
in 1965, waterfront activities and historic bay vessels added further impetus
to travel and vacations to the town.
Chestertown was founded in 1706 and achieved prominence
as one of six Royal Ports of Entry becoming
Maryland’s second port after Annapolis and second to the State Capital in the
number of 18th century mansions owned by a flourishing merchant
class along the Chester River waterfront. In May 1774, five months after
the British closed the port of Boston after the Boston Tea Party, the citizens
of Chestertown wrote a set of resolves that prohibited the buying, selling, or
drinking of tea. Based on these resolves, a popular legend has it that the citizens
held their own tea party on the Chester River, in an act of colonial defiance.
The
Chestertown Tea Party Festival celebrates Chestertown's colonial
heritage with a weekend of events with colonial music and dance, fife and drum
performances, puppet shows, colonial crafts demonstrations and sales, military
drills, and a walking tour of the historic district. In the afternoon,
re-enactors board the schooner Sultana and tea is thrown into the
Chester River.
Cambridge was settled by English colonists in 1684 who developed
farming on the Eastern Shore. The largest plantations were devoted first to
tobacco, and then mixed farming. The town was a trading center and later a stop
on the Underground Railroad, an extensive network of safe houses for slaves
escaping to the north. Cambridge developed food processing industries in the
late 19th century, canning oysters, tomatoes and sweet
potatoes. Main Street is a comprehensive
downtown revitalization process created by the Maryland Department of Housing
and Community Development with a focus on heritage tourism.
Salisbury is
the largest town on the Eastern Shore and the commercial hub of the Delmarva Peninsula. The town’s
oldest neighborhoods have Federal, Georgian, and Victorian architecture.
Oxford traces its start from 1666 when 30 acres were laid out as a
town called Oxford by William Stephens, Jr. enjoying prominence as an
international shipping center surrounded by wealthy tobacco plantations. Early
inhabitants included Robert Morris, Sr., who greatly influenced the town's
growth; his son, Robert Morris, Jr., known as the financier of the Revolution;
Jeremiah Banning, sea captain, war hero, and statesman; The Reverend Thomas
Bacon, Anglican clergyman who wrote the first compilation of the laws of
Maryland. Oxford has the oldest privately operated ferry service still in
continuous use in the United States originally established in 1683.
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