Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: When did Maryland become a colony?
The Province of Maryland[1] was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632[2] 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.
List of colonial governors of Maryland Colonial families of Maryland History of Maryland History of slavery in Maryland Thomas Cresap Lord Baltimore penny Economic history of Colonial Maryland
In 1649, the General Assembly of Maryland, the decade-old colonial legislature passed the Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the "Act Concerning Religion, a law mandating religious tolerance for trinitarian Christians". Passed on September 21, 1649 by the Assembly of the Maryland colony, it was the first law requiring religious tolerance in the British North American colonies. The Calvert family sought enactment of the law to protect Catholic and other Trinitarian Christians who did not conform to the established Church of England. Religious toleration lasted for approximately 40 years until it was revoked during the Protestant Revolution of 1689. From 1689 until 1776, Maryland was officially Anglican.
Maryland Colony declared in 1854 its independence from the Maryland State Colonization Society but did not become part of the Republic of Liberia. It held the land along the coast between the Grand Cess and San Pedro Rivers. In 1856, the independent state of Maryland (Africa) requested military aid from Liberia in a war with the Grebo and Kru peoples. They were resisting the Maryland colonists' efforts to control their trade in slaves and other goods. Roberts assisted the Marylanders, and a joint military campaign by the two groups of African-American colonists resulted in victory. In 1857, the Republic of Maryland joined Liberia as Maryland County.
The Maryland House of Delegates originated as the Lower House of the General Assembly of the Province of Maryland in 1650, during the time when it was an English colony, when the Assembly (legislature) became a bicameral body. The Lower House often fought with the Upper House for political influence in the colony. The Upper House consisted of the Governor and his Council, all personally appointed by Lord Baltimore and Proprietor of the Province, and thus tended to protect his interests in Maryland. Conversely, the Lower House tended to push for political change in the colony, claiming to be the true elected representatives of the people.
In England, events now began to move decisively against the Calverts and their political interest. In 1688, the country underwent what would later become known as the Glorious Revolution, during which the Catholic King James II of England was deposed and the Protestant monarchs King William and Mary II of England were installed on the throne. This triumph of the Protestant faction would cause Calvert considerable political difficulties. Sensibly, Calvert moved quickly to support the new regime, sending a messenger to Maryland to proclaim the new King and Queen. Unfortunately for Lord Baltimore, the messenger died during the journey, and a second envoy (if one was ever sent - Calvert would later claim that it was) never arrived. While the other colonies in quick succession proclaimed the new sovereigns, Maryland hesitated. The delay was fatal to Baltimore's charter, and in 1691 Maryland became a royal province. Baltimore, however, was still permitted to receive the revenues in the form of quitrents and excises from his sometime colony. Maryland remained a royal colony till 1715, when it passed back into the hands of the Calverts.
Parks began publishing Maryland government documents in 1726 when he published the "Acts of the Assembly" for the colony. In 1727 he became the first "public printer" (aka: "printer to the public") for the government of colonial Maryland, and was commissioned to print all government documents, which he did until 1737. About 1730 he began a print shop in Colonial Williamsburg on Duke of Gloucester Street "near the Capitol". Sometime shortly after 1737 he moved to the print shop familiar today as the tourist attraction on lot 48. He became the first official government "public printer" for the colony of Virginia as well. Parks was then the government "public printer" for both colonies of Maryland and Virginia. He was the "public printer" for the government of the colony of Virginia from 1730 to 1750, and as Virginia's official "public printer", published the first official collection of Virginia's laws in 1733, known as "A Collection of all the Acts of Assembly, now in force, in the Colony of Virginia."
As a result of political upheavals, especially after the three English Civil Wars in the 1640s, and the later "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 with their Roman Catholic--Protestant/Anglican conflicts which also transformed into struggles between the King and Parliament. As these conflicts traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, most colonies eventually surrendered their charters to the Crown by 1763 and became royal colonies as the King and his Ministers asserted more centralized control of their previously neglected and autonomous Thirteen Colonies. By the late 1600s, the colonial Maryland, had its Proprietary Charter to the Lords Baltimore revoked and had become a royal colony with its Governor of Maryland appointed by the Monarch with the advice of his Ministers and the Colonial Offices and Board of Trade of members from Parliament. By 1776, when the Pennsylvania and its lower Delaware Bay counties remained proprietary colonies under a charter originally granted to William Penn and his heirs. The Province of Connecticut and the Province of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations continued as corporation colonies under charters, and Massachusetts was governed as a royal province while operating under a charter after the unifying of the older "Massachusetts Bay" colony at Boston and the "first landing" colony, Plymouth Colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts, with its famous "Mayflower Compact" from 1620. Further south, the Provinces of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia to the undefined border with Spanish Florida, all had their original charters dismissed with different opinions about the role and powers and taxing authority between the Royal Governors and their increasingly restless and defiant colonial Assemblies. The Royal Authority reasserted itself and becoming governed more directly from London with increasing friction as the 18th Century progressed to its revolutionary climax.
Whilst neighboring Liberia had become independent in 1847, Maryland remained a colony for a further seven years. Following a 1853 referendum, Maryland became a separate independent state on 8 June 1854.
George Calvert received a charter from King Charles I to found the colony of Maryland in 1632. When George Calvert died, Cecilius Calvert, later known as Lord Baltimore, became the proprietor. Calvert came from a wealthy Catholic family and was the first individual (rather than a joint-stock company) to receive a grant from the Crown. He received a grant for a large tract of land north of the Potomac river and on either side of Chesapeake Bay. Calvert planned on creating a haven for English Roman Catholics, most of whom were well-to-do nobles such as himself who could not worship in public. He planned on creating an agrarian manorial society where each noble would have a large manor and tenants would work in the fields and on other tasks. However, with extremely cheap land prices, many Protestants moved to Maryland and bought land for themselves. They soon became a majority of the population, and in 1642 religious tension began to erupt. Calvert was forced to take control and pass the Maryland Toleration Act in 1649, making Maryland the second colony to have freedom of worship, after Rhode Island. However, the Act did little to help religious peace. In 1654, Protestants barred Catholics from voting, ousted a pro-tolerance Governor, and repealed the Toleration Act. Maryland stayed Protestant until Calvert again took control of the colony in 1658.
Catholicism was introduced to the English colonies with the founding of the Province of Maryland. Maryland was one of the few regions among the English colonies in North America that had a sizable Catholic population. However, the 1646 defeat of the Royalists in the English Civil War led to stringent laws against Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from the colony, including Andrew White, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor. Due to immigration, by 1660 the population of the Province had gradually become predominantly Protestant. During the greater part of the Maryland colonial period, Jesuits continued to conduct Catholic schools clandestinely.
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (1579–1631), Secretary of State under King James I, applied in 1629 for charter to establish a colony in the Mid-Atlantic area of North America, but died five weeks before it was issued.[25] Caecilius Calvert (1605–1675), inherited both his father's title and his charter, which was granted in 1632. He was named for Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury,[26] principal Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth, whom Calvert had met during an extended trip to Europe between 1601 and 1603.[25] Rather than go to the colony himself, Baltimore stayed behind in England to deal with the political opposition raised by supporters of the Virginia Colony and sent his next younger brother Leonard in his stead. Caecilius never travelled to Maryland.[27] Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore (1637–1715), sailed to Maryland in 1661 as a young man of 24, becoming the first member of the Calvert family to take personal charge of the colony. He was appointed deputy governor by his father and, when Cecil Calvert died in 1675, Charles inherited Maryland, becoming governor in his own right. During his tenure the price of tobacco began to decline, causing economic hardship especially among the poor. A hurricane in 1667 devastated the tobacco crop.[28] In 1684, Charles Calvert travelled to England[29] in regard to a border dispute with William Penn. He never returned to Maryland. In his absence the Protestant Revolution of 1689 took control of the colony. That year the family's royal charter was also withdrawn, and Maryland became a Royal Colony.
The Southern Colonies within British America consisted of the Province of Maryland, the Colony of Virginia, 
the Province of Carolina (in 1712 split into North and South Carolina) and the Province of Georgia. In 1763, the newly created colonies of East Florida and West Florida would be added to the Southern Colonies by Great Britain.
These colonies would become the historical core of what would become the Southern United States, or "Dixie".
The largest site of the original Maryland colony, St. Mary's City, was the seat of colonial government until 1695. Because Anglicanism had become the official religion in Virginia, a band of Puritans in 1642 left for Maryland; they founded Providence (now called Annapolis).[25]
During the Colonial period, Maryland's Proprietors, the Barons and Lords of Baltimore, who generally remained in the Kingdom of England, chose who would serve as the proprietary Governor of Maryland on their behalf. Leonard Calvert (1606-1647), youngest brother of the second Lord Baltimore, Cecilius Calvert (1605-1675), and the first Lord Proprietor, came with the first settlers in March 1634 to serve as first Governor of the colonial Province of Maryland until his death in 1647. Between 1692, when the Baltimores lost control, and 1715, Maryland was a direct Royal Colony, and the Governor was appointed by the British Monarch. The Lords of Baltimore regained their Royal Charter in 1715, under the British monarchs of the German House of Hanover, and then under the fifth and sixth Lord Baltimores, they resumed choosing the Governors until the beginning of the American Revolution (1775-1783). The first Governor of an independent state chosen to break this chain of colonial Governors was Thomas Johnson (1732-1819) of Frederick County, who took office on March 21, 1777. 
Maryland had long practiced an uneasy form of religious tolerance among different groups of Christians. In 1649, Maryland passed the Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, a law mandating religious tolerance for trinitarian Christians. Passed on September 21, 1649 by the assembly of the Maryland colony, it was the first law requiring religious tolerance in the British North American colonies. The Calvert family, who had founded Maryland partly as a refuge for English Catholics, sought enactment of the law to protect Catholic settlers and those of other religions that did not conform to the dominant Anglicanism of England and her colonies.
From Maryland's earliest days, Cecil Calvert had enjoined its colonists to leave religious rivalries behind. Along with giving instructions on the establishment and defense of the colony, he asked the men he appointed to lead it to ensure peace between Protestants and Catholics. He also asked the Catholics to practice their faith as privately as possible, so as not to disturb that peace. The Ordinance of 1639, Maryland's earliest comprehensive law, expressed a general commitment to the rights of man, but did not specifically detail protections for religious minorities of any kind. Peace prevailed until the English Civil War, which opened religious rifts and threatened Calvert's control of Maryland. In 1647, after the death of Governor Leonard Calvert, Protestants seized control of the colony. Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, quickly regained power, but recognized that religious tolerance not specifically enshrined in law was vulnerable. This recognition was combined with the arrival of a group of Puritans whom Calvert had induced to establish Providence, now Annapolis, by guaranteeing their freedom of worship. Partially to confirm the promises he made to them, Calvert wrote the Maryland Toleration Act and encouraged the colonial assembly to pass it. They did so on April 21, 1649.
The Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, was a law mandating religious tolerance for Trinitarian Christians. It was passed on April 21, 1649, by the assembly of the Maryland colony, in St. Mary's City. It was the second law requiring religious tolerance in the British North American colonies and created one of the pioneer statutes passed by the legislative body of an organized colonial government to guarantee any degree of religious liberty. Specifically, the bill, now usually referred to as the Toleration Act, granted freedom of conscience to all Christians. (The colony which became Rhode Island passed a series of laws, the first in 1636, which prohibited religious persecution including against non-Trinitarians; Rhode Island was also the first government to separate church and state.) Historians argue that it helped inspire later legal protections for freedom of religion in the United States. The Calvert family, who founded Maryland partly as a refuge for English Catholics, sought enactment of the law to protect Catholic settlers and those of other religions that did not conform to the dominant Anglicanism of Britain and her colonies.
In 1642, the Province of Maryland declared war on the Susquehannock Indian nation (Conestoga peoples).[13] The Susquehannock (with the help of the colony of New Sweden) defeated Maryland in 1644. As a result, the Conestoga traded almost exclusively with New Sweden to the north while the colony was young.[13] The Susquehannocks remained in an intermittent state of war with Maryland until a peace treaty was concluded in 1652,[13][14] but would become allies in the following decades.[13] Records from this era are poor and accounts of these early conflicts are incomplete.[14]
This meant Cecil had to remain involved in court politics constantly, in order to continually protect the charter of the Maryland colony from Virginia colony lobbyists and anti-Catholic lobbyists. Therefore, it fell to Cecil's younger brother, Leonard Calvert, to lead the settlers to Maryland and become the governor of the new colony.
Local music groups during the colonial era did much to sponsor musical development. Annapolis, a major center for colonial music in British North America, was home to the Homony Club and the Tuesday Club, while the Freemasons held balls and concerts across Maryland. Unlike the northern United States, religious music did not prosper in Maryland until the end of the colonial period, and then only in the German communities in the bustling ethnic port city of Baltimore along with outlying rural farming towns of Carroll, Montgomery and Frederick counties. Tavern owners frequently sponsored dances and concerts during the colonial era. Beginning in 1752, theater became a major part of Maryland culture for colonists of all classes; performances included light dance and incidental music, ballad operas and the works of William Shakespeare. Aside from the cultural and state capital of Annapolis, the city of Baltimore, and county seat towns of Upper Marlboro in southern Maryland and Chestertown on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, were major homes for Maryland theater, home to the debuts of the latest and most popular dances. With the French and Indian War (1754–1763), and then the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), soldiers brought back home to Maryland military band music, especially fife and drum ensembles.
Despite his close ties with the colonial government, Jenifer strongly resented what he and most of the colonial gentry saw as Parliament's arbitrary interference with the colonies' affairs, especially its laws concerning taxation and trade regulation. Years before the struggle for independence began, he had defended the proprietors of Maryland against those who sought to make Maryland a Royal colony. When the Revolution came, Jenifer lent his considerable support as a wealthy landowner to the Patriot cause, despite the fact that many leading Patriots had been his enemies in the proprietorship struggle. Jenifer became the president of Maryland's Council of Safety, the Patriot body established to organize Maryland's military forces for the Revolution (1775–77). When, in 1776, a new constitution was framed for the state of Maryland, Jenifer commented on the document's neglect of popular sovereignty: "The Senate does not appear to me to be a Child of the people at Large, and therefore will not be Supported by them longer than there Subsists the most perfect Union between the different Legislative branches."
Frederick died in 1771, by which time relations between Britain and her American colonies were fast deteriorating. In his will, Frederick left his proprietary Palatinate of Maryland to his eldest illegitimate son, Henry Harford, then aged just 13. The colony, perhaps grateful to be rid of Frederick at last, recognized Harford as Calvert's heir. However, the will was challenged by the family of Frederick's sister, Louisa Calvert Browning, who did not recognize Harford's inheritance. Before the case could grind its way through the Court of Chancery, Maryland had become engulfed by the American Revolution and by 1776 was at war with Britain. Henry Harford would ultimately lose almost all his colonial possessions.
The Maryland colony was founded by Cecil Calvert in 1634. Like his father George Calvert, who had originated the efforts that led to the colony's charter, Cecil Calvert was Catholic at a time when England was dominated by the Anglican Church. The Calverts intended the colony as a haven for Catholics fleeing England and as a source of income for themselves and their descendants. Many of Maryland's first settlers were Catholic, including at least two Catholic priests, one of whom became the earliest chronicler of the colony's history. But whatever Calvert's intentions, Maryland was a colony of an Anglican nation. Its charter had been granted by an Anglican king and seems to have assumed that the Church of England would be its official church. Anglican and later Puritan newcomers quickly came to outnumber the early Catholic settlers. Thus, by 1649 when the law was passed, the colonial assembly was dominated by Protestants, and the law was in effect an act of Protestant tolerance for Catholics, rather than the reverse.
On March 25, 1634, the first Catholic Mass in the English-speaking colonies was celebrated by Fr. Andrew White, S.J., on St. Clement's Island, Maryland, in what is now part of the Archdiocese of Washington. The Catholic founders of the Maryland settlement then established the colony as a place of religious freedom. During the colonial era, however, when others took power, Catholics would become a persecuted people suffering the wrath of oppression allowed by local penal laws.