MD -- Port Tobacco:
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- PTTOB_151012_07.JPG: Port Tobacco
In this center of Confederate activity, at the Brawner Hotel, Detective Captain William Williams unsuccessfully offered Thomas Jones $100,000 reward for information that would lead to the capture of John Wilkes Booth.
- PTTOB_151012_10.JPG: Port Tobacco: A Maryland Mosaic:
On this ground, two cultures -- Indian and European -- confronted one another. Here a commercial town and government center grew, declined, grew again, and declined again. Residents raised supplies for the Continental Army and, during the depression after the American Revolution, closed the courts to prevent foreclosures. A great US President's kidnapping was plotted, a scheme that ended in his murder. Twenty years earlier two free Africans were tried and convicted in the courthouse for leading a peaceful slave insurrection. This is Port Tobacco.
Potobacs, one of hte ancestral groups of today's Picataway Indians and other native groups, had a village on this area in the 1600s. By the end of that century or early in the next Europeans built a scatter of houses and warehouses called Chandler's Town. Renamed Charles Town in 1727, but known locally throughout its history as Port Tobacco, the town became, and remained, the seat of Charles County government until 1896.
The only surviving map of the town dates to 1888, 200 years after initial European settlement. Over those years the town's inhabitants and neighbors shared in the nation's major experiences:
* contact and conflicts with Native Americans;
* the Revolutionary War;
* religious diversity;
* slavery;
* the Civil War; and
* segregation, to name a few.
The people of Port Tobacco helped forge the nation's character. Current research examines those people and the name they helped create.
The Port Tobacco Archaeological Project was created in 2007 to research the 300-year-old town and its aboriginal predecessors.
Tens of thousands of artifacts have been unearthed to date, many dating to the years before the American Revolution of 1776 to 1783. Scientists study those objects to learn about the beliefs and customs of the area's inhabitants, and to illuminate a complex history that has shaped our present.
- PTTOB_151012_21.JPG: Lots of bugs!
- PTTOB_151012_33.JPG: Port Tobacco: Conspiracy & the Plot to Assassinate President Lincoln:
Port Tobacco was the home and place of business of George Atzerodt. Although he failed to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson, he was convicted and executed for his role in the plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln.
Part of the plot -- when it was supposed to be the abduction of the president to Richmond -- was hatched in Port Tobacco, possibly at Atzerodt's carriage shop or his home (neither of which has yet been located) the Smooth Hotel, or at the St. Charles Hotel. Atzerodt testified that conspirators John Surratt and John Wilkes Booth came to Port Tobacco several times.
Local Union Army units scoured the countryside in search of the assassins for several hectic days in April 1865. Some of those units were stationed in and around Port Tobacco. Archaeological investigations at one nearby camp produced:
* discarded ammunition,
* horseshoes, and
* personal and uniform items belonging to the soldiers
- PTTOB_151012_41.JPG: Port Tobacco: Commerce:
During the 17th century, local Indians often traded corn and deerskins to colonists for knives, steel needles, kettles, cloth, and beads. By the early 18th century, while most colonists dispersed across the countryside to farm the land, a few -- particularly Scottish emigres -- settled in towns, operating stores out of their houses. Both Stagg Hall and Chimney House are surviving examples of merchant houses and stores. Stagg Hall was built ca. 1740 for merchant John Parnham.
Stagg Hall's well-preserved interior woodwork (left) and exterior make Stagg Hall an extraordinary example of early Colonial architecture. Extensively restored in the 20th century, Chimney House (the Barnes-Compton House) was built for merchant Thomas Ridgate in the late 1700s.
Scots factors (agents of merchant firms in Glasgow and Edinburgh) and English merchants (immigrants and American-born) sold European goods for cash an on credit to the Potobac Indians and to town residents and area farmers. Cash was hard to come by, so deerskins, tobacco, other agricultural products and implements, and slaves secured credit. Many of the 18th and early 19th-century artifacts recovered from Port Tobacco were imported from Great Britain.
By the 1750s Scots factors had established an extensive network of stores along the Potomac River and sold European goods on credit in exchange for tobacco, the cash crop throughout the Chesapeake. During the 1760s, Port Tobacco passed at least a million pounds of tobacco annually which was shipped to Britain, France, Holland, and Russia.
- PTTOB_151012_50.JPG: On to Yorktown
Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail
-- Road to Victory --
Upon arrival of French forces in Newport, Rhode Island in July 1780, Baron Ludwig von Closen, a captain in the Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment, was selected by General Rochambeau as one of his aides-de-camp. Closen accompanied Rochambeau on most of his visits with General Washington and was chosen as courier of many important communications, including messages to the French fleet commanders Admirals de Barras and De Grasse. Closen kept a detailed diary of his activities throughout his stay in America, including the Yorktown Campaign of 1781.
At Baltimore on 12 September 1781, Closen and his fellow aide-de-camp Baron Marie-Francois Cromot Dubourg decided to separate from the main army and seek a shorter route to Williamsburg. That evening they set out with four servants and 10 horses. Traveling without a guide they lost their way and spent the night at a remote farm. The next day they rode through Queen Anne to Upper Marlboro from where they continued to Port Tobaccco on 14 September.
Closen described Port Tobacco as "situated at the foot of a hill, where there is a stream bordered by about twenty houses....In the evening we had time to climb up to the church, which is situated on a dominating height, from which we had a delightful view." The church was St. Ignatius, described by Cromot Dubourg as "very handsome."
The next day they traveled to Laidler's Lower Ferry Landing at Charlestown (now Morgantown) where they took Hooes' Ferry to Point Mathias on the Virginia side of the Potomac. They reached Williamsburg on 18 September, Closen regularly entered the trenches with the regiment and had the satisfaction of witnessing Lord Cornwallis surrender his forces on 19 October 1781.
- PTTOB_151012_58.JPG: John Wilkes Booth
Escape of an Assassin
-- War on the Chesapeake Bay --
Divided loyalties and ironies tore at Marylander's hearts throughout the Civil War: enslaved African-Americans and free United States Colored Troops; spies and smugglers; civilians imprisoned without trial to protect freedom; neighbors and families at odds in Maryland and faraway battlefields. From the Eastern Shore to the suburbs of Washington, eastern Maryland endured those strains of civil war in ways difficult to imagine today.
Those strains continued even after Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. John Wilkes Booth used the help of Southern Maryland's Confederate underground during his flight from Washington, D.C. after shooting President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865.
Discover the story of Booth's escape and other fascinating history for yourself as you drive through some of Maryland's prettiest countryside and most charming small towns. Follow the sign of the bugle to learn about the war on the Chesapeake, visit the site of the war's largest prison camp and follow Booth to his eventual capture south of the Potomac River.
Please drive carefully as you enjoy the history and beauty of Maryland's Civil War Trails.
- PTTOB_151012_77.JPG: Port Tobacco
The Indian village of Potobac, visited in 1608 by Capt. John Smith, occupied this site. County Seat of Charles County, 1658 - 1895. Washington visited here frequently. Site of St. Columba Lodge No. 11 A. F.& A. M., chartered April 18, 1793.
Erected by St. Columba Lodge No. 150 A. F. & A. M, La Plata, Maryland, 1932. Replaced and relocated 1976.
- Wikipedia Description: Port Tobacco
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Port Tobacco is an unincorporated community in Charles County, Maryland. Once a bustling port providing indirect access to the Potomac River, Port Tobacco was a commercial hub for colonial Maryland and served as the county seat of Charles County from 1658 to 1895. Unfortunately, erosion from excessive agricultural use and poor soil conservation caused significant siltation at the head of the Port Tobacco River, which eventually became unnavigable to larger merchant vessels. As such, commercial activity at the port dwindled by the time of the Civil War.
In 1888, a small portion of the town's square incorporated as Port Tobacco Village and may have signaled an attempt by the town's residents to address the port's decline. That decline, however, was only exacerbated by the completion of a nearby rail line to Pope's Creek in 1873 operated by the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad. The new line bypassed Port Tobacco and ran further south to another port directly on the Potomac River. New communities eventually sprang up along the railway and prospered, including the town of LaPlata, which succeeded Port Tobacco as the county seat in 1895.
Historic landmarks within Port Tobacco include Chapel Point, home of St. Thomas Manor and St. Ignatius Church, the oldest continuously active Jesuit complex in the world, and the oldest Catholic parish in the Thirteen Colonies; Mulberry Grove, the birthplace of John Hanson; and Rose Hill manor house.
In addition to Rose Hill and St. Thomas Manor, Ellerslie, Thomas Stone National Historic Site, Linden, Mt. Carmel Monastery, Port Tobacco Historic District, Retreat, and Stagg Hall are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Notable People
Edwin Nicholson, Founder of Project Healing Waters - Fly Fishing
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