Chesapeake Bay Historic St. Mary’s City, the fourth oldest settlement in Colonial America, provided an exciting mix of colorful living history and fascinating archaeology, all set in a beautiful tidewater landscape. Lord Baltimore's 17th-century capital stood ready to be rediscovered with some costumed interpreters. In 1634 George Calvert came with two hundred British colonists to establish Maryland’s first colony open to religious tolerance. Strolling in the township’s tobacco plantation with an indentured servant girl working off her ship passage gave us an authentic glance at early colonial life. The roadside rest stop known as an ordinary provided any traveler in need a tick (floor mattress) and meal for a night.
Payment was done with tobacco as the currency.
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| Herbs and gardens sustained the early British colonist. |
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| Colonial women often went barefoot and helped farm tobacco plantations in 1684 |
It also wasn’t hard not to love the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland. The museum sprawls across 18 beautiful acres smack in the middle of the harbor of one of the Eastern Shore's prettiest towns. There is an intact 1879 "screwpile" lighthouse that can transport you into the life of a lonely lighthouse-keeper in the middle of Hooper Strait on the Bay. A climb to the top of an 1879 Hooper’s lighthouse for a view of the harbor, walking through a crab cannery, being on board an oyster boat and dining at The Crab Clam Restaurant is all great fun. The Maritime Museum has an eye-catching fleet of 85 traditional Chesapeake Bay craft ranging from an 1889 log-bottom "bugeye" to a duck-hunting "sneak box." You can learn how to bait a crab trap and “dredge” or "nipper" for oysters. Blue crabs instead of Dungeness crabs are found in the Atlantic. The Museum’s floating fleet of historic Chesapeake Bay watercraft is the largest in existence and its small boat collection includes crabbing skiffs, workboats, and log canoes. JR being an old salt sailor was naturally enthralled with the boat restorers, ship models, a working boat yard, and history of the Bay’s oyster and crabmeat industries.
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| JR checks out a shipjack restoration workshop |
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| Hooper's Light Station prism |
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| Chesapeake Bay log canoe boats for oyster dredging |
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| Log canoe racing is a popular sport for any crew member today |
Chesapeake Bay Historic St. Mary’s City, the fourth oldest settlement in Colonial America, provided an exciting mix of colorful living history and fascinating archaeology, all set in a beautiful tidewater landscape. Lord Baltimore's 17th-century capital stood ready to be rediscovered with some costumed interpreters. In 1634 George Calvert came with two hundred British colonists to establish Maryland’s first colony open to religious tolerance. Strolling in the township’s tobacco plantation with an indentured servant girl working off her ship passage gave us an authentic glance at early colonial life. The roadside rest stop known as an ordinary provided any traveler in need a tick (floor mattress) and meal for a night.
It also wasn’t hard not to love the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland. The museum sprawls across 18 beautiful acres smack in the middle of the harbor of one of the Eastern Shore's prettiest towns. There is an intact 1879 "screwpile" lighthouse that can transport you into the life of a lonely lighthouse-keeper in the middle of Hooper Strait on the Bay. A climb to the top of an 1879 Hooper’s lighthouse for a view of the harbor, walking through a crab cannery, being on board an oyster boat and dining at The Crab Clam Restaurant is all great fun. The Maritime Museum has an eye-catching fleet of 85 traditional Chesapeake Bay craft ranging from an 1889 log-bottom "bugeye" to a duck-hunting "sneak box." You can learn how to bait a crab trap and “dredge” or "nipper" for oysters. Blue crabs instead of Dungeness crabs are found in the Atlantic. The Museum’s floating fleet of historic Chesapeake Bay watercraft is the largest in existence and its small boat collection includes crabbing skiffs, workboats, and log canoes. JR being an old salt sailor was naturally enthralled with the boat restorers, ship models, a working boat yard, and history of the Bay’s oyster and crabmeat industries.
