History of St. Mary's College of Maryland

The college’s history spans from the early colonial days of St. Mary's City through to the present, including the establishment of religious tolerance and its later loss, long periods of oppression followed by the expansion of freedom as the result of the American Civil War, and through the 19th and 20th centuries to the modern-day public honors college.

[9] In 1634, at the time of the arrival of the first colonists, there was a Native American village on the site that was a part of the Yaocomico branch of the Piscataway Indian Nation.

[12] When the colonists first came ashore, the paramount chief of the Yaocomico was already well aware of Europeans due to earlier contact with explorers and traders, as well as news from Virginia tribes that were already co-existing with British colonial settlements.

The chief was keen to establish trade with the English and he was also in the process of relocating his people due to war with another tribe.

[11][13] The colonists initially lived in Indian longhouses from the prior village, along with some remaining Yaocomico people who had stayed behind to help them.

In the early days of St. Mary's City the young colony suffered from many problems, including periods of violent religious conflict[17] between Protestants and Catholics,[17] in spite of Lord Baltimore's mandate of tolerance,[7][18] as well as disease and the establishment of slavery.

Mathias de Sousa was an indentured servant in early St. Mary's City,[20][21] possibly of African and Portuguese heritage,[21] who gained his freedom and established himself as a trader and a mariner in the colony.

[1][7][18] In the male-dominated frontier environment of the colonies,[7][17] far away from the courts of England, Brent was also forced to defend her legal right to manage her own estate before the Maryland Assembly.

[1][22] Catholics lost the right to vote[23] and were prevented from worshipping in public[23][24] (prohibitions that lasted in Maryland for nearly a century, until the late 1700s)[24][25] and the new Protestant leadership moved the capitol to Annapolis.

[1][4] With the capitol moved and widespread persecution of the Catholic community,[23] St. Mary's City was abandoned[4][26] and became a ghost town,[26] except for use as farmland.

[19] By the late 1600s there had been about 1,000 slaves in all the different settlements of the Maryland colony combined, but during the first 75 years of the 1700s, the number of enslaved people increased to nearly 100,000, and kept growing.

[19] Over time, the farms in St. Mary's City were consolidated into a large antebellum slave plantation which lasted for more than 150 years until the Civil War.

[29] Ruins and archeological research in the area has shown that slaves lived in poorly insulated huts, enduring the extremes of Maryland weather with little comfort or protection.

[24] Wealthy Catholics would secretly send their children abroad to get religious education, but to discourage this, Maryland laws were passed fining parents who did this.

[37] In order to discourage further importation of Irish indentured servants, who were largely Catholic, a prohibitive tax was imposed to try to prevent bringing any more of them to Maryland.

Even after legal restrictions eased in the 1820s, hostility towards Catholics and religious tensions continued in Maryland until the first half of the 20th century.

[44] Kennedy then tapped the increased public interest to campaign for erecting a monument to the memory of religious tolerance in St. Mary's City.

The legislature voted to create, fund and designate a nondenominational[49] school in St. Mary's City as a "Living monument to religious freedom".

[49] This was a milestone at the time, because only ten years earlier had the last of Maryland's notorious anti-Catholic "penal codes" been revoked.

Thus the non-denominational "St. Mary's seminary" was born,[1][49] named after the original colonial settlement, now only ruins in the same place where the school was founded.

Students and faculty of the time were witnesses to some of the local history of this era, literally watching the historic struggle and eventually, the resulting expansion of human rights, visible out the windows of the school.

By the 1930s, the steamboat service to the school was more of a tradition than a necessity, and it was losing clientele Bay-wide due to the increased usage of automobiles.

He led a campaign to significantly expand all levels of education, by securing numerous capitol programs from the Maryland state Legislature.

[66] This also included a campaign by Raley to expand St. Mary's Seminary Junior College into a four-year liberal arts institution.

[70] During the entire summer season of 1976, he performed in the stage production of "Wings of the Morning"[70][71] a historical play about the founding of the Maryland colony and the beginnings of democracy there.

Washington played the role of a real historical figure from colonial St. Mary's City, Mathias de Sousa,[20][70][71] who was possibly of both African and Portuguese heritage[20] and if so, was America's first Black legislator.

This experience had a lasting influence on the course of Washington's acting career, as he later sought out numerous historical roles, including portrayals of Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Herman Boone and Melvin B. Tolson.

Washington also later won an Academy Award for his role in the film Glory where he played the part of Private Silas Trip, who served in a United States Colored Troops regiment during the American Civil War.

During his time as president, Lewis oversaw an expansion of the Brent scholars' program for first generation college students.

[2] The center's mission is to apply lessons[81] and inspiration[2] derived from the area's history[2] to study of the following modern day issues[2][81]-- St. Mary's College has had many students and faculty win Fulbright awards.