St. Michaels Map and History

© John Norton

On the broad Miles River, with its picturesque tree-lined streets and beautiful harbor, St. Michaels has been a haven for boats plying the Chesapeake and its inlets since the earliest days. Here, some of the handsomest models of the Bay craft, such as canoes, bugeyes, pungys and some famous Baltimore Clippers, were designed and built. The Church, named “St. Michael’s,” was the first building erected (about 1677) and around it clustered the town that took its name.

For a walking tour and more history of the St. Michaels area visit https://tidewatertimes.com/travel-tourism/st-michaels-maryland/.

pair of pups of the most approved Newfoundland breed, but of different families, and that the pair I purchased of him were selected under this order. The [male] dog was of a dingy red colour; and the [female] black. They were not large; their hair was short, but very thick-

Newfoundland coated; they had dew claws.

“Both attained great reputation as water-dogs. They were most sagacious in every thing, particularly so in all duties connected with duck-shooting. The [female] remained at Sparrows Point till her death, and her progeny were and are still well known, through Patapsco Neck, on the Gunpowder, and up the bay, amongst the duckshooters, as unsurpassed for their purposes.”

George Law recorded this incident decades after the rescue. He was undoubtedly sought out by the sportsmen who had grown somewhat obsessed with the bloodlines of the canines that shared their duck blinds. Along the shores Law

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mentioned, the nineteenth century saw “gunning clubs” developed and refined by gentlemen whose own bloodlines ran to Maryland’s most prominent families.

In Maryland history, Charles Carrolls are beyond number, but in 1783 Charles “The Barrister” expanded his island holdings at the mouth of the Gunpowder River with a tract he named the Shooting Ground. So, obviously, wildfowling was popular on Carroll’s Island decades before Sailor and Canton landed in Maryland. About the time of their rescue, a sportsmen’s club developed on the island that is credited with honing the retrieving skills of the pair’s progeny.

The Carroll’s Island Wild Fowl Shooting Club, which had hunting rights on the island pre-1833, became especially noted for developing the breed that became recognized as Chesapeake Bay Retrievers. In the introduction to C. John Sullivan’s Chesapeake Retrievers, Decoys and Long Guns, J. Fife Symington, Jr. speaks of these “noble animals” and the “reverence that early sportsmen held for these dogs.” Reverence is hardly an overstatement. Meticulous records survive of dog breeding on Carroll’s Island and in similar clubs ringing the upper Bay, records reminiscent of the Biblical Begats.

Opinions differ as to whether Sailor and Canton were the same breed as Newfoundlands known

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