Indigenous peoples Native Americans have inhabited Southern Maryland since at least 12,000 years ago. Settlements include
Moyaone, also known as the
Accokeek Creek Site, which has been intermittently inhabited for 6,000 years, and the Biscoe Gray Heritage Farm, which was inhabitated as early as 200
CE. The
Piscataway people have been the historically dominant tribe, with territory including Southern Maryland and extending from modern-day
Baltimore County to the
Appalachian Mountains foothills. Other groups include the
Yaocomico, which inhabited an area around the
St. Mary's River, the
Potapoco, who inhabited an area around
Port Tobacco, the
Mattawoman, who lived along
Mattawoman Creek, and the
Patuxent people, who lived along the Chesapeake Bay. These groups were
Algonquian as they spoke
Algonquian languages. They were also of the
Eastern Woodland culture group.
Colonial era of the
Maryland Colony English explorer
Captain John Smith explored the area in 1608, where he and his men encountered local indigenous groups.
Cecilius Calvert was granted a charter to establish a colony meant to be a safe-haven for
Catholics in 1632. Expeditions were launched into modern day Maryland, with an expedition reaching
St. Clement's Island in 1634. Later that year, the
Maryland Colony was established by
Leonard Calvert, first
Governor of Maryland and brother of Cecilius. The colony's capital, and first settlement, was the newly established
St. Mary's City. After 61 years as Maryland's capital an
uprising of Protestants put an end to religious tolerance, overthrowing the old Catholic leadership and putting an end to colonial St. Mary's City itself, moving the colonial capital to
Annapolis. Originally, laborers were
Indentured Servants, with African slaves arriving in 1639. By 1755, one third of Maryland's population were enslaved Africans. The profits from slavery also provided the means for Maryland's
gentry to gain power and dominate politics. 272 slaves from across Maryland, including the Southern Maryland counties of Charles, St. Mary's, and Prince George's, were sold during the
1838 Jesuit slave sale to two planters in
Louisiana. A notable abolitionist from southern Maryland was
Josiah Henson, a slave who was born in Charles County before escaping to
Canada. Henson wrote an
autobiography that inspired
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin''. Dunmore's forces were defeated by local
Flying Camp militia led by Captain
Rezin Beall, and they left the island on August 9, 1776. During the war, American slaves throughout the Chesapeake region flocked to British lines following
Dunmore's Proclamation, which promised freedom for slaves who fought for the British military. Intent on marching to
Washington, the British marched to
Upper Marlboro before engaging American troops at the
Battle of Bladensburg. The battle resulted in a British victory. By nightfall on August 24, 1814, British forces
entered Washington and burned several government buildings. The British then marched back to Benedict. Similarly to what occurred in the Revolutionary War, enslaved Marylanders fled to British controlled areas to receive freedom. and Southern Maryland was sympathetic to the
Confederates next to
Maryland's Eastern Shore. From the war's beginning, however, large numbers of
Union occupying troops and patrolling river gunboats prevented the state's secession, although frequent nighttime smuggling across the
Potomac River with
Virginia took place, including of
Maryland men volunteering for Confederate service.
John Wilkes Booth was helped by several people in his escape through the area and in crossing the river after
killing President
Abraham Lincoln. Thousands of captured Confederate troops were confined in harsh conditions at
Point Lookout Prison Camp at the southern tip of the peninsula. During the war, in November 1863, Maryland ratified a
new state Constitution which abolished slavery in the state. Southern Maryland was
segregated by race, with African Americans being repressed in fields such as healthcare. In 1911, state delegate
Walter Digges and state senator
William J. Frere, both of Charles County, proposed the
Digges Amendment to the
state constitution, which attempted to disenfranchise African American voters. The amendment was rejected during the 1911 Maryland general election. Public schools in Southern Maryland were segregated by race, with
desegregation occurring after the
U.S. Supreme Court decision in
Brown v. Board of Education. In 1937, school teacher
Harriet Elizabeth Brown, with the help of
NAACP attorney and future
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, successfully sued the
Calvert County Public Schools system to equalize salary discrepancies between black and white school teachers. In 1969,
La Plata High School faced racial protests after no African Americans were allowed to be
Majorettes. Protesting students were not given their diplomas during graduation as punishment, with the protestors receiving their diplomas in 2021 during a special celebration. Folk singer
Bob Dylan wrote
protest song "
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" in response to the murder of an African American server by a white Charles County landowner in
Baltimore. The landowner faced a light sentence of six months in a county jail, after being convicted of assault.
20th Century Southern Maryland was traditionally a
rural,
agricultural, oyster
fishing and
crabbing region; linked by passenger and freight steamboat routes. These steamboat routes operated on the
Chesapeake Bay and major rivers until the 1930s before the building of highways and the
Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge on
U.S. Highway 301. (The latter
highway was named after
Robert Crain, an attorney who owned the state's largest farm,
Mount Victoria, and who campaigned for the road's construction). Weekend excursion boats also carried Washingtonians to small amusement parks and amusement pavilions at numerous Potomac shore locations. From 1949 (1943 in some places) to 1968, the region was known for its poverty and its
slot machine gambling. Following president
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 7037, which established the
Rural Electrification Administration, the
Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) was established in 1937. SMECO was established by Southern Maryland residents after the region was historically ignored by commercial
power companies, and played a role in electrifying Southern Maryland. and gambling in the region came to be seen as a blight and was outlawed by Governor
J. Millard Tawes and the state legislature. A local political figure,
St. Mary's County politician
J. Frank Raley Jr. organized a slate of local candidates with the platform of challenging the political status-quo and lifting the region out of its generations long poverty. These developments are credited for enabling the development of modern St. Mary's County. ==Population and economy==