St. Mary's College of Maryland Preservation Master Plan

St. Mary’s College of MarylandPreservation Master PlanHistoric St. Mary’s City February 2008for regional “free schools” in different Maryland counties.These schools were publicly funded but charged tuition,and were established under an act passed in 1723. After anew law was passed in 1728, public funding came from theproceeds of a poll tax on “All Negroes” in Maryland. Sincenearly all blacks in the colony at this time were enslaved, thistax presumably was paid by their owners (Fausz 1990:26;Hammett 1990:294; Moody 2007). The St. Mary’s CountyFree School merged in 1774 with its counterparts in Charlesand Prince George’s Counties to form the Charlotte HallSchool in northern St. Mary’s County. Charlotte Hall School,which operated until 1976, was an important precedent forother institutions, for it evinced strong moral and financialsupport from its board of wealthy trustees, it successfullyemployed a boarding-school model for the first time in itsregion, and it demonstrated that even a rural, remote areacould support a public institution of higher learning. Still,institutions to educate females were rare and, in the South,usually affiliated with a religious denomination. A Catholicrenaissance in Maryland led to the establishment of ahandful of Catholic schools for females as well as males inthe early 1800s, but these were not in St. Mary’s County.Public institutions offering education for female studentsdid not exist at all in the United States until Massachusettsestablished its first female public normal school in 1839(Fausz 1990:25-28).St. Mary’s County in the 1830s was a remote, rural,economically depressed region, too poor to support evenone financial institution and largely overlooked by the stategovernment. Maryland’s Bicentennial in 1834 passed withno commemoration of St. Mary’s City as the birthplace of thestate, and what little remained of the old city was forgottenby most. In 1838, however, things changed when JohnPendleton Kennedy published a popular novel, Rob of theBowl: A Legend of St. Inigoe’s, a fictional account of life incolonial St. Mary’s City, which cast new light on the Calvertsand the history of Maryland’s founding. Kennedy’s work,drawing on rare historic documents, generated considerableinterest statewide in the St. Mary’s City site and what littleremained of the first city (Fausz 1990:28-29).In early 1840, the three St. Mary’s County representatives tothe Maryland Assembly, Col. William R. Coad, Col. James T.Blackistone, and Dr. Joseph F. Shaw, capitalized on this newattention in an attempt to stimulate progress and improveeducational opportunities in the county. They introduceda bill proposing the establishment of a state-funded publicfemale seminary at St. Mary’s City to serve as a livingmonument to Maryland’s founders and their achievements,with a keen awareness of history and an aim to provide aPage 2-17