Augustine Herman
| Augustine Herman | |
|---|---|
 |
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| First Lord of Bohemia Manor | |
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In office September 1660 – September 1686 |
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| Succeeded by | Ephraim George Herman |
| Personal details | |
| Born | c. 1621 Prague, Kingdom of Bohemia |
| Died | September 1686 Cecil County, Maryland |
| Spouse(s) | Jannetje Varleth |
| Residence | Cecil County, Maryland |
| Occupation | Merchant |
| Profession | Land surveyor, draughtsman |
| Religion | Dutch Reformed |
| Signature |  |
Augustine Herman, First Lord of Bohemia Manor (Czech: Augustin Heřman, c. 1621 – September 1686) was a Bohemian explorer, merchant and cartographer who lived in New Amsterdam and Cecil County, Maryland. In the employment of Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, he produced a remarkably accurate map of the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay regions of North America, in exchange for which he was permitted to establish an enormous plantation that he named Bohemia Manor in what is now southeastern Cecil County, Maryland.
Land rights to the area now known as St. Augustine, Maryland were granted to Herman by Lord Baltimore prior to 1686 but the Herman family was never able to lay proper claim to the title.
Chroniclers have spelled the surname variously: Herman, Herrman, Harman, Harmans, Heerman, Hermans, Heermans, etc. Augustine Herman himself usually wrote Herman, which is now the accepted style. He frequently added “Bohemiensis” ("the Bohemian", "the Czech"), as a suffix.
According to the most reliable evidence, Augustine Herman was born about 1621 in Prague, Kingdom of Bohemia; the location he himself stated in his last testament. The claim that he was born in 1605, as the son of Augustine Ephraim Herman, and Beatrice, the daughter of Caspar Redel, has never been established, nor has the belief of some that he may have been the son of Abraham Herman, the evangelical pastor of Mšeno. Accordingly, the claims that his father was a wealthy merchant and councilman of Prague, who was killed in 1620 at the Battle of White Mountain during the Thirty Years' War, remains hearsay.
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