After decades of studies, researchers in Maryland have managed to locate the traces of the first permanent English settlement in the state, one of the oldest settlements of what will be the Thirteen British colonies of America, embryo of the modern United States. It was the archaeologists of the Historic St. Mary’s City who announced the discoveries: it is the fort of St. Mary’s, little more than a palisade with a series of buildings inside, founded in 1634 by a hundred colonists from the Great Brittany and led by Leonard Calvert, first governor of the city.
It was from the 1930s, explains the Washington Post, that scholars were trying to locate this fortress essential for the English colonial expansion, but soon abandoned and therefore remained unknown to us. Suffice it to say that already in 1694 the capital of Maryland was moved to Annapolis. It is the fourth oldest English colonial fort, a truly remote era if we think of the young history of the States, preceded only by Jamestown built in 1607, Plymouth in 1620 and Massachusetts Bay in 1630.
Leading the excavation team was the archaeologist Travis Parno, together with the geophysical archaeologist Tim Horsley. In fact, aerial photos and radar surveys were indispensable, allowing us to locate the traces of the palisades, in what today looks like simply a meadow near the St. Mary’s River. The excavations in 2019 had then confirmed the aerial discoveries, but the public announcement had been postponed due to the blocking of works caused by the coronavirus.
The researchers explained that around 150 settlers sailed from the Isle of Wight into the English Channel. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean aboard The Ark and The Dove, they landed in March 1634 on this side of the American East Coast. Of this group, in addition to numerous English Catholics and Protestants, were part of Leonard Calvert Catholic and first governor of the city and a Jesuit priest, Andrew White.
The existence of the wooden palisade was known thanks to letters sent by Governor Calvert in May 1634 to a business associate, explains the Washington Post, who had told of a fortress more impressive than the one found (perhaps a project that was only half successful), with the presence of four small pieces of artillery placed at the corners. Similar in size to a football field, the open settlement has a single bastion. The trigger of a musket and the tip of an arrow were also found on the site.
Also interesting are the studies on the first contacts between the settlers and the indigenous people who inhabited those lands for centuries, the Yaocomaco Indians. According to what Father White reported at the time, the relationships were collaborative and the newcomers, to try not to annoy the natives, bought the land paying in kind with work tools such as axes and hoes, as well as fabrics. Future research on the traces left by the poles in the ground could confirm that, inside the fort or near it, there were also indigenous houses and not only English. The discovery helps shed light on the origins of the United States of America, declared independent by London in 1776, but direct heirs of these first men who, fleeing religious persecution or in search of fortune, faced the Atlantic and went to inhabit these unknown lands.
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