The History of St. Michaels • Things to Do in St. Michaels • Read About St. Michaels
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St. Michaels History

People in St. Michaels
Verrazano may have explored these peninsulas in 1524. Captain John Smith cruised this "delightsome land" during the summer of 1608. William Claiborne, the Virginia Secretary of State, a friend of John Smith, and later a pirate (Shomette), founded a trading post and settlement in 1631 just 10 miles from the current town of St. Michaels on the lee side of Kent Island across Eastern Bay.

About thirty years later, the Calvert family (the Lords of Baltimore) supported settlements in Talbot County, named for the sister of Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, and wife of Sir Robert Talbot.

Frederick Augustus Bailey (later known as Frederick Douglass), famous abolitionist and later U.S. representative in Haiti, worked as a slave in and near St. Michaels before he escaped from slavery in the 1830's. Robert E. Lee slept in one of the local homes; presidents and statesmen from all over the globe vacationed on nearby Jefferson island.

James Michener lived here while researching and writing Chesapeake, Bill Veeck (as in "wreck") was a resident; Harold Baines (Chisox and Baltimore Orioles) was born in St. Michaels and has a home here.

The Early History of St. Michaels
Land grants dating from the 1640's to the mid-1670's established much of the present periphery of the town. The river and (probably) the tiny village were known as St. Michaels before 1658. It is likely that the current name of the river, the Miles, is a corruption of the town name, and there is at least one citation, in the will of William Hambleton of Martingham, in 1675, which refers to the "Myles" river. In about 1677, the Christ Episcopal Church of St. Michael the Archangel parish was founded on a narrow neck of land between the Miles River and Broad Creek.

During the next hundred years, forests were cleared, ships were constructed with the timber and the land tilled for tobacco. The village remained small, but attracted a number of shipwrights and craftsmen to support the small shipbuilding industry. The tobacco market waned with the advent of the American Revolution and agricultural production turned to wheat to feed Washington's troops.

In 1778, James Braddock, an agent for a British firm, purchased approximately 20 acres and subdivided St. Michaels into a planned community of 58 lots (Touart). Its contemporary neighbors then and now were already on the map. Both the nearby town of Oxford and the private ferry service from Oxford to Bellevue were already almost a hundred years old; Tilghman Island had already been a political entity for 70 years; the village of Talbot Court House (later Talbot Town. now Easton) developed in the early 1700's and had some Quaker structures from the late 1600's.

The current St. Mary's Square was the centerpiece of Braddock's plan. By the time the Treaty of Paris was signed to end the Revolutionary War in 1783, "there can be no doubt that ... (St. Michaels), though small, was firmly established (Touart). The village was incorporated as a town in 1804. Between 1804 and 1806, the village was re-surveyed and platted as three squares: Harrison's square at the north end, Thompson's square to the southwest and the original Braddock's square on the southeast end. Many of the current homes and some shops date from the late 1700's to the late 1800's and the aura on main street (Talbot Street) and the homes on side streets pleasantly reflect colonial, Federal and Victorian eras.

The Town That Fooled The British
In the dark morning hours of August 10, 1813, a number of British barges had planned an attack on the town and a fort on the harbor side. The residents of tiny St. Michaels, forewarned, hoisted lanterns to the masts of ships and in the tops of the trees, tricking the British by causing the cannons to overshoot the town. This first "blackout" was effective and only one house was struck. Now known as "The Cannonball House" (A on map) a cannon ball penetrated the roof and rolled down the staircase as Mrs. Merchant carried her infant daughter downstairs. The house still exists as a private residence.

St. Michaels derived its name from the Episcopal Parish established here in 1677. The church attracted settlers who engaged in tobacco growing and ship building.

In 1805, an area was set aside for a public market known as "St. Mary's Square" (B on map). Here stands a bell cast in 1841 which rang at 7a.m., noon and 5p.m. to measure the workday for the ship's carpenters in the nearby harbor and the remains of a cannon used in the defense of the town during the War of 1812.

St. Michaels in the 19th Century
After the War of 1812, St. Michaels declined as an ocean-going shipbuilding center and after a brief depression in the 1820's, began to rise as a seafood processing and packing center. Oysters and blue crabs were the principal fare. The opening of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal in October, 1829 added new seafood customers in Philadelphia, Wilmington and points north. Boat building of small, shallow draft craft supported the seafood industry, and served those which harvested the waters and those which carried the booty to Baltimore, Annapolis and other newly-developed ports. These unique bay craft, constructed in St. Michaels, evolved to maturity during the last half of the 19th century and included bugeyes, the majestic Skipjacks and, particularly, the log canoe. (Nearly twenty log canoes, some from that era, still race regularly just outside the St. Michaels harbor.) In the 1870's and continuing into the early 1900's, St. Michaels was one of the hot spots in the Chesapeake's famous "Oyster Wars". During those tumultuous years, St. Michaels was a disorderly village known more for its hard living watermen (Wennersten-Oyster) than for its significant contributions during the War of 1812.

St. Michaels in the 20th Century
At the turn of the 20th century, steamboats and the railroad ferry "bridge" from the western shore began to act as a conduit for the seafood harvest in one direction and "boardinghouse" visitors from the western shore in the other direction. In the late 1930's, seafood packers such as the black-owned Coulbourne and Jewett Company (on the site of the present Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum) were shipping 1,000,000 (a million!) pounds of crabmeat a year and up to 12,000 gallons of oysters per week to wholesalers and retailers in Baltimore and Philadelphia. The site was used for seafood processing until it was bought by the Maritime Museum in 1965.

In the 1930's, 40's and 50's visitors came to the St. Michaels area by auto to enjoy a leisurely waterfront vacation in one of the many "mom and pop" boarding houses, cottages and inns which dotted the local landscape. They came to fish and crab. They came to enjoy the quality of life "on the Shore". In the mid-1950's, after the William Preston Lane Memorial Bridge (the "Bay Bridge") replaced the Sandy Point (Annapolis) ferry, more came. It was a good thing, too. They began to form the base of the tourism industry which now supports these picturesque peninsulas. By the mid-1960s, The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum dream had materialized and was becoming the magnet for a new kind of tourist, landlubbers who shopped at the "boatiques" and ate at the local seafood restaurants. They also came because they recognized the charming, classic character, ambiance and permanence of the town. (The names on the old tombstones and the current P.O. boxes are remarkably the same and read like a Professor Henry Higgins' aspirated historical litany: Higgins, Harrison, Haddaway, Hambleton. . . . ). And boaters came with powerful craft on weekend Bay excursions. Today, the maturing St. Michaels' nautical and historical attractions are becoming the magnet for the museum as St. Michaels clearly leads the small, vintage port towns on the Delmarva peninsula in opportunity, diversity, excitement and leisure. It has become a place to "hobnob" with the rich and famous.

The History of St. Michaels • Things to Do in St. Michaels • Read About St. Michaels
Phone Numbers and Information • Tour St. Michaels