History of Talbot County, Maryland, 1661-1861

PREFACE

It is a reproach to Talbot County that no one has, heretofore, ever seriously and earnestly attempted the task, dutiful, profitable and pleasing as it is, of the recovery and preservation from the oblivion into which they have fallen, or are falling, of the memories of those incidents that illustrate, and of those characters that adorn, our local annals. We owe it to this beautiful county of ours, to which we are all attached by so many ties of affection and interest, that we should revive and perpetuate recollections of all that has transpired upon this, our natal soil, and of all those worthies, who by their labors in the several departments of life, have made it the pleasant abode that it is for us, and shall be for those coming after us.

That narrow patriotism, which limits itself to the county, state or section, is not to be encouraged, if it excludes or weakens that broader patriotism that embraces the whole nation; but a love of one's immediate home lies at the foundation of this broader love of country, of which one of the chief duties and obligations is the keeping alive those local traditions of events and persons which strengthen that love of country, and which serve, in a very appreciable degree, as materials for its general history. A study of our local history may not be the noblest occupation of the mind; there may be grander subjects for contemplation than the petty occurrences of a vicinage, or the careers of the respectable mediocrities of a county. There may be matters of investigation more profitable, perhaps, than neighborhood antiquities and family genealogies, but let it not be supposed that these are so insignificant as to be unworthy of attention. Be assured that he who will give up a portion of the time which is dissipated in less useful occupations, to these pursuits, will, at least, find this advantage, that he is laying the very best foundation for the study of the larger and more momentous history of his country. Indeed, no one can thoroughly investigate the annals of his own county without becoming well grounded in general history; nay more, without making a most fitting preparation for the study of the very philosophy of all history, for such is the concatenation and relation of events in all times and places, that the social movements in one county, or section of a country, at any period, can hardly be comprehended without a knowledge of the progress of society in other countries; and it is from the correlation and coordination of such

minutia that the science of history is evolved. But beside the obligations of patriotic duty, and beside the solicitations of intellectual profit, there is a further inducement to pursue a study of our local history and that is, the pleasures which such a study affords. This study ministers in some indirect but very positive way to that strongest of instincts a love of life; for it, as it were, prolongs our consciousness backwards, gives us a kind of reminiscence of all the past and enables us to live over again the years that have flown by. An ancient Latin poet has truly said "Hoc est vivere bis, vita posse priori frui" (This it is twice to live, to be able to enjoy the life of the past). He who becomes thoroughly possessed with the spirit of historical and antiquarian research, particularly research into local history and antiquities, feels himself insensibly carried back into the times, and transported to the places to which his research relates. The dead revive, occupy their old homes, frequent their old haunts, display their old garbs, practice their old follies, vent their old passions, or exhibit their old virtues.

The whole drama of the dead past is reënacted with all its cast of characters, with all its scenery and appointments, just as the drama of the living-present is now placed upon the stage. What play in the mimic theatre can equal this in vividness, in its realism, in its absorbing interest? He who makes himself a spectator truly lives a double life— a life in the past, and a life in the present, and his years though not multiplied in number, are surely increased in capacity. George Eliot, in her fascinating novel Romola, expresses her reverence for the departed, who have left us examples of right living, when she makes blind Bardo say to his daughter Romola, when she had finished reading to him from one of his favorite classics. "It is true, Romola. It is a true conception of the poet: for what is that grosser, narrower light by which men behold merely the petty scene around them, compared with that far-stretching, lasting light which spreads over centuries of thought, and over the life of nations, and makes clear to us the minds of the immortals, who have reaped the great harvest and left us to glean in their furrows? For me, Romola, even when I could see, it was with the great dead that I lived; while the living often seemed to me mere spectres shadows dispossessed of true feeling and intelligence."

If, good Reader, the perusal of this History of Talbot County should inspire you with an earnest desire to know more of this beautiful county of ours, so dear to us all, to know more of its political contests, its religious conflicts and changes, its progress in education, its industrial mutations and development, its social phases, its advancement in cilvili

zation and refinement, and finally of its notable citizens who laid the foundation for all the prosperity of the present, then the years of labor and of patient research expended upon this work by its author and its compiler will not have been spent in vain.

Easton, Maryland, 1914.

OSWALD TILGHMAN.

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