duties of the Custom House were discharged by a most worthy and competent man, Mr. Thomas Watts. The Custom House proper in the days of Mr. Jeremiah Banning and his successor, Mr. Robert Banning, was really at the Isthmus, their residence, where the modest building still stands. During the term of Mr. John Willis and his successors, it was a diminutive tenement, not more than ten feet square, that stood near the Willis house, and yet may stand, and contrasted strangely with those imposing structures that were built in the great city upon the Patapsco which was literally unknown when Oxford on Choptank was a thriving port.

Of the population of Oxford previous to the national enumeration of 1870 little is known. In provincial times it may be that two or at most three hundred people were assembled within its limits. In the year just mentioned for the first time the inhabitants of the town were numbered separately from those of the remainder of the county. Then there was a total of two hundred and seventy-seven, all of native parentage. By the census of 1880 the number of the population had risen to and now, 1882, it is estimated to be fully one thousand.

So much for the past. What will be the future of this town which had its founding in the very dawn of our local history, which had its era of prosperity and then its sleep of years to awaken into renewed youth and vigor, it is probably vain and useless to conjecture. Pleasing as it may be to indulge the fancy that it will continue to grow in size and importance until it shall become a considerable city, where commerce and manufactures may concentrate, or where fashion, in pursuit of health and pleasure, may congregate as at another Nice or Newport, sober reason compels us to believe that Oxford can never be more than a village, even though the ship canal be constructed by the Choptank route, and the oyster fields of the Chesapeake unexhausted yield their perennial "harvest of the sea;" even though its air shall continue to be the very breath of Hygeia herself, and its waters healing as the fabled pool of Bethesda.

Here will be concluded this account of the "town and port of Oxford." That it is burthened with trivial details is a critisicm which is readily anticipated: but in reply it may be asked whether any incident is unimportant which illustrates the history of a community. For the sake of rendering this paper interesting, no attempt has been made to substitute mere conjecture for facts, nor to supply the deficiences of authentic records by materials furnished by the imagination. For every statement there is ample testimony in the form of either written documents or contemporary witnesses.

THE TOWN OF SAINT MICHAELS

(1883)

In times of old a village, which perchance grew into a town or even city, would cluster around the castle of some great lord, who for the privilege of preying upon its inhabitants himself protected them from the severer depredations of robber knights who infested the land. When the church became supreme, or contested for preeminence with the nobility, bishops and abbots were the great magnates, and they assumed the role of protectors of a timid and cowering people. Around the cathedrals and monasteries sprang up villages which were glad to pay with tythes and other rates for the shelter and defence that could be given them by either the temporal or spiritual arm of the church, from the violence and exactions of neighboring barons and their retainers. Though these were the circumstances of the origin of towns in lands far distant and in times long past, it could hardly have been expected that we should be able to trace the beginnings of a town to the building of a church, in a country free from all apprehension of oppression from a nobility or privileged class, and at a time when priestly anathemas deterred the violent from wrong, as little as church walls protected the weak from injury; yet such is the fact with regard to Saint Michaels. The church was the first house erected, and around it gathered the village which took its name.46 As no personal protection was secured by it to the villagers, nor expected, and as there is no reason to believe from what we know of the character of the early settlers that spiritual benefits were principal motives of living near it, we must look for other reasons why they should have taken up their homes around the humble ecclesiastical structure that was built near the spot where the new and beautiful Protestant Episcopal Church now stands. These reasons will appear in the sequel.

Of the circumstances of the building of the church edifice first erected upon the site which has ever since been consecrated to religious purposes in the midst of grounds that have been sadly diminished by frequent sales and possible intrusion, an account was prepared for and published in the Saint Michaels Comet of June 1st, 1878. Although the date of its erection has not been preserved, there is evidence that in

45 Saint Michaels may be regarded the patron saint, or guardian angel of Maryland, for all patents required the payment of the quit rents to the Lord Proprietary on the Feast of Saint Michael and all angels: and this was the legal day of many processes.

1736 it had gone to decay and had been replaced by a new structure; and that no others but very aged persons had knowledge of the time when it was built. From depositions taken in the year just named, by authority of the Vestry, the land for church purposes had been given by either Mr. John Hatton or Mr. Edward Elliot, but the weight of the evidence was that the former was the real owner of the two acres that were set apart for church purposes. There is reasonable ground to believe that this occurred as early at least as 1672, when the Reverend Mr. James Clayland, was exercising the office of minister of the Reformed Church, and before the Church of England had become the established church of the province.46

It is not difficult to conjecture what were the considerations which determined the locating of the church at the place where it was built. In the earliest years of the province of Maryland, before the construction of the roads, the water ways were commonly used for inter communication. The canoes and barges antedated the chairs and coaches of a later period, and for the poorer class of people they took the place of the horse with his saddle and pillion. As the settlements in Talbot were in the first instance made along the banks of the innumerable creeks and coves of the county, it is readily seen that the inhabitants found it more convenient to make their journeys by water, than to take long detours around the heads of these creeks and coves by the yet unfrequented paths through woods and swamps. Now the place selected as the site of the church is just where the waters of Saint Michaels and Broad Creeks approach near to each other. Boats were able to land almost at the church door upon one side, while they could reach a point not many hundred yards from the same, upon the other. An examination of the chorography will show that a very large part of what subsequently became Saint Michaels parish can be easily reached by boats leaving the town either by church cove or by what is known as Saint Domingo or Back creek. The whole of what is now called Bayside, the whole of Miles River Neck, and the country along Saint Michaels river on the east,47 were able to send their worshippers to the church

46 A memorandum by Mr. John Bozman Kerr, states that the first church at St. Michaels was built in 1600. Upon what authority this was made is not indicated. We are not safe in disregarding any indicia of this first explorer of the wilderness of our early annals, but he is not to be followed implicitly.

47 The proper name for the creek or river, commonly called Miles River, is Saint Michaels. The corruption into Miles probably originated in the habit, common to all people of abbreviating names which are difficult of pronuncia

in barges, canoes or other boats, some one of which every farmer possessed; while those who preferred and were able to ride, had but to to follow the devious and narrow bridle path which by necessity had to pass immediately before the door.48

But the position selected for reasons ecclesiastical and spiritual well might have been chosen for reasons economical and secular; for the same facilities of access which it offered to those seeking religious strength or comfort were offered to the wordly minded intent upon their material or pecuniary advantage. In truth the place of meeting for worship became a place of meeting for business. There, as a point where most persons congregated, were posted the advertisements of the masters of the ships trading in the waters of Talbot, Queen Anne's and Dorset, in which they described the character of their vessels, their destination, their rates of freight, and gave the names of their owners and consignees in London, Liverpool, or other English ports. There the captains met the planters of the vicinity, and the factors and merchants, with whom contracts were formed. The creek which makes in from Saint Michaels river and forms the harbor of the town furnished an admirable anchorage for sea-going and other vessels, while at Deep-Water Point, one of the chops of this harbor, vessels of large tonnage could approach the shore within a stone's throw. If we may credit tradition, a most uncertain guide, such vessels, at a time, not within memory, could and did ascend the harbor much higher than the present depth of water would permit.49 It is, however, very well established that the harbor

tion. Possibly the custom of the Quakers in dropping the word Saint, may have favored this habit. It was easy to pass from Michaels river to Miles; and the corruption commenced at a very early period in the history of the county. There is a Miles creek in Trappe district, which sometimes, in the first records was called St. Miles, and at others St. Michaels. In 1687 one John Miles of Ann Arundel county, sold a tract of land to Thomas Miles of the same county upon the upper waters of the St. Michaels river. May we not have here the origin of the alternate name.

48 Although the origin of the town is to be traced to the building of a church, it is a curious fact, worthy of being noted, that the first mention of the place that has been discovered in the county or any other records, is in connection with a horse race which came off at St. Michaels in 1680. In a book of judgments for 1681-1685 there is a record of an action to recover a bet made upon this horse race. This indicates clearly that here was a place for neighborhood gatherings at the date indicated.

49 As confirmatory of the truth of this tradition, stones are pointed out in Church Creek, which are said to have been thrown from ships that had used them as ballast.

of Saint Michaels was a place of lading and unlading of English shipping at a very early period, and continued so to be down to the Revolution, if not a little later. In extant records there are many indications that Deep Water Point, upon the right of the approach to the harbor, was from its singular natural advantages, at and from a very early day, a preferred place for the receipt and deposit of freight, and that here was the factory of one Liverpool firm, at least, and a house of public entertainment.

There is a little doubt that the English mercantile firms of London, Liverpool and Bristol, whose ships were trading in the waters of Talbot, Choptank, Third Haven, Wye and Saint Michaels rivers, had their factors or agents at points at, or at least not remote from the site of the town of Saint Michaels; but there have been discovered but few records of the presence of such persons. There was a public tobacco warehouse upon the farm of Daniel Sherwood, upon Broad Creek not very distant from this place. Here large quantities of the staple of the province was brought to be inspected, and stored to await transportation! It is known that Mr. James Edge, he who gave name to an arm of Broad Creek, upon which he resided, was in 1741-2 the factor of Mr. Richard Gildart of Liverpool, whose ships visited Talbot regularly down to the outbreak of the war of Independence.50 When the people of the colonies determined, by their Associations, to permit no English goods to be introduced, namely in 1775, Mr. Jas. Braddock of St. Michaels, was the agent of Messrs. Gildart and Gawith, and their ship, the Johnson, which entered the Eastern bay was prevented by the Committee of Observation from landing that part of her cargo consigned to Mr. Braddock. This gentleman owned much property which was subsequently embraced in the plot of the town, at the date of its incorporation and survey; and his name was given to one of the squares or wards into which the town was divided, as will presently be noted. In this very imperfect sketch of the origin and ante-revolutionary history of Saint Michaels, it is proper that reference should be made to an independent merchant whose large transactions in tobacco and other country products and whose stocked store of imported goods, were important factors in the growth of a town in his immediate vicinage. This gentleman was Mr. Thomas Harrison, who had his place of business on the arm of Broad Creek that approaches the town, as it were in the rear, at his farm now called Canton. His store-house stood at the water's edge,

50 Mr. Edge is buried beneath the church at St. Michaels.