Colonial Maryland

Province of Maryland
Colony of England (1632–1707) Colony of Great Britain (1707–76)
1632–1776
Flag
A map of the Province of Maryland.
Capital		St. Mary's City (1632–95) Annapolis (from 1695)
Languages		English, Susquehannock, Nanticoke, Piscataway
Government		Constitutional monarchy
Royally Chartered Proprietor
•	1632–1675	Lord Baltimore, 2nd
•	1751–1776	Lord Baltimore, 6th
Proprietary Governor
•	1634–1647	Leonard Calvert
•	1769–1776	Robert Eden
Legislature		Maryland General Assembly
History
•	Charter granted	1632
•	Independence	July 4, 1776
Currency		Pound sterling
Succeeded by Maryland
Today part of		Maryland  Washington, D.C.

Flag

 Washington, D.C.

The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S. state of Maryland. Its first settlement and capital was St. Mary's City, in the southern end of St. Mary's County, which is a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay and is also bordered by four tidal rivers.

The province began as a proprietary colony of the English Lord Baltimore, who wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the new world at the time of the European wars of religion. Although Maryland was an early pioneer of religious toleration in the English colonies, religious strife among Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers was common in the early years, and Puritan rebels briefly seized control of the province. In 1689, the year following the Glorious Revolution, John Coode led a rebellion that removed Lord Baltimore from power in Maryland. Power in the colony was restored to the Baltimore family in 1715 when Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, insisted in public that he was a Protestant.