Province of Maryland

The Province of Maryland was an English 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 which established the United States and became the U.S. state of Maryland.

The province began as a proprietary colony of the British Lords Baltimore, who wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the new world. Although Maryland was an early pioneer of religious toleration in the British 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 the year following the Glorious Revolution, John Coode led a Protestant rebellion that expelled Lord Baltimore from power in Maryland. Coode's government was unpopular and both William III and Coode himself wished to install a crown-appointed governor. This man ended up being Lionel Copley who governed Maryland until his death in 1694 and was replaced by Francis Nicholson. It was restored to the family when Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, swore publicly that he was a Protestant.

Despite early competition with the colony of Virginia to its south, the Province of Maryland developed along very similar lines to Virginia. Its early settlements and populations centers tended to cluster around the rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay. Like Virginia, Maryland's economy quickly became centered around the farming of tobacco for sale in Europe. The need for cheap labor to help with the growth of tobacco, and later with the mixed farming economy that developed when tobacco prices collapsed, led to a rapid expansion of indentured servitude and, later, forcible immigration and enslavement of Africans.

In the latter colonial period, the southern and eastern portions of the Province continued in their tobacco economy, but as the revolution approached, northern and central Maryland increasingly became centers of wheat production. This helped drive the expansion of interior farming towns like Frederick and Maryland's major port city of Baltimore. The Province of Maryland was an active participant in the events leading up to the American revolution, and echoed events in New England by establishing committees of correspondence and hosting its own tea party similar to the one that took place in Boston.

Source: Wikipedia