nnnnnnnnn
Being an
Essay of Conjecture on the
Times,
Triumphs, Travails and Adventures
of a
Noble House
Shirley Calvert-Faoro, Editor & Peter Faoro, Scribe ©2005 All rights reserved.
Introduction & DIRECT FAMILY GENEALOGY
1 .Positioning For Power - Up to the year 1625
2. The Flourishing of Power - The critical years between 1625 and 1632
3. Cecil & Leonard - The adventure begins: 1632 to 1675
4. Peerage and Pioneers - Making their own rules: 1675 to 1782
5. Frontiersmen, Farmers and Families - The Bluegrass: 1782 to 1890
6. Denouement - The end of the Calvert aristocracy: 1732 to 1771
The errors and real or perceived lapses in judgment in these pages are mine. The rest of the project wouldn’t have been possible without the kindness and generosity of volunteer genealogy research groups. As just one example, we were at one point contacted by one of the participants in these groups, who, along with her husband, spent a full day climbing through an obscure church cemetery in rural Kentucky poring through the church’s faded handwritten records of a century ago in search of William Baltimore Calvert.
Particular thanks are extended to Barbara Mullendore Calvert in New Jersey and Jean T. Gillett in California, and to Mike Gallafent of Reading, England for making the trek to the Oxford library, providing copies of period articles on the last Lord Baltimore, and for reviewing sections of the manuscript for accuracy in the portrayal of Elizabethan and Georgian English society.
Special mention and appreciation is extended to Sandi Gorin, who was kind enough to dig through her archives at our request and retrieve gems of Kentuckiana which have been woven into the text to help give depth and flavor to this project. I never met any of these people, yet consider them friends as well as colleagues. Two people I happily have met are Uncle (Albert) Earl Calvert, whose exceptional retention of oral tradition provided the foundation of our work, and Shirley Jean Calvert, advisor, the reason behind this effort, and the patient editor of my drafts. Happiness is indeed being married to your best friend.
Disclaimer
The Calvert Chronicles is an essay intended solely for private
distribution among family, friends and colleagues interested in the
subject matter. Some parts are compilations of commentary by others
more familiar with certain aspects of the topic. Sources and authors
have been cited when possible, but much of the material was gathered
from the public domain or otherwise acquired well before the present
project was envisioned. In some instances, sources which would have
been noted were simply lost. In addition to those mentioned above, in
writing The Calvert Chronicles we’ve looked to material from That
Dark and Bloody River, by Allen W. Eckert, and Frederick Jackson
Turner’s theses, The Significance of the Frontier in American
History. Other sources include: Descendants of the Virginia
Calverts, by Ella Foy O’Gorman; a series of articles published in The
Maryland Genealogies by John Bailey Calvert Nicklin; The
Flowering of the Maryland Palatinate, privately published by Harry
Wright Newman; various issues of Maryland Historical Magazine
published by the Maryland Historical Society; and The Calvert Papers
held by the Maryland Historical Society and the State of Maryland. If
copyrighted material is contained herein for which credit is not given,
or for which payment would have been demanded by the author, the
transgression was unintentional, and my apologies are sincerely
extended.
“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.”
- William Shakespeare
2 KING HENRY VI, Act 4, Scene 2
The following essay isn’t intended to be a history of the Calvert family, but rather a social account of their times. The historical record has been amply mined, and has proven to be abundantly clear in some places, but in most other places too scanty, contradictory and poorly documented for any further attempt to rise above the level of mere speculation: very shortly after Sir George’s death gaps covering years and decades begin appearing in the family records, and the chances of finding reliable material to fill in those voids after the passage of centuries are slight at best.
Though every effort has been made at accuracy, some relationships and observations may, in fact, be wrong, again due to the absence of records: in many instances we can’t be absolutely certain that one particular Calvert fathered another, but our objective has been to create a reliable sense of the places and periods in which we know the Calverts were present, and keep our assumptions about specific Calverts as informed as possible
There has been no attempt made in the following pages to include the names and birth and death dates of each and every Calvert down through the ages. Such material, primarily of interest to genealogists, is usually tedious in the extreme and lends little “color” to the story itself.
There is a difference, though, between
speculation about individual lives, and reasonable assumptions drawn
from our understanding of how societies functioned in the past. What
drew the ships “
Commemorative postage stamp issued in 1934
This is an effort to take what is known (or probably known) about the line extending from Sir George Calvert, through his second son Leonard, down to Omer Triplett Calvert, with side trips to the world of Sir George’s eldest son Cecil and his descendants, and place them in context. In short, these are descriptions of the stage and not the actors; a picture of the backdrop to add perspective to the chronicle of a family’s journey.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some of what follows will represent arrogance
and unacceptable conduct to modern observers. Even by the general
social standards of their times the aristocratic Calverts operated
under a code of behavior that was - to them and their social peers -
assumed, even considered laudable, while dramatically at odds with the
standards of behavior expected of the general population both then and
now. As the tale extends into adolescent
We are unfair in making judgments about yesterday by the assumptions of today. The laws, as well as the arguments devoutly held by various societies down through the years concerning the standing of women, slaves, religious freedom, censorship, and so on, are but the most obvious examples of changing values. Aside from such large issues, however, most of a culture’s values evolve in an almost imperceptible series of small, seemingly innocuous steps, as illustrated by an example from a most surprising source.
George Washington, a Calvert relative by marriage through Cecil’s line, appears to have been every bit the man his reputation describes, to the point of being absolute and unbending in his judgments of right and wrong. Apparently he wasn't a particularly fun guy to hang around with, though; poor sense of humor and all that, although he was reportedly an enthusiastic dancer, and a devoted card player. (2) Without a doubt he is deserving of the place in history accorded him. But consider:
Abundant documents confirm that from early
adulthood the Father of our Country unabashedly used his position,
wealth, and influence to acquire extensive land holdings in the
The historical Calverts would in many ways be strangers to us today, but in the context of their times they were, with one notable exception, upright and honorable men and women, representative of the society from which they arose. That society, however, was often harsh, uncouth, largely illiterate and unlearned, frequently violent and, in a style still finding expression on today’s Wall Street, it could be a cynical, calculating age.
Having said as much, let us start at the middle of the beginning.
POSITIONING FOR POWER
------------------------
George Calvert, 1579 - 1632
************
Rather than start with George Calvert
himself, let us take a quick look at Anne Mynne, who would become his
wife on
Henry I, King of England (son of William the Conqueror)
Henri I, King of
William de Vernon, 5th Earl of Devon
Henry Grey, 1st Baron Grey of Codnor
Richard Grey, 2nd Baron Grey of Codnor
Baron FitzPayn
Richard Poynings, 3rd Baron Poynings
....and a lengthy list of Knights and Ladies
The tradition of strategically adept marriages would continue into following generations as successive Lords Baltimore would marry into (or otherwise dally, with resulting offspring) families claiming the hereditary power and influence of monarchs and nobility, including Charles II, King of England, and later George I, King of Great Britain (the title changed as the empire grew). How did George Calvert gain sufficient access and acceptance to the upper classes to marry into that rarefied society and thereby secure his own family’s rightful place at Court?
Of George’s own parentage very little has been recorded beyond their names; Leonard Calvert, an obscure Yorkshire gentleman, being George’s father, after whom his second son and direct ancestor of the Kentucky Calverts was named, Alicia Crossland his mother, John Calvert and Marjorie (of unknown maiden name) being his paternal grandparents, and even less being known about George’s maternal grandparents other than a dispute over whether Alicia’s father was Thomas or John Crossland. And yet both of George’s parents were of high enough standing to boast a family Coat-of-Arms, and George himself was formally educated.
The fact of George’s education is itself an indication of relative wealth (perhaps “upper middle class” in 20th Century terms) for in the last quarter of the 1500’s when he was a boy relatively few people could even read or write, and monarchs themselves were often only moderately educated. Formal education had only recently ceased to be the exclusive province of the clergy, scholars (often one and the same), and those who supported the clergy or the Crown with donations of land or gold.
Although schools for the poor and deserving began in this era, the family’s right to a Coat-of-Arms probably indicates that George’s attendance at such a school was not an option. (One was not normally granted a Coat-of-Arms unless there was either land which one, at least in theory, had a right to protect or as an honor bestowed by the Crown in return for political or monetary support). Moreover, the education received at such an institution would not have been sufficient preparation for admittance to the University. Had Leonard and Alicia been of the merchant class, their son would have been apprenticed rather than being sent to a university at considerable expense.
The near absence of information about George’s forebears, in combination with the fact of his schooling, also tells us a great deal about him. His parents were quite possibly unlettered, but at the very least tithed their estate to the established church, probably more than the requisite 10% as a sign of both devotion and an overt attempt to acquire influence in this world or the next - probably both. That they were able to do so suggests that George’s father was a successful landowner who accumulated his modest wealth through a combination of the beef and cattle trade (as indicated by the word calvert itself) and sub-renting portions of the family’s land.
Presumably then, young George grew up in a home where he saw first-hand the benefits of hard work, and must have been informed in unmistakable terms that education and hard work combined were a route to success. By inference and observation he learned that society’s institutions were tools to be used to one’s own advantage when possible.
In an age when childhood ended rather abruptly at 10 or 12 (early adulthood when the median life span was 35) these ideas must have been very fresh and pronounced in the boy’s mind when he was sent to Trinity College, Oxford, from which he received his Bachelor’s degree at age 17 in 1596/7, and his Master’s degree in 1605.(3) Education at the time was limited in scope to put it mildly: two centuries after George was born the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was published. That first edition consisted of three volumes, each about the thickness of a big-city telephone directory, and claimed - without argument - to summarize all knowledge. Of those three volumes, fully one-third of the whole was devoted to Astronomy, Arithmetick (sic), Anatomy and Medicine and their subsections, with a substantial portion of the rest given over to navigation, geography, and the various arts of war and fortification.
Another inference can be made by the fact of
George’s admittance to Trinity, and that is that whatever the schooling
he received previously, his teachers were accomplished and their
student receptive. In reading and in arithmetic he was clearly quite
good or he wouldn’t have survived Trinity and gone on to amass a
fortune. His writing, however, was another matter. King Charles I would
later tease him that he “writ as fair a hand to look upon from afar
off, as any man in
It is unlikely that the marriage of George Calvert and Anne Mynne was a matter of the heart, although affection may well have grown out of the union. Romance would not be considered an important element of matrimony for nearly two centuries. That George was sharp enough to recognize the possibilities of such a marriage is certainly plausible, but it would have been the parents who first broached the subject as a practical matter for both families.
Wanting to improve his son’s station in a society governed by class and connections certainly was in Leonard Calvert’s mind, and George Mynne knew that his daughter’s family affiliations were valuable assets, not to be handed away frivolously. But what did the Mynne family stand to gain from the agreement? The man Anne Mynne married when she and her husband were both 25 was of a good family, wealthy if not rich, educated, and of an “acceptable” class of landowners. (Merchants, however successful they might have been, were still looked down upon). He had probably been identified as an up-and-coming individual in that small society.
It was a sensible match. While the Calverts stood to gain in what we would today call “upward mobility”, the Mynne’s agreement to the marriage addressed a much more basic reality. In an age when women of any class were of secondary standing, the union of their daughter to the promising son of a prominent family represented significant assurance that Anne would be able to continue living in a manner appropriate to her inherited station in life. The concern was not unfounded, for society held many examples of titled ladies in threadbare gowns.
It was, of course, a gamble of sorts for the Mynnes to betroth their daughter to anyone, but there were likely strong indications already that young George was not a man to take undue risks with his own station in life. Ella Foy O’Gorman has described George Calvert this way:
"George Calvert was not a man of brilliant talent and boundless confidence in his own abilities, nor was he one of those who found the most attractive fishing in troubled waters. His talents were solid: he was cautious, laborious, exact, of unimpeachable integrity, and a true lover of his country."
George found a great deal of sense and utility in his improved circumstances.
THE FLOURISHING OF POWER
George Calvert, 1579 - 1632
First Lord Baltimore
-------------------------------------------
(1585 - first English colony in
************
Then, as now, access to the halls of power was a source of power itself provided, of course, that the person having access remembers that his is a derived power secure only so long as he is viewed favorably by the higher authority. George Calvert knew that well.
By his marriage to Anne Mynne, George was able to combine his own personal attributes of relative affluence and education with the implied right, derived from his wife, of access to the company of nobles and the royal household itself. O’Gorman’s description of his cautious, meticulous nature fits the recorded progress of his career. He didn’t immediately gain - or probably even seek - access to the King himself, but rather those quite close to the King and took advantage of successive opportunities to increasingly demonstrate his capabilities.
One year following his marriage to Anne, and
eight years after he had taken his Bachelor’s Degree, George received
his Master’s degree from Trinity,
The same year he became a Member of Parliament (in which he was to serve three non-consecutive terms over twenty years) and was appointed Private Secretary to the Earl of Salisbury. Salisbury himself was to leave a prominent mark on British history and George’s association with the Earl clearly provided the foundation of his own involvement in matters of state, for within months he was further appointed Clerk of the Crown (analogous to our modern District Attorney) for County Claire, Ireland.
It would be another eight years before his
major entry onto the stage of British history would occur, but his
progress then would be steady: at the age of 34 (in 1613) he became a
member of the Privy Council - similar to combined membership in the US
President’s Cabinet and the Supreme Court. Four years later he was
knighted; a year following that he was appointed one of the King’s
Secretaries of State (becoming Principal Secretary of State in 1619).
Only a few months before Anne died in 1621, the King granted him an
estate of 2300 acres in
As a basis for measuring his growing wealth during this part of his career, the position of a lesser Secretary of State, as opposed to his subsequent appointment as Principal Secretary, had carried with it a lifetime pension of £1000 Sterling per year - a sizable sum in itself when measured against the cost of the eventual “Adventure to Maryland” which was £550 - but during two months in 1627 he spent no less than £25,000 for what he described as “a little pain and care” for some improvements to his holdings in Newfoundland. Those are the words of a man accustomed to wealth.)
During this span of 20 years he became involved in the New World as a minor investor in the Virginia Company, where he nonetheless served on what we would recognize as the Board of Directors, remaining in that capacity until the organization’s eventual dissolution. His relationship with the Crown and Court must have played a role in his appointment to such a senior position: The potential financial risk was quite high, and the project eventually failed, but cautious George put very little money into it, having only two shares in the venture which couldn’t have carried much weight with the principals.
In looking at George’s involvement with the Virginia Company, and his later career path, some conclusions can be drawn about his diplomatic skills in and around the King’s Court. George Calvert was not only able to openly profess Catholicism to a Protestant King, but managed to have his grant of baronial title omit the usual obligation that he be “conformable in point of religion”, i.e., that his religion and the King’s be identical. Something more than loyalty, intelligence, and access were at work here. The most probable explanation for the King’s forbearance on such matters, and his evident assistance in furthering Calvert’s interests can be found in the power of political reality.
James I understood politics, and though
George Calvert’s religious leanings might not be “politically correct”
the King was free to overlook them. With a freedom denied to later
monarchs by enactment of legislation ordered by Parliament, James was
able to view George’s religion as little more than an inconvenience
rather than a significant obstacle to the elevation of a skilled,
wealthy and loyal supporter. After the Reformation, which was not
universally welcomed, there were many in
The
The Seventeenth and the Twentieth Centuries shared a desire for get-rich-quick schemes, but George Calvert doesn’t appear to have been a man taken in by such dreams. His dreams had a decidedly more practical flavor. While probably hoping to find gold, George would never have spent £25,000 on improvements to real estate had his primary objective been mining or the spice trade. George wanted developed land, real estate itself, pure and simple. Towns, villages, farms, shipping, self-sustaining economic communities generally in which he would have a vested interest were his chosen vehicles. (5)
In 1623 Sir George, Lord Baltimore, a Member
of Parliament, Principal Secretary of State to the King, and a Royal
relative, successfully prevailed upon the King for a grant of lands in
Newfoundland, to be called Avalon.
..He came at the most favorable season and remained but for a month or two, so that he could scarcely have had time to visit the interior of the island [and] we cannot but think that when he compared the reality with Whitbourne’s glowing descriptions and the fancy pictures he built upon them, his disappointment must have been deep.
The second Lady Baltimore, Joan, accompanied
Sir George on his second visit, and remained about a year, at which
time having had enough of the harsh climate and surroundings; she
packed her bags and sailed for
Lady Baltimore, and her younger children by
George, remained in
The processes of government were as slow in
the 1600’s as today, and Sir George’s petition for a grant of new lands
in
The Charter of Maryland was therefore issued
to his eldest son, Cecil, Second Lord Baltimore. At the time of his
passing, Sir George Calvert bequeathed an appreciable estate of
developed land (in
CECIL & LEONARD
-------------------------------------------
Cecil Calvert, 1605 - 1675, Second Lord Baltimore
Leonard Calvert, 1606 - 1647
************
(1611- King James Version of the Bible
published * 1619 - first slaves brought to
************
Cecil, like his father before him, realized
the benefits of a politically adroit marriage, and with the advantages
of an established title and existing access to the Royal household that
his father had made possible by marrying Anne Mynne, Cecil also entered
a marriage to a woman of a lineage at least as distinguished as that
which his own mother had brought to the family. Anne Arundel, who would
marry Cecil, on
Edward III, King of
John of Gaunt, Duke of
Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmoreland
Richard Neville, 1st Earl of
William Bonville, Baron Harington & Bonville
Cecily Bonville, Baroness Harington & Bonville
Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of
Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of
Thomas Arundel, 1st Baron Arundel of Wardour
Anne’s ancestry might have been “noble”, but
it wasn’t necessarily illustrious. The royal families, nobility, and
aristocracy so firmly established in the
"[In the winter of 1379/80] delayed by winds and the threat of a French raid, [Sir John] Arundel took part of his force to Southampton to guard against an enemy landing and, while there, to conduct himself indistinguishably from the enemy. Besides robbing the countryside, he quartered his men-at-arms and archers in a convent, allowing them to violate the nuns and a number of poor widows who lived there, and carry them off to the ships when ready to sail. Arundel was the man who had demanded money in hand before he would defend the south-coast towns against earlier French raids.... Sailing in December, his convoy was caught by a violent storm during which he ordered the kidnapped women thrown overboard to lighten the ships."
From left: Leonard Calvert, Anne Arundel, Cecil Calvert
Under the law of primogeniture (7), second son Leonard, although he came into reasonable circumstances with George’s passing, inherited no title or particular riches from his father. Primogeniture was the legal method by which estates and wealth passed intact from generation to generation through the firstborn son. George Calvert’s Will specified a bequest of £900 for Leonard. Two years after George’s death Leonard personally put up three-quarters of the total cost of the expedition to Maryland (£550), so he must have had other resources - probably land - beyond the relatively small amount left by his father’s final wishes. Nevertheless, as Governor of Maryland after Sir George’s death, he would write to his brother the Baron complaining that he could not afford the £30 (in hard cash) needed for the purchase of arms and supplies in a particular transaction he had been directed to undertake.
In some instances primogeniture was also a
tool by which second children and beyond were effectively disinherited,
but the Calvert family engaged in no such fratricide. The law was the
law: Cecil was the Baron, Leonard wasn’t. Minorities and
disenfranchised groups of all sorts have accepted such laws without
question from the beginning of history and the Calverts were no
different. Moreover, Cecil clearly recognized certain executive
qualities in his younger brother and called upon his sibling to help
run the family business --- as Governor of Maryland. That Leonard
didn’t object to the concept of primogeniture, at least not too
vociferously, can be inferred by his introduction of a similar law in
Second son or not, Leonard, too, married well, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he probably married prestigiously since there are no surviving records of the marriage. The woman credited with being his wife, Anne Brent, claimed Royal ancestry but primarily Spanish and despised French rather than English and therefore somewhat less “clout” than the Ladies Baltimore. Anne’s forebears included no less than:
Alfonso V of
Alfonso VI of
Sancho II of
Alfonso VII of
Alfonso IX of
Louis VIII of
Louis IX of
Edward I of
Cecil, though the official founder of
Leonard was given substantial leeway in
achieving the objectives set for him by his older brother. Leonard
carved a society out of the rough woods and swamps of the new world
amidst the almost constant hostility of the Virginians. Where there
were forests before he arrived, there were communities and farms and
estates when he died, leaving as his executrix his sister-in-law (and
attorney) Margaret Brent (8), a powerful colonial landowner who, because
of her remarkable business and legal acumen, has been called
Margaret Brent – National Geographic Society
True, the society from which Leonard departed
was still rough, still violent and somewhat dangerous, but it was on a
solid footing and subsequent Governors of Maryland were only to build
upon and refine what Leonard had created. It is not inappropriate that
the Maryland flag is the only one of the 50 state flags to honor its
founders by name through the use of the family crest, and one of the
very few to commemorate its pre-colonial past at all. Only
The
The natives in Maryland were part of the great Iroquois Confederation, consisting of tribes controlling territory extending from the modern Canadian Maritime provinces, south to Virginia, and west to the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania, with disputed claims extending even further; all told, a territory larger than that controlled by Rome at the height of her Empire. But thirty years of interaction between coastal native Americans and the Europeans had led to some manner of understanding between the two cultures. The frictions had evolved into a generally more civil standoff, with Indians recognizing they were no match for gunpowder and the colonists being more interested in establishing their crops and fortunes than killing heathens.
In
To a far greater degree than the other
colonies,
While Leonard and Cecil agreed in principle
on most things, it was Leonard who was able to add a sense of
pragmatism to the directions he had received, particularly in the realm
of religion-as-politics. English Catholics of the time were primarily
landowners and otherwise drawn from the class of gentry.
When Cecil directed his brother that the
subject of religion was not to be discussed at sea during the voyage to
the new colony, his intention was obviously to prevent disaster and
keep the peace, for Catholics were a minority even on their own ships.
It was Leonard who translated this concept into a greater principle.
Even though
The practical reality of the situation was
that Cecil had inherited the full weight of managing his father’s
holdings and participating in the affairs of state appropriate to one
of his station.
Beyond that, it is highly probable that Cecil
was not fully aware of the completely pristine circumstances in which
he had set Leonard to work. While Cecil made references to the natives
in his letters (demanding, for instance, that they “surrender their
rights to me this year”), his primary goal was to establish the colony
as a Calvert mini-kingdom, mirroring
An excellent example exists today of the
communities Leonard caused to be established in early
St. Mary’s and Plimouth would have resembled
each other closely in technology and architecture. The roads were muddy
when wet, dusty when dry, and pigs and chickens roamed almost at will.
Homes, constructed of wood, stone and earth, were more often than not
only a single room often occupied by large families. Both
As Dorothy might have said in a different Oz,
"We're not in
PEERAGE & PIONEERS
-------------------------------------------
Cecil’s line:
Charles Calvert, 1637 - 1715, Third Lord Baltimore
Benedict Leonard Calvert, 1679 - 1715, Fourth Lord Baltimore
Charles Calvert, 1699 - 1751, Fifth Lord Baltimore
Frederick Calvert, 1732 - 1771, Sixth Lord Baltimore
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leonard’s line:
William Calvert, (died 1682)
George Calvert (dates unknown)
George Calvert, 1700 - 1782
************
(1656 * Harvard College accepts concept of
sun-centered universe * 1664 - British seize New Netherland (New York)
from the Dutch * 1670 - Estimated colonial population is 114,500 * 1677
- Peace treaty conference held between Maryland, Virginia, New
York and the Seneca Indians at Albany * 1687 - Isaac Newton publishes
his Principals of Natural Mathematics * 1705 - Idea of declaring
independence from England first shows up in print * 1707 -
Scotland united with England * 1740 - Estimated colonial
population is 889,000 * 1750 - Benjamin Franklin flies a kite in a
thunderstorm and isn’t electrocuted * 1760 - George III becomes King of
Great Britain. * 1769 - Daniel Boone leaves
************
The developments in Calvert history during
the period noted above are best explained by an event that happened
when it was all over. That descriptive event took place in 1781 when
the Governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, commissioned one George
Calvert, age 70, a descendant of Leonard’s line and cousin to a Omer
T’s great-great grandfather, as a Captain in the Virginia Militia. The
Governor’s action is significant for a number of reasons and points up
the differences that had evolved between the titled Calverts of England
and those who settled in
Cecil’s descendants remained primarily British and aristocratic in outlook and upbringing, their numbers multiplying while the wealth remained the property of whomever was the current Lord Baltimore. Portraits of the successive Lords, often as children, show the offspring of class and position often in settings of comfort and opulence.
Although several of Cecil’s descendants had
been dispatched to the colony where they served as Governor, Attorney
General, Secretary of the Province, and other lofty positions, they
held those positions as subjects of the Crown and on behalf of the
Baron and the King. These families continued to move - and marry - in
the upper circles of society as it had developed on this side of the
Several years earlier, in 1771, Frederick
Calvert, the Sixth Lord Baltimore, had died in
George Calvert, proprietor of Deep Hole Farm
in
Whatever else this George may have done,
Jefferson must have understood that offering the old man a commission in the militia would be taken as it was intended: a deliberate slap at the King, a sign of encouragement for Virginians who had not had much good news from the battlefield, and many of whom were not as favorably disposed toward independence as was Jefferson himself.
The American Revolution was only part of a
truly world war. The major powers of
In such an environment public opinion could
not be expected to be cohesive, and it wasn’t. Later studies of
publications, court records and other barometers of contemporary
sentiment have shown that the population at large was about evenly
divided into thirds over the subject of independence. The actively
pro-independence faction was balanced by an equal number who wished to
remain part of the
How did George Calvert, at age 70, find
himself possessed of strong enough sentiments to renounce his
inheritance? The most likely answer is to be found in de Tocqueville’s
observations about the contrast of family structure in democratic and
aristocratic societies. From Volume Two of his Democracy in
In
In
In countries organized on the basis of an aristocratic hierarchy...men confine themselves to controlling those next on the chain [and] society is, in truth, only concerned with the father. It only controls the father; it rules him and he rules his sons....He is the author and support of the family; he is also its magistrate. He is given a political right to command.
In democracies, where the long arm of government reaches each man among the crowd separately to bend him to obedience to the common laws, there is no need for such an intermediary. In the eyes of the law the father is only a fellow citizen older and richer than his sons.
When conditions generally are very unequal and this inequality is permanent, the concept of superiority works on the imagination of men. But when men are little different from one another and such differences are not permanent, the general conception of superiority becomes weakened and less defined.
When men {in aristocratic societies} are more concerned with what their ancestors thought than to think for themselves, the father is heard with deference, he is always addressed with respect, and the affection felt for him is ever mingled with fear. In democratic societies father and son live together in the same place and carry on the same work. Habit and necessity bring them together and force them to communicate.
In democratic society a son addresses his father with freedom, familiarity and tenderness all at once. Under democratic laws the members of a family are perfectly equal, and consequently independent; nothing forcibly brings them together, but also nothing drives them apart as in aristocratic societies where age and gender irrevocably fix the rank for each. Democracy overthrows or lowers all these barriers. Perhaps the division of patrimonies which follows from democracy does more than all the rest to alter the relations between father and children......
The “division of patrimonies” to which de Tocqueville refers is the breakup of estates made inevitable by the elimination of primogeniture within the American colonies.
Simply put, George Calvert, along with most of Leonard’s descendants, had decided, perhaps without realizing it, that he was American and not British. Cecil’s descendants might see themselves as superior by birthright, but on this side of the Atlantic, the aged Captain Calvert probably saw himself as no more and no less than another landowner. His frame of reference was American; his sense of class distinctions was less ingrained than his English kin. At the time of the American Revolution, residents of these shores had been making their own decisions for nearly 300 years, almost always on the basis of self-interest and not often influenced by “tradition”.
George wouldn’t have felt particularly superior to his fellow citizens, nor that he was giving up all that much by declining the honor of title. He may also have been influenced by the knowledge that his deceased cousin Frederick (of whom more in a separate section) had squandered much of the family estate and irreparably damaged the family’s social and political standing in aristocratic circles.
More and more distanced from power and position, their property divided by succeeding generations, surrounded by a population which largely didn’t care who your grandfather was, Leonard’s descendants probably didn’t experience their evolution of social status as anything but normal and natural. Rather than mourning the loss of the Calvert fortune, which they never held, Leonard’s descendants most probably saw an opportunity to rise - on their own merits - in this new and unbridled land.
The
The exodus from
If you stopped your grants, what would be the
consequence? The people would occupy without grants. They have already
so occupied in many places. You can not station garrisons in every part
of these deserts. If you drive the people from one place, they will
carry n their annual tillage and remove with their flocks and herds to
another. Many of the people in the back settlements are already little
attached to particular situations. Already they have topped the
In
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V FRONTIERSMEN, FARMERS
& FA William Calvert, 1732 - 1812 Gerrard Calvert, 1765 - 1840 William B. Calvert, 1799 - 1864 Burgess Durury Calvert, 1832 - 1923 William Burgess Calvert, 1863 - 1955 Omer Triplett Calvert, 1890 - 1974 |
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(1775 - Battle of Lexington and Concord * 1781 - British surrender at Yorktown, VA *1803 - Louisiana Purchase * 1790 - United States population is 3,929,214 * 1792 - Kentucky becomes 15th state * 1807 - Fulton’s steamboat makes it from New York to Albany without blowing up * 1836 - photography invented * 1846 - US extends from Atlantic to Pacific * 1869 - Union & Central Pacific Railroad across the US completed *1876 - Telephone invented * 1903 - Wright Brothers first flight)
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By 1797 Leonard’s great-great-grandson
William had packed up the family and moved from
Until 1744, when the first white
explorers set foot in the region, the settlement of the North American
continent was restricted to the Atlantic coast. As late as the 1760’s
there were still only small, widely separated settled areas of
The settlement of
The settlers were pretty much on their own
until the demand for land became a political issue in Congress and
President Washington dispatched General “Mad Anthony”
Indian raids and full-scale battles (not to mention unscrupulous land speculators and the general riffraff that follows any migration) were major concerns for the entire period from 1744, when the first whites entered Kentucky, until the early 1800’s when the Iroquois, Cherokee, Delaware, Wyandot, Kaskaskia, Chippewa and Shawnee who vigorously and aggressively resisted the settlers’ encroachment on their lands, had been driven off or killed and Kentucky emerged from “frontier” status to join the rest of the states as a settled community.
By the early 1800’s
The success and early rapid growth of the
city can be attributed to the fact that