When our great ancestor came to the Eastern Shore, land could be taken up for sixty-five cents an acre. A man could cultivate 6000 hills of tobacco and five acres of corn. One pound of tobacco would buy three pound of beef, and two pounds would buy a chicken. A hogshead of tobacco would supply a family with the luxuries of life for a year, while the gun and net furnished the pantry. The bays and rivers were soon full of craft of various sized; the hunting grounds were turned into tobacco fields; and the back woods receded further from civilization, so that the Eastern Shore became great within the compass of three lives.
The policy of the Eastern Shore settlers was to treat the Indians with kindness and to acquire their land by purchase. To smoke the pipe of peace with the early white settlers was an universal custom among the tribes, but this practice was regarded in a far different light from the practice of smoking with us. Tobacco was to them a sacred herb and a precious gift of the Great Spirit to his children. The act of smoking was, therefore, a ceremony of a religious character. A large ornamental pipe was kept in every village for the reception of strangers. The chief filled and lighted the pipe of peace, and, after smoking a little; handed it to the principal men. If the visitors refused to smoke, their intentions were evil, but if they smoked it was a sign of peace. When the Indians became tired of their deadly conflicts with the white settlers they were willing to sell them their real estate. But civilization seemed to have a blighting effect upon them and they wandered from their reservations, moving towards the western wilderness.
The early settlers of the Eastern Shore were mostly an industrious class, who were attracted here not only on account of the salubrious climate and fertile soil, but also by the friendly act of religious toleration. Virginia and Massachusetts banished the Quakers, but there was no inquisition, martyrdom or banishment possible in Maryland. The Quakers, therefore, came here in large numbers and settled among the Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists. There were at tone time probably more Quakers in some sections of Maryland than all the other religious denominations together. Their custom, language and habits were not objectionable here and did not generate persecution or hostility. England even banished her political prisoners here and they were welcome because all labor was valuable in the production of tobacco and other necessary commodities. Land and living were cheap, but labor was comparatively high. Slavery alone spoiled the value of unskilled labor in this section.
Religious toleration was first exemplified in the heterogeneous population of the Eastern Shore. The New England Puritan and the Roman Catholic here worked side by side, and even the Quaker found a refuge form the lash, pillory, cart tail and ear cropper. Here Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Spaniards, Italians, French, Belgians, Dutch, Germans and Bohemians, coming form the vexed nations of Europe sought and found asylums for the oppressed. This was a cosmopolitan colony, and the religious liberty was enjoyed by all; Maryland from the first was the home of every race. Virginia was settled by gentlemen and New England, by seekers after religious liberty, but in this colony the yeomanry were the principal settlers.
The white people who first come to the Eastern Shore were not very well educated, and thought more about horse racing, fox hunting, card playing, dancing and cock-fighting than they did about school masters and books. The parents being illiterate, allowed their children to grow up in ignorance. They had so much to do in cutting down the primeval forests and planting their crops that they had very little time for the school room. Indeed, there were very few books printed at that time and there were only two news papers printed in Maryland as early as 1775.
It is even said that in the courts of Maryland very few justices of the peace could write their own names. Tobacco was their meat, drink, clothing and medium of exchange. The women wore linsey-woolsey frocks and the men we re clothed with home spun, fustian round-abouts and breeches, and they all ate hog and hominy. In 1651 Lord Baltimore issued silver and copper money of different values. Annapolis had the honor of furnishing the first silver money for change. It was coined by a goldsmith who had obtained the right form the Governor. Prior to that time Spanish dollars had been cut into halves and quarters to make change.
The question may be asked by strangers who visit the locality which is known as the Eastern Shore, where our great-ancestor settled two hundred and fifty years ago, and who observe the conditions which obtain today, what ever drew intelligent people into this section of the country? A little research of history will convince the most skeptical of its extreme value at that time, and he will wonder why all the civilized world did not find a source of attraction here. This very locality, a part of which is now desert sand, and thousands of acres grown up in pine, bushes and sedge grass, was once a veritable garden of flowers, fruits and vegetables of every kind. But the tobacco planter exhausted the soil and the greater portion of the pine woods in this section mark the site of worn out tobacco fields.
The Eastern Shore had a greater variety of soil and climate, flora and fauna, than any other section of the New World that was then known. Here seemed to meet the four cardinal points of the compass. The forest produced both hard and soft wood, the magnolia and the northern pine, hickory and maple, white pine and white oak, sassafras and dog-wood: while the fields abounded in all kinds of natural fruits, berries and grasses of spontaneous growth, and, before the first generation of settlers passed away, orchards of apple and peach trees were growing luxuriously where the primeval forests had been removed for the growth of the tobacco plant.
There were 250 miles of water front along the Chesapeake Bay and its estuaries, and 50 navigable streams cutting into the tidewater section in every possible direction. These were alive with water fowl and shell fish. Oysters and crabs, diamond back terrapin and canvas back ducks, the swan, goose and dipper were here in abundance. Ducks were so plentiful that a dozen could be killed at a shot. Here were fish of every kind, and venison became a tiresome food. Wild turkeys could be shot anywhere and rewards were offered for killing squirrel, because they were destructive to crops. Quail, pheasant, snipe, woodcock, raccoons, opossum, wild pigeons and hares were plentiful. Bear was killed as late as 1770, and the lineal descendants of the same Reynard family are yet being chased by hounds.
Our great ancestors took up little land that did not border on water; nearly every planter had navigable salt water within rifle's shot of this front door. It afforded a facility of communication with one another and with the outside world not possessed by any other colony on the continent.