🦀Maryland

The Old Line State · The Free State

Maryland was founded in 1632 as a refuge for English Catholics — the first colony with legal religious toleration for Christians. It is the birthplace of the national anthem, home to the Naval Academy, and center of the Chesapeake Bay — the largest estuary in the United States and the source of the state's famous blue crabs. Though small in area, Maryland contains virtually every geographic feature east of the Mississippi: ocean beaches, tidal marshes, Piedmont farmland, and Appalachian mountains.

A Catholic Refuge

In 1632, King Charles I granted the colony to Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, who named it for Queen Henrietta Maria. Maryland was intended as a refuge for Catholics — officially tolerated by the 1649 Maryland Toleration Act, the first colonial law extending religious liberty to all Christians (though still not to Jews or others). Protestants soon outnumbered Catholics, and the religious toleration experiment was repealed and restored several times.

The National Anthem

During the War of 1812, British warships bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor through the night of September 13–14, 1814. Francis Scott Key, detained on a British ship in the harbor, watched the attack unfold and saw the American flag still flying at dawn. He wrote a poem about the night that was set to music and, in 1931, became the national anthem — "The Star-Spangled Banner." The original flag from Fort McHenry is displayed at the Smithsonian.

Border State Crossroads

Maryland was a border state during the Civil War — a slave state that did not secede, held in the Union partly by force under President Lincoln's emergency measures. The Battle of Antietam, fought in Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest single day in American history and gave Lincoln the opening he needed to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Washington's Neighbor

Maryland ceded the land that became Washington, D.C. to the federal government in 1790. The state's modern economy is heavily shaped by that proximity — Maryland hosts the National Institutes of Health, the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, and numerous federal installations. Johns Hopkins University and hospital, founded in 1876, is one of the world's leading research institutions. Baltimore remains a major Atlantic seaport.

Maryland Facts

• Maryland is the only state named for the wife of a king — Henrietta Maria, queen consort of Charles I.
• The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis was founded in 1845.
• Harriet Tubman was born enslaved on Maryland's Eastern Shore around 1822 and later guided dozens out of slavery on the Underground Railroad.
• The state insect is the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly, and the state sport is jousting.
• Maryland's Eastern Shore and Western Maryland are separated by Chesapeake Bay and are geographically and culturally distinct regions.

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