Contents ▼▲
Front Matter Our Country Long Ago The Barbarous Indians The Mounds Where the Northmen Went The Northmen in America Queer Ideas Prince Henry the Navigator Youth of Columbus Columbus and the Queen "Land! Land!" Columbus and the Savages Home Again Columbus Ill-treated Death of Columbus How America Got its Name The Fountain of Youth "The Father of Waters" The French in Canada French and Spanish Quarrels The Sky City Around the World Nothing but Smoke Smith's Adventures The Jamestown Men Smith Wounded Pocahontas Visits England Hudson and the Indians The Mayflower Plymouth Rock The First Thanksgiving Snake Skin and Bullets The Beginning of Boston Stories of Two Ministers Williams and the Indians The Quakers The King-Killers King Phillip's War The Beginning of New York Penn and the Indians The Catholics in Maryland The Old Dominion Bacon's Rebellion A Journey Inland The Carolina Pirates Charter Oak Salem Witches Down the Mississippi La Salle's Adventures Indians on the Warpath Two Wars with the French Washington's Boyhood Washington's Journey Washington's First Battle Stories of Franklin Braddock's Defeat Wolfe at Quebec England and her Colonies The Stamp Tax The Anger of the Colonies The Boston Tea Party The Minutemen The Battle of Lexington Bunker Hill The Boston Boys The British leave Boston Declaration of Independence A Lady's Way of Helping Christmas Eve The Fight at Bennington Burgoyne's Surrender Winter at Valley Forge The Quaker Woman Putnam's Adventures Indian Cruelty Boone in Kentucky Famous Sea Fights The "Swamp Fox" The Poor Soldiers The Spy A Traitor's Death Two Unselfish Women Surrender of Cornwallis British Flag hauled down Washington's Farewell

Story of the Thirteen Colonies - Helene Guerber




The Catholics in Maryland

When Henry VIII. made a change in the national church, many Catholics became discontented, and longed to leave England and settle elsewhere. One of these, Lord Baltimore, then decided to make a home for Catholics in the New World. As the climate of Newfoundland, where he tried to plant his first colony, proved too cold, he came to Virginia, in 1629. But the Virginians, being Church of England people, refused to receive any Catholics in their midst.

Thus driven away from Virginia, Lord Baltimore crossed to the opposite side of the Potomac. He asked for a grant of land here, which was given, in 1634, to his son. He promised to pay the king two Indian arrows every year, with one fifth of all the gold and silver he found. This tract was called Maryland, in honor of the Catholic, Queen Henrietta Maria, and prosperous settlements were made at St. Marys and at Annapolis. As he had promised that no one should be persecuted for religion, and that all except Jews could vote, people of every faith soon came thither, and Maryland was rapidly settled.

This colony, however, had its troubles, too. There was first a quarrel with Virginia, and then several Indian wars; and when William became King of England, he took the government away from its Catholic proprietor. But later on, Baltimore's heirs, having turned Protestant, recovered their rights, and were left in control of the whole province until the time of the Revolution. Maryland's chief city, Baltimore, was founded about 1729. It was named in honor of the Catholic founder of the colony, and it still contains thousands of faithful Roman Catholics.

Owing to mistakes made in drawing up the different grants; the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland became a cause for disputes which lasted about fifty years. Several times surveyors were sent out from England to settle the quarrel, and the line they finally drew is generally known as the Mason and Dixon line. At the end of every mile, these surveyors set up a stone post, bearing on either side the initial of the colony it faced; and every five miles, a larger pillar, with the arms of both families, the Penns and the Baltimores.

While all the changes we have been describing were thus taking place in the rest of the New World, Virginia had not been standing still. Indeed, it had prospered so greatly that it had become the most important of all the colonies. But its progress was interrupted several times. For instance, three years after the founding of the House of Burgesses, a quarrel between an Indian and a settler ended in a murder, which brought about an Indian war.

Powhatan, who had vowed that the sky should fall before the Indians broke peace with the Virginians, was now dead. The savages, hating to see their former hunting and fishing grounds occupied by the planters, now attacked the scattered settlements, and murdered men, women, and children. Even Jamestown itself would have been surprised, and all the colonists slain, had not a friendly Indian given the people timely warning.

Terrified by this Indian outbreak, the colonists no longer dared occupy their plantations, and either crowded into a few of the towns or went back to England. In a short time the colony thus found itself reduced by half, although the Indians were beaten in the war. Some years later, seeing that the Indians were rising again, and that nothing but severe measures could save the settlement, another war was begun, and all the hostile Indians were either driven away or slain.

When King James I. heard that the colony was failing, he fancied that the trouble arose from poor laws and bad government; so he took away the Virginia charter, and made the colony a royal province, in 1624. But although he boasted that he would soon make new and better laws for Virginia, he never did so. His son and successor, Charles, after whom one of the capes at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay had been named by the first settlers, also found too much to do at home to trouble himself about the Virginians, who were sorely tried by tyrannical governors.

Still, although they lived on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the colonists loudly insisted that they had the rights of free-born Englishmen. They therefore said that the governors the king sent over could not tax them or make new laws, except through the House of Burgesses. But as the governors would not always agree to this, quarrels arose, which gradually became more and more bitter.