The Indian tribes living in the region that was to become Maryland were Algonkian-speakers: the Accomac, Nanticoke, and Wicomico on the Eastern Shore, and the Susquehannock, Yacomico, and Piscataway on the Western Shore. The Susquehannock, the most powerful tribe at the time of English colonization, claimed all the land lying between the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers. Although the Algonkian Indians hunted for much of their food, many tribes (including the Susquehannock) also had permanent settlements where they cultivated corn (maize), vegetables, tobacco, and other crops. George Alsop, in his Character of the Province of Maryland (1666), noted that Susquehannock women "are the Butchers, Cooks, and Tillers of the ground but the men think it below the honour of a Masculine to stoop to any thing but that which their Gun, or Bow and Arrows can Command." European penetration of the Chesapeake region began early in the 16th century, with the expeditions of Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine navigator, and the Spaniard Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón. Captain John Smith, leader of the English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, was the first English explorer of Chesapeake Bay (1608) and produced a map of the area that was used for years.
The founding of Maryland is intimately tied to the career of another Englishman, George Calvert. A favorite of King James I, Calvert left the Church of England in 1624 to become a Roman Catholic. He announced his conversion in 1625 and—because Catholics were not allowed to hold public office in England at that time—then resigned his post as secretary of state and, against the king's wishes, retired from the royal court. As a reward for Calvert's service, the king bestowed upon him large Irish estates and a peerage with the title of Baron of Baltimore. Two years later, Calvert sailed for the New World, landing in Newfoundland, to which he had received title in 1621. After a severe winter, however, Calvert decided to seek his fortunes where the weather was warmer—in Virginia. Not well-received there because of his religion, Calvert returned to England and asked King Charles I (James's successor) for land south of Virginia; instead he received a grant north of the Potomac. Virginia's agents in England contested Calvert's right to this land strenuously but unsuccessfully, and when he died in 1632, the title passed to his son Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (usually called Lord Baltimore), who named the region Maryland after the queen consort of Charles I, Henrietta Maria. At this time, the land grant embraced not only present-day Maryland but also the present State of Delaware, a large part of Pennsylvania, and the valley between the north and south branches of the Potomac River. Not until the 1760s was the final boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland (as surveyed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon) established by royal decree, and nearly a century passed before Maryland conceded to Virginia the land between the north and south branches of the Potomac.
The government of provincial Maryland was absolute, embodying the most extensive grant of royal powers to a colonial settlement. Lord Baltimore's main source of income as lord proprietary was the quitrents settlers paid for their land; in return for his authority, Calvert had to give the king only two Indian arrows yearly. Lord Baltimore assigned to his half-brother, Leonard Calvert, the task of organizing the settlement of the colony. On 22 November 1633, Calvert and approximately 250 settlers, including many Roman Catholics and two Jesuit priests, set sail for America on two ships, the Ark and the Dove. They landed at St. Clements Island on 25 March 1634. Two days later, Calvert purchased a site from the Indians, named it St. Marys (the first capital of Maryland), and assumed the governorship of the colony.
The early days of settlement were tumultuous. The refusal by a Virginia colonist, William Claiborne of Kent Island, to acknowledge Lord Baltimore's charter led to a small war that ended in 1638 with a temporary victory for Governor Calvert. The conflict in England during the 1640s found an echo in the struggle between Puritans and Roman Catholics in Maryland, a conflict that saw the two-year exile of Governor Calvert to Virginia, the assumption of power by English representatives (including Claiborne and one of the Puritan leaders) in 1652, a subsequent civil war, and finally the recognition of Lord Baltimore's charter by Oliver Cromwell in 1657.
Cecilius Calvert died in 1675. His successor was Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore and the next lord proprietary. His tenure, which lasted until 1715, saw a decisive change in the character of the province. In 1689, with Protestants ascendant in both England and Maryland, the British crown assumed direct control over the province, and in 1692, the Church of England became Maryland's established religion. When Charles Calvert died, his successor, Benedict Leonard Calvert, 4th Baron Baltimore, was granted full proprietary rights—but only because he had embraced the Protestant faith. Proprietary rule continued through his legitimate heirs until the eve of the American Revolution.
Throughout this period, the upper and lower houses of the colonial assembly—consisting, respectively, of the governor and his council and of delegates elected from the counties—quarreled over taxation and the extension of English statutes to free Marylanders. Having already secured most rights from the proprietor, the lower house was somewhat reluctant to vote for independence from the British crown, on whose authority the proprietary government now rested. After its initial hesitancy, however, Maryland cast its lot with the Revolution and sent approximately 20,000 soldiers to fight in the war. The Continental Congress met in Baltimore from December 1776 to March 1777 and in Annapolis from November 1783 to June 1784. These cities were thus among the eight that served as US capitals before the designation of a permanent seat of government in Washington, DC.
Maryland was one of the last states to sign the Articles of Confederation, not ratifying them until other states dropped their claims to what later became the Northwest Territory. On 28 April 1788, Maryland became the 7th state to ratify the federal Constitution. The state constitution, drawn up in 1776, was weighted heavily in favor of property holders and the rural counties, at the expense of the propertyless and the city of Baltimore; the legislature removed the property qualifications in 1810.
Maryland's prosperity during the colonial and early federal period waxed and waned according to the world price of tobacco, the staple crop of tidewater and southern Maryland. Planters increasingly employed slave labor on farms and plantations, and the black population grew rapidly in the 18th century. German immigrants began moving into western Maryland, where wheat became the primary crop. The cultivation of wheat also helped make Baltimore's fortune. Founded in 1729 and incorporated in 1796, the city of Baltimore was blessed with a harbor well suited to the export and import trade. As commerce developed, shipbuilding emerged as a major economic activity. By the early 19th century, Baltimore was already the state's major center of commerce and industry.
The city and harbor were the site of extensive naval and military operations during the War of 1812. It was during the bombardment of Ft. McHenry in 1814 that Francis Scott Key, detained on the British frigate, composed "The Star-Spangled Banner," which became the US national anthem in March 1931.
After the War of 1812, Maryland history was marked by the continued growth of Baltimore and increasing division over immigration, slavery, and secession. The chartering in 1827 of the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad, which eventually linked Maryland with the markets of the Ohio Valley and the West, added to the city's economic vitality. But distrust of the thousands of newcomers—especially of Irish immigrants and their Roman Catholicism—and fear of the economic threat they supposedly represented spurred the rise of nativist political groups, such as the Know-Nothings, who persecuted the immigrants and dominated Maryland politics in the 1850s.
Although not many Marylanders were in favor of secession, they were hostile to the idea of using force against the secessionist states. On 19 April 1861, as the 6th Massachusetts Regiment passed through Baltimore, it was attacked by a mob of southern sympathizers in a riot that left four soldiers and 12 civilians dead. Ten days later, the Maryland house of delegates, following the lead of Governor Thomas Hicks, rejected a bill of secession. Throughout the Civil War, Maryland was largely occupied by Union troops because of its strategic location and the importance for the northern cause of the B&O Railroad. Marylanders fought on both sides during the war, and one major battle took place on Maryland soil—the Battle of Antietam (1862), during which a Union army thwarted a Confederate thrust toward the north, but at an enormous cost to both sides. Confederate armies invaded the state on two other occasions, when General Robert E. Lee brought his troops through the state on the way to Gettysburg in 1863 and when Lieutenant General Jubal Early ravaged the Hagerstown area and threatened Baltimore in 1864. The Maryland legislature, almost totally pro-Union by 1864, passed a new constitution, which among other things abolished slavery.
The state's economic activity increased during Reconstruction, as Maryland, and especially Baltimore, played a major role in rebuilding the South. Maryland's economic base gradually shifted from agriculture to industry, with shipbuilding, steelmaking, and the manufacture of clothing and shoes leading the way. The decades between the Civil War and World War I were also notable for the philanthropic activities of such wealthy businessmen as Johns Hopkins, George Peabody, and Enoch Pratt, who endowed some of the state's most prestigious cultural and educational institutions. The years after World War I saw the emergence of a political figure without equal in Maryland's more recent history: Albert C. Ritchie, a Democrat who won election to the governorship in 1919 and served in that office until 1935, just one year before his death. Stressing local issues, states' rights, and opposition to prohibition, Ritchie remained in power until Harry W. Nice, a Republican but an advocate of New Deal reforms, defeated him in 1934.
The decades after World War II were marked by significant population growth. From 1980 to 1990 alone, Maryland grew by 13.4%, well above the national rate of 9.8%. Baltimore, which, though still the hub of the state's economy, had fallen into decay and became the focus of a redevelopment project. Much of the downtown area and harbor facilities were revitalized by urban projects, begun in the late 1970s and continued into the 1990s. These featured the Charles Center development, the waterfront renovation of the Inner Harbor, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and a new $150-million convention center at the Inner Harbor.
Although Maryland's economy declined less than those of other states during the recession of the late 1980s, the state suffered from the contraction of defense industry. Nevertheless, service industry employment, primarily in the Baltimore-Washington corridor, gave Maryland the 5th-highest state income in the country as of the mid-1990s—a ranking it maintained as of 1998. Federal government and high-tech employment accounted for many of these jobs.
Maryland's 370-year history of tobacco farming appeared to be drawing to a close in 2000. Nearly 90% of the state's tobacco farmers indicated they would accept a government buyout later that year. The crop that had settled the Chesapeake had become risky, with the tobacco industry under attack for the health hazards of its products. The state by 2003 had implemented a tobacco buyout program, whereby the state agrees to pay farmers $1 per pound of tobacco that they would sell for the following ten years based on the average amount of tobacco they sold between 1996 and 1998. Farmers agree to plant alternative crops instead of tobacco. As of January 2004, 785 growers were to participate in the buyout program, representing 80% of eligible growers and 7.3 million pounds of tobacco.
The environmental clean-up of Chesapeake Bay, begun in the mid-1980s, was slated to continue into the 21st century. In an effort to further protect the bay's ecosystem, in 1999 Maryland Governor Parris Glendening announced a plan to protect 60,000 forested acres on the Eastern Shore from development. Nevertheless, the bay faced more immediate threats such as the April 2000 oil spill into the Patuxent River, which flows into the Chesapeake. Federal officials faulted Maryland Power Company for its efforts to clean up the spill, the worst in the company's 104-year history. Governor Robert Ehrlich, elected in 2002, pledged to continue the clean-up of the Chesapeake Bay in 2003.