As we reflect on this 376th anniversary celebration of the landing
on St. Clements Island of those first emigrants to the new colony of
Maryland, you might wonder if there is anything new to be said about
the lives, the courage, the determination of that first generation,
in sum 'The Spirit of 1634.' Those first years have been carefully
studied by genealogists, historians, archaeologists and
anthropologists. They have been explored and celebrated in hundreds
of books and articles. Yet there is always something new to learn,
and even retracing the steps of what is known remains an exciting and
inspiring adventure.
What is most engaging is the merger of several disciplines
as we attempt to get to know and understand what that first generation
did and why. Art, a closer look at the surviving documentary evidence, and the analysis of the physical remains in the ground, coupled with a careful study of the word portraits of one of the best known chroniclers of those
first years, Father Andrew White, lead in new directions and exciting new finds.
For example, until a short while ago, most scholars believed that we could never know what the first
Governor, Leonard Calvert, looked like, although we have long known
that he had returned to England long enough to have his portrait
painted. Recently we have had two paintings brought to our attention, both of
which are now in the State's collection. The first now hangs in the
State House. The second we owe to,
Mr. Truman Siemans, whose relative had made a copy early in the 20th
century. He found the original on EBAY and bought it for the State's
collection. Together they provide a face for Leonard Calvert that we
once thought we would never see.
Siemans' portrait of Leonard Calvert, gift to the Friends of the Maryland State Archives
Another new avenue of exploration is the possible architect of the
Chapel whose work has been largely overlooked until recently when I
began to catalog my books and found a treatise of his, that I
had purchased at secondhand bookstore in New England for next to nothing.
It is written by Guillielmi Hesi, a recognized Jesuit chapel architect, and was published in 1636 as the
Emblemata Sacra. It is devoted to poems and imagery that would have
been familiar to that first generation. We have it available as
images on line on the Maryland State Archives web site and when the
Chapel is ready for exhibits, the Friends of the Maryland State
Archives will be pleased to lend the original for display.
It is not far fetched to make the connection between Father William Hesius and the building of the Chapel at St. Mary's City. While no plans have survived, the paper they probably were drawn on has. The Jesuits brought paper with them that was made in their mllls near where Father Hesius lived and designed the church of St. Michel Leuven, Belgium, built ca. 1650. A number of examples of Jesuit paper with the watermark of a cross, a crown, IHS,and the word MARINAUD, are to be found throughout the Maryland records of the late 1660s and early 1670s when the Chapel was built, upon which are written the inventories of the estates of the Spirit of 1634 generation.
A cherub contemplating his shadow from Emblemata (1636)
For the Chapel walls, there is a recently identified candidate
for the
alter, based upon the Peter Paul Rubens painting of the
crucifixion that we now know George Calvert had hanging in his private
chapel before it was given to Queen Henrietta Maria to hang over the
alter in hers. While the original was lost during the English Civil
Wars there is a lovely engraving of it that could be used for a
suitable reproduction.
In these times of economic turmoil and uncertainty, the Spirit of 1634
well deserves a holiday of its own, yet Maryland Day, with a few
exceptions like today, has been slipping from public view. Clearly Maryland Day is worth celebrating, not only for
what we know about the Spirit of 1634, but also about the adventure
ahead in learning more. Yet, with the recent emphasis on long weekends
and rolling several
holidays into one, most people seem not to be aware that there is an
official State Holiday called Maryland Day. The Baltimore Sun, while
publicizing this event in its March 26th edition, following Sue
Wilkinson's unflagging efforts to get their attention, failed
to mention the day at all on the 25th itself. Indeed,
until we launched a new website devoted to reminding us of the
meaning of Maryland Day, at http://marylandday.net, you could only
find scattered references to Maryland Day on the web. Two of
the most popular returns from Google and Bing, either
missed the day altogether, or were celebrating something else.
There
is much to remember
and much more to learn from the lives of those who stepped ashore on
March 25, 1634, having come nearly 6,000 miles over rough seas to
start a new life.
Their journey began on St. Cecilia's Day, November 22, 1633.
Driven out by wars and religious intolerance, and drawn by the
prospects of prosperity in a new land of abundance, approximately 150
brave souls set forth from Cowes on the Isle of Wight. They
disembarked at an island they named St. Clements on March 25, 1634,
a day that was sacred to all who landed that day, whether Catholic or
Protestant, as the feast of the annunciation. It also signaled the
end of the old year and the beginning of the new on a calendar, that
would not be changed to ours for another 118 years.
The 150 or so
who launched the new colony of Maryland had little
but hard work ahead of them with no assurance that they would
succeed. They came with cultural baggage of closely held and
antagonistic religious views, to be governed by a Charter that
carried a hint of representative government, the details of which
were read to them for the first time that day. They came with
specific instructions on what to do and how to behave which in large
measure they would ignore in favor of new ways of living which
included adapting to and incorporating the knowledge and skills of
the natives they found already living here. Indeed when commanded to
build an English town from which they were to go out to work their
fields, they instead inhabited an abandoned Indian village, and soon
sought scattered farms and plantations along the manifold creeks and
rivers that penetrated the interior. It proved to be a hard life in
which large numbers would not survive, leaving few heirs to
perpetuate their memory.
Still those that did survive labored
on,
joined by succeeding waves of immigrants until there was a large
enough population in which native born would out number newcomers.
Fortunately there was a well-educated priest among them who has
left more than one version of his account of this migration of
English men and women to Maryland. Father Andrew White would go on
to translate the bible and familiar prayers into Piscataway, and
probably wrote the draft of the 1649 Act Concerning Religion which we
refer to today as the act of toleration.
All
but a fragment of his
translations are lost, but the concept of religious toleration which
he wove into an Elizabethan Statute on Blasphemy pointed the way to
the much broader concept of the separation of church and state, and
religious freedom on which our civil government is based.
Father White writes eloquently of the voyage and the landing. His
Briefe Relation contains less of his religious piety than later
versions, but all present a vivid word picture of the Spirit of 1634.
A sample of excerpts from the most recent translation from the
latin of what he sent to Rome is typical of his style:
“On the 22nd of November, 1633, St. Cecilia's day, with a
southeast wind softly blowing, we sailed from Cowes, which is a port
on the Isle of Wight. ….When the wind was failing us, we cast
anchor opposite Yarmouth Castle, which is situated toward the
northwest of the same island. Here we were received with public
cannon salutes; and yet fear was not absent. For the sailors were
muttering among themselves that they were expecting a messenger and a
letter form London, and for that reason they also seemed to be
devising delays. But God destroyed their evil plans. Indeed that
very night , when a favorable wind was blowing … our pinnace
[the Dove] … hurried out to sea. And so., lest we might lose
sight of our pinnace, we decided to follow. In this way the plans
that the sailor considered against us were foiled. This happened on
the 23rd of November, the feast of St. Clement, who obtained the
crown of martyrdom when he was tied to an anchor and plunged into the
sea ….”
The voyage to the carribean islands was uneventful and the only
lives lost were to partying too heavily on Christmas.
“Wine was consumed in order that this day might be better
celebrated,” Father White wrote, “and those who enjoyed
it too intemperately were seized by fever the following day; they
were thirty in number, and from those about 12 died not very much
later, including two Catholics...”
This is our only solid evidence that the majority on board may
have been protestant, assuming that drinking was indiscriminate as
to religion. 1/6th of those aboard by this calculation would have
been Roman Catholic, and helps to explain why Lord Baltimore's
instructions to his brother Leonard who led the expedition so
explicitly required all the passengers not to discuss or debate
matters of religion.
When they at least reached the Potomac River they found the
native
population up in arms:
“At the mouth of the river itself we perceived armed
natives. That night fires were burning in the entire region, and
since such a big ship had never been seen by them, messengers sent
from this side and from that were reporting that a canoe similar to
an island had come near, and that it held as many men as there are
trees in the woods. We, however continued to the Heron Islands, so
called from the unheard of throngs of this kind of bird. The first
one in our way we named after St. Clement; the second after St.
Catherine, the third after St. Cecilia. We first left the ship at
St. Clement's Island, to which no access lay open except through a
shallow because of the sloping shore. Here the maids, who had left the
ship to wash the laundry, almost drowned, when the skiff turned over,
and a great part of my linen clothes were lost, no small loss in
these parts.
This island abounds in cedar, sassafras, herbs and flowers to make
all kinds of salads, also in a wild nut tree which bears a very hard
nut, with a thick shell and a small but wonderfully tasty kernel.
However, since it is only four hundred acres wide, it did not seem
spacious enough as a location for the new settlement.”
Instead, Governor Leonard Calvert, with the assistance of
Captain
Henry Fleet from Virginia who was fluent in the language of the
natives, purchased
“such a charming place for a settlement that Europe can
hardly afford a better one. Thus, when we had advanced from St.
Clement's about nine leagues, we sailed into the mouth of a river
...[that] runs forward from south to north about twenty miles before
it is absorbed by the salt water from the sea, not unlike the Thames.
In its mouth one can see two bays, able to hold 300 ships of huge
size. One bay we dedicated to St. George, the other one, more inward
to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. ...We went up from coast inland on
the right side, and about a thousand paces removed from the shore, we
gave the name of St. Mary to the designated city. ...in order to
prevent any pretext for injury or occasion for enmity, we bought
thirty miles of that land from the chieftain in exchange for hatchets,
axes, hoes, and some amount of cloth. ...”
“Is not this miraculous, that a nation a few daies before in
generall armes against us and our enterprise should like lambes yeeld
themselves, glad of our company, giving us houses, land, and liveings
for a trifle...”
The great adventure had begun with housing and a marketable crop
already in
place. In fact there was such an abundance of corn that the surplus
would be sent to market in Massachusetts, where Marylanders would
initiate a reputation for exuberant behavior and found themselves
banned from Boston. John Winthrop recorded the encounter in his
journal:
“ The Dove, a pinnace of about fifty tons, came from
Maryland upon Patomack river, with corn to exchange for fish and
other commodities. ...some of our people being aboard the bark of
Maryland, the sailors did revile them, calling them holy brethren, …
and with all did curse and swear most horribly, and use threatening
speeches against us. ...The next day (the governor not being well) we
examined the witnesses, and found them fall[ing] short of the matter of
threatening, and not to agree about the reviling speeches, and,
beside, not able to design certainly the men that had so offended.
Whereupon .. a letter [was] written to the master, that, in regard
such disorders were committed aboard his ship, it was his duty to
inquire out the offenders and punish them; and withal to desire him
to bring no more such disordered persons among us.”
For the infant colony of Maryland there would be many years of
struggle and near defeat ahead. Many good works have been written
about those early years by a distinguished group of scholars
including Lois Carr, Henry Miller, Julie King, Silas Hurry, and Tim
Riordan, to
mention a few. They have documented the determination in the face of
uncertainty and economic upheaval that is so characteristic of that
Spirit of 1634.
Indeed it has been in the blending of the
disciplines of historical research, art, archaeology, and forensic
anthropology, that we are continuing to learn more about what the
reality of life was like
for those who struggled to make a home for themselves and their hoped
for posterity in Maryland.
If you have not yet experienced it, be sure to visit the Written
in Bone exhibit at the Smithsonian in which the
findings in Maryland
play such a large part. Under the leadership of Doug Owsley, that
exhibit takes us on a journey into the lives and deaths of the full
spectrum of society, rich and poor, black, white and native American.
One particularly absorbing story in the exhibit is that of Anne
Wolseley Calvert,
wife of Chancellor Philip Calvert, uncle of the Third Lord Baltimore,
whose mansion was one of the largest ever built in Maryland in
colonial times.
On December 5, 1990, James Bock reported in the Sun that a team
of
scientists, archaeologists, and historians had begun to interpret the
remains of three people buried in lead coffins within the foundations
of probably the first brick Catholic Chapel in English-speaking North
America, one which only recently has been reconstructed on the
foundations of the original at St. Mary's City.
The middle of the three coffins contained a woman of 55 or 60
years whose suffering at the last must have been enormous. She was
malnourished and had few teeth. She had been in considerable and
constant pain from a spiral fracture of one leg that had only
partially healed allowing her to walk with a pronounced limp, but
leaving her with two open abscesses that surely made the last two or
three years of her life perfectly miserable.
Who was this woman buried with such tender loving care- arms
folded and tied with silk ribbon, rosemary, the herb of remembrance
sprinkled lovingly over her body? All of the evidence points to Anne
Wolseley Calvert, the wife of Chancellor Philip Calvert who lay next
to her in the largest of the three coffins. She came with her
husband in 1657 and died in St. Mary's City two years before him, in
about 1679 or 1680.
We now know that she suffered greatly
and we know much about her
state of health, but can we also put a face to her memory?
From
her skull, a forensic pathologist reconstructed the
facial muscles and overlaying tissues to produce a striking likeness
of a young woman. For the Smithsonian exhibition, Written in Bone,
it was decided to
reconstruct her face again, this time older, as she may have been at
the time of her death. How close these two reconstructions came to
capturing the real Anne Wolsely we will never know for certain
without a contemporary image.
We do have a clue however, the
story
of which is interesting in itself.
In the 1750s a relative of the Wolseleys came to Annapolis to
live. She brought with her a painting of her grandmother the neice
and namesake of Anne Wolseley, Anne Wolseley Knipe. When she died the
painting passed to her daughter and then to her granddaughter. It
then skipped a generation, passing to her great-great granddaughter,
the wife of the Honorable George Hunt Pendleton. Pendleton served in
Congress, ran as George McClellan's running mate against Abraham
Lincoln in 1864, authored the Pendelton Civil Service Act and was
rewarded with an Ambassadorship to Germany. Mrs. Pendleton took the
painting with her to Germany, removing it from Annapolis where it
had been on display for about 150 years.
By 1929 Anne Wolseley
Knipe's portrait had disappeared from sight. Because it was of a close
blood relative to Anne Wolseley, and might be useful in the
reconstruction her image as well as in the hunt for family DNA, two
consumate researchers, Jane McWilliams and Elaine Rice Bachmann,
were assigned the task of tracking it down. They managed to sort out
the innumerable relatives that to whom it could have descended,
knowing that in all probability the family tradition of bequeathing
it to daughters would have continued. Unfortunately there were a
large number of candidates for whom there were no addresses and the
hunt ground to a halt.
Then by chance, in the lunch room of the
State Archives, Jane and Elaine happened to be talking with a senior
member of the staff who had spent her childhood in a small town in
Pennsylvania. When Jane mentioned that one of the possible heirs was
named Joline and had come from Pennsylvania, the staff person
mentioned that her childhood neighbors had had that name and offered
to give them a call. They proved to be none other than the
descendants of Anne Wolseley's niece. They didn't own the painting,
but thought they knew who did, providing the telephone number of
relatives in California. The family was so delighted to receive
Jane's call and to learn about the interest in the painting that
they donated it to the State Archives, returning it again to
Annapolis. From generation to generation the women descendants and
close relatives of Anne Wolseley Knipe had carefully preserved both
the memory and the artistic rendition of Anne Wolseley Knipe. Now it
has a home among the collective memories of our colonial past at the
Archives where it joins a revived interest in the role of women who
helped formulate what was, and what is Maryland.
Although
genetically linked to her name-sake there still remained
the question of how much Anne Wolseley Knipe resembled her Aunt?
I leave that for you to ponder from two forensic reconstructions
and the image of the painting below, but to my eyes
there are some striking resemblances, especially given the fact that
the portrait was probably a marriage portrait designed to show off
the best qualities of the sitter, while the reconstructions were not an
artistic embellishment of fact. To put it bluntly, as a contemporary
member
of the English branch of the Wolseley family explained to Elaine Rice
Bachmann, the Wolseleys were
known for their big noses.
Anne Wolseley Knipe, niece of Anne Wolseley
First Forensic Reconstruction of the skull thought to be of Anne Wolseley, followed by the second reconstruction of the skull which appears in the Written In Bone Exhibit at the Smithsonian.
In many respects, Anne Wolseley Calvert, whose own
family had
suffered persecution in England for their adherence to Catholicism,
represents every-woman of 17th Century Maryland with her strong
determination to make her way in a forbidding world filled with
travails not unlike those of Maryland's neglected patron saint, St.
Cecilia.
While the records are for the most part silent about the example
Anne Wolseley Calvert set for those about her, we are left with one
tantalizing piece of evidence that suggests the devotion she could
inspire.
Her husband Phillip spent his life attempting to make
the colony of
Maryland a reasonably safe and secure place to live, a place where
men, who died young and often with minor children, could be assured
that the state would properly administer their estates for the
benefit of their widows and their children. He did so with the help
of a number of devoted clerks, the bureaucrats of their day, often
providing them with lodgings in his own home. When his longtime
bachelor clerk, Michael Rochford died in 1679, Rochford chose not to
honor his employer, but his employer's wife, Anne Wolseley. Out of a
meager estate, he left his most precious possession, his silver
watch to Ann, a touching tribute to a woman who had suffered much
but who also seems to have been able to have shown kindness to
others.
Not everyone agrees that we should go to such lengths as
peering
into coffins to reconstruct the past. Indeed an individual who may
be a Calvert descendant felt compelled to write expressing his
concern over what he perceived of as a desecration of a grave. He
closed his letter with the familiar blessing "Eternal rest
grant unto them O Lord. Let perpetual light shine upon them. May
they rest in Peace."
I tried to explain in reply that until we
did the historical
research there was no connection with the Calverts and that from the
remains alone their could not be. Only by linking the scientific
evidence secured from many different disciplines with the
fragmentary written evidence that survives could identification of
the remains be nearly certain. I said nearly, because so much of the
literary evidence has been lost. Nowhere in the records available
today, for example, is there reference to these graves as being
those of Anne, Philip, and an unnamed female child.
Should we
engage in such reconstruction of the past from actual
human remains? That is a philosophical question which in my opinion
is best answered yes. If we had put as much into life for the
benefit of others as Philip and Anne did, if we had suffered as much
as Anne and that five month old girl did, I think I would like the
world to know it and not be forever forgotten in a lead coffin under
an oft-plowed corn field.
When Hamlet contemplated the skull of his friend Yorick, he did
so for good reason. When with care and good taste we examine the
remains of those who gave so much so that we could live the good
lives we do, we do so for good reason as well. "Alas Poor
Philip" and Ann, we should. Indeed in many respects Anne and
the young girl in the coffin beside her represent every-woman and every-child. We owe it to
them and to ourselves to pay them respectful tribute, not to ignore
them. It is not a desecration so to do, it is a celebration, the
final act of which should be a respectful re-interment in the crypt
of the newly reconstructed chapel on the site of the earliest
Catholic chapel in English speaking North America. But to celebrate
we need to understand why, who and how, with whatever evidence
remains for us to examine. Only then can perpetual light shine upon
them and only then can they truly rest in peace.
In doing so,
through ongoing research and interpretation, we also
will know even better why we should remember the Spirit of 1634, and pause to celebrate Maryland
Day every March.
Explore more of Maryland History at: http://teachingamericanhistorymd.net/. The images of the Anne Wolseley Knipe portrait and the first forensic reconstruction are courtesy of the Maryland State Archives. The image of the second reconstruction is taken from Douglas Owsley and Karin Bruwelheide, Written in Bone, Minneapolis:LeantoPress, 2009, p. 59. The quotes from Father Andrew White are taken from White, Andrew, Barbara Lawatsch-Boomgaarden, and J. IJsewijn. 1995. Voyage
to Maryland (1633) = Relatio itineris in Marilandiam. Wauconda,
Ill: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers and Narratives of early Maryland 1633-1684: Ed. by Clayton Colman Hall.
1910. Narratives, Original, of early American history, 11. 1910.
Siemans' portrait of Leonard Calvert, gift to the Friends of the Maryland State Archives
A cherub contemplating his shadow from Emblemata (1636)
The replica of the 
Anne Wolseley Knipe, niece of Anne Wolseley
First Forensic Reconstruction of the skull thought to be of Anne Wolseley, followed by the second reconstruction of the skull which appears in the 