Annapolis Maritime Museum

The first English settlers were a group of Puritans who established Providence, a settlement at the mouth of the Severn River, in 1649. The Puritans probably used Captain John Smith's Bay map to navigate here from Virginia. Their settlement was not a town so much as a broadly dispersed gathering of tobacco plantations. They shipped the tobacco to England in exchange for goods they couldn't manufacture themselves.

The ship in the background is the Constant Friendship, one of the largest vessels in the tobacco fleet that carried Maryland's cash crop to London. On their return voyages, the vessels carried settlers, servants, household goods, and news. About this time, as many as 70 wooden sailing vessels made the round trip each year between England and Maryland's rivers around the Bay like the Severn.

Eventually, a village grew up on this side of the Severn. Governor Francis Nicholson moved the capital of Maryland to this little village in 1695 because of its central location, protected harbor, and Protestant-friendly population. He named it "Annapolis" after Princess Anne, who would soon become Queen of England.

Key
1. The Constant Friendship
2. Tobacco was the main "cash crop." Growers would pack dried tobacco leaves into barrels known as "hogsheads" and



ferry them out to ships in boats.
3. Settlers used log canoes and other small boats for transportation and harvesting seafood, which provided a good portion of their diet.
4. In the late 1600s, Horn Point was owned and farmed by Richard Hill. Back Creek was known as "Hill's Back Creek." The trees have been girdled, their bark stripped to kill them in order to open fields for growing tobacco.
5. Great blue herons wade in the shallows to hunt fish and other small animals.

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Show me all markers in:  Annapolis, MD  |  Anne Arundel County  |  21403  |  Maryland  |  United States of America

From this spot, you can see 1608 - Captain John Smith's Chesapeake Voyages
From this spot, you can see 1774 - The "Annapolis Tea Party"
From this spot, you can see 1887 - The Age of Steam
From this spot, you can see 1919 - Oysters: The Bay's "White Gold"
Oysters: Vital to Nature. Vital to Our Future.
Oysters: Vital to Commerce. Vital to Culture.
Oysters: Vital to the Lifeline of the Chesapeake
From this spot, you can see 1998 - Annapolis: America's Sailing Capital
Welcome to Eastport
Harvesting the Bay

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