Before Easton Was Easton: James Dawson

Before Easton Was Easton

A Rare Old Document Comes to Light by James Dawson

Easton was not always called Easton, nor did it always have the county courthouse. As a reminder of this, I had an interesting call recently from a Distinguished Local Gentleman of Parts who found some old papers that had belonged to his father and wondered if I would look at them for him, as he was having trouble with the old handwriting, so we made an appointment for him to meet me at the bookshop. He did not know how his father had gotten these old papers.

As we put the documents on the counter, they seemed to be old deeds and bills of sale from the mid-1800s. Interesting, maybe, but not especially exciting, until one stray detached fragment caught my eye. The D.L.G of P asked me how old I thought it was. Judging from the handwriting, I told him that it probably dated from the early 1700s, but suddenly doubting my estimate, I looked more closely at the crabbed old writing and, much to my relief, found it was dated 1710!

Suddenly, this old fragment got very interesting. Unfortunately, it was only a fragment, so I sifted through the dozen or so other papers hoping to find more and, amazingly, there was the rest of it! Glancing at the full document, I saw it read,

“THE COURT proceed to the Laying out Two acres of Land in Armstrong’s old field near Pitte’s Bridge, whereon to build a Court House in this County according to act of assembly etc.”

This was great! It was the order to buy 2 acres of land to build the Talbot

County Courthouse in what would be Easton!

But first a brief history of courthouses in Talbot County. Talbot

County was established in either 1661 or 1662, depending on who is counting, but never had a real courthouse until one was located in the long-vanished town of York, up near

Skipton on the Wye River, in 1674 in a tavern run by Mistress Winkles that was replaced by a proper courthouse building in 1680. Prior to York, court had been held in houses of various county commissioners. Since county courthouses were usually centrally located in a county, it would seem that courthouses located up near the northern boundary of Talbot County would be inconvenient at best, but in those days Talbot County was much bigger than it is now. In fact, 115

Before Easton Was Easton There was no fooling around with 17th century justice. With stocks, it went all the way up to the Chester you sat with your outstretched legs River and so at that time York was locked between two boards, but with centrally located. a pillory you were forced to stand

That is, until 1707, when the Mary- with your neck and wrists locked in land General Assembly took away place. In either position, you were the northern part of Talbot County out in the open and subject to abuse between the Wye and Chester rivers by passersby. In spite of these attracto establish Queen Anne’s County. tions, York soon withered and died Inconveniently, this reconfiguration without its courthouse. Nothing is put York at the top of Talbot County. left of it now. Architectural historian York was always a small place any- H. C. Forman drew a reconstruction way, and its only other attractions of what the 1680 courthouse probbesides governance were gambling ably looked like. and sales of alcohol, as there was For the next three years, court a racetrack directly in front of the was held at various places in the courthouse and a tavern next door. Oxford area, Oxford then being the Not to mention a pillory and stocks oldest and most important town in the front yard for when you got in Talbot County. However, since into trouble gambling and drinking. Oxford was off to one side, a more

Close-up of the handwriting.

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central location was needed in the county, so one was found in Anderson’s Old Field near Pitts Bridge in what was then proto-Easton. Two acres were purchased, and a 20’ x 30’ brick courthouse was built there in 1712, shortly followed by the jail, stocks, pillory and whipping post. At this time, the name of the place was changed to Talbot Town, and then finally to Easton in 1788. No contemporary illustration of the 1712 courthouse is known to exist.

The 1712 courthouse was torn down in 1792 when it became too small. It was replaced on the same site by the present courthouse building in 1794, which was enlarged in 1898 and yet again in 1958 when, yet again, it became too small.

The purchase of those two acres in 1710 for the courthouse was how this delightful old document fits in the story. It is not often that one gets to handle a piece of local history over 310 years old! The D.L.G of P. graciously let me borrow the papers and look them over at my leisure. This I was very happy to do, because while I am not interested in made-up puzzles like crosswords, I love nothing better than historical detective work like puzzling out old papers and deciphering old handwriting, because they’re real and not made up.

I like to think that I’ve developed a knack for reading old documents over the years, but something this old would be more of a challenge.

1680 York Courthouse

Early 1700s handwriting is considerably different from later 1700s handwriting, and even more different from mid-1800s handwriting, which looks almost modern.

The early 1700s writing was eccentric, to say the least, because while much of it has curvy lines, a good bit of it is angular and zigzaggy, almost as if an intoxicated ant had fallen into the ink well and then crawled drunkenly around on the paper. In this old script, not only do we see the long letter s that is typical of handwriting before the early 1800s, but if there is a double s, the first one is elongated and looks like an f without the short center bar. As far as I can tell, this was just for looks and didn’t mean anything. When printed, it looks like the letter f without the short center bar, and when written in longhand, it looks like someone grabbed both ends of an 8 and then stretched it out like it was a rubber band.

Additionally, with handwriting this old, you also find that e’s look like backward o’s with a small loop at the top. The letter A written big and small looks normal, but the capital letter F looks like two lowercase fs scrunched together. And capital Ms are almost not to be described.

And let’s not even get into the orthography, what there is of it, as for the most part dictionaries did not exist then, and spelling was phonetic

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and not at all consistent, even in the same document, or maybe even in the same sentence. And not only that, but some words are spelled with too many letters. Why anyone then or now would need to spell the word at with two ts, when one would do, seems kind of silly. Or att least I think so! But maybe they just liked the way the extra letters looked. Some other examples of using too many letters are itt for it, doe for do, vallue for value, summ for sum and pannel for panel. Also, the way they capitalized words back then seems odd to us. They often capitalized words, usually Nouns, even in the Middle of a Sentence.

Naturally, I had to do a transcription. I tried to preserve the capricious spelling and quirky capitalization in my transcript to keep the look and flavor of the original, but I know that in these modern times, the spelling police does not approve of that. But my opinion, if you tamper with the spelling, you tamper with history.

But all of this made for a fun-filled afternoon for me, as I was home not only because of the Covid Threat but also recovering from a Fractured Fibula from slipping on mudd while walking my dog. But then, of course, I have weird ideas of what is funn.

This document, approximately 900 words long, was the actual minutes kept of the Commissioner’s meetings on Jan. 16, Feb. 20, and March 1, 1710, relating to the pur-

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chase of two acres in what would be Easton for a county courthouse. The cost of the land was 5,000 pounds of tobacco (I have no idea how much that would be in 21st-century bitcoins).

Queen Anne

The first line began,” Talbot so. ATT A COURT of our Soverign Lady ANNE Queen of Great Brittain etc…” Note that Anne is named as the Queen of Great Britain. Remember 1707? Anne had originally been the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland when she ascended to the throne in 1702, but with the Acts of Union of 1707 when England and Scotland united to became Great Britain, of which she was now the

Queen, it was such a big deal that a big chunk of Talbot County was taken away from us to name the new county for her in celebration.

The minutes of two of the meetings are titled “Att A Court of Adjournment,” which meant that since there was no courthouse then in which to hold the meetings, they had adjourned to hold the meeting at another location, in this case at Philemon Armstrong’s plantation house.

I had no doubt of the document’s authenticity. The paper and ink look exactly correct to me. The ink is that old iron gall ink, so whenever the clerk whose handwriting I was deciphering pressed hard on his quill pen to make the lines thick and bold, he obviously transferred more ink onto the paper. Over the centuries, this ink, which is acidic, starts to damage the paper, and in the very wide lines it looks just like the paper has been burned, which it has ~ not by a flame, but by the corrosive effects of the ink. Yes, this probably could be faked, but it wouldn’t be easy. Also, the thick ink lines have stained completely through the paper, making it difficult to read what is written on the other side.

But who was the clerk who recorded these minutes? His first name looked like Robert, but his last name was written with so many dense overlapping loops and curlicues that it seemed impossible to 122

tell the loops from the name or the name from the loops.

Here, Talbot County historian Samuel Harrison came to the rescue. He devoted a page in his history of Talbot Co. listing all the names of the court clerks from 1662 to 1915, and there was only one Robert in the proper time period. His last name was Finley, which it kind of looked like after I stared at it for a while. So that problem was solved. The document measures 6 1/8” x 71/2”, eight pages made of two larger pages folded in half and stitched together by thread at the fold through two holes near the top and bottom, which is called a stab binding. This was commonly done in the days before there were staples or paper clips to hold pages together. People also used ribbons

How the courthouse looked in 1856. 124

Finley's signature.

or pins to secure multiple pages together then.

It is not at all unusual that paper this old has survived, because the handmade paper used then was naturally acid free, and under proper conditions, can seemingly last almost indefinitely, unlike most of the wood pulp paper we use now.

I repaired the section that was detached with acid-free archival document repair tape. Another fold had also split long ago and had been repaired with a small piece of paper cut from a newspaper that was glued on. This normally would have been a bad thing to do, but the repair was done so long ago that the newspaper was printed on acid-free paper and so was safe, even though whoever did the repair had not done a very good job of aligning the two pieces. This piece of newspaper used for the repair measured 1 1/4” x 7” and mentioned the Whig political party, which was in existence from 1834 to the mid-1850s, which would seem to date that repair fairly accurately as we shall see.

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Before Easton Was Easton ing to the county. This record is in the handwriting of Robert Finley,

I found out in later research the clerk, and they therefore must that historian Samuel A. Harrison be regarded as perfectly authentic. (1822-1890) owned this exact docu- For the sake of perpetuating this ment in 1870 and mentioned it in record, as well as for its intrinsic his history of Talbot County on p. interest, it is here copied in full…:” 221 and quoted it in full on pages [on pages 221 to p. 223 in vol. 2 221-223. This was reprinted from History of Talbot County Maryland Harrison’s original monograph 1661-1861. Compiled Principally written in 1870 titled “The Court From The Literary Relics Of The House” that was used in 1915 as Late Samuel Alexander Harrison, a chapter in his history of Talbot A.M. M.D. by his son-in-law Oswald County Tilghman Easton, Md. published by

Harrison wrote in 1870, Williams and Wilkins, 1915. How’s

“There is in the possession of the that for a grand title! This also compiler of these annals a record of helped to establish the provenance the laying out of the county land for of the document. the purposes of a courthouse, which However, the 1710 document is record is not among those belong- in a later paper folder labeled “An

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instrument relating to the Town of Easton bearing date 1710 record in Liber 65 folios 529, 530 and 531 one of the Land Record Books for Talbot County Circuit Court for Talbot Co.” made on Sept. 26, 1854 by John Bozman Kerr when it was copied in the records in full. So in 1854, it had belonged to Kerr, who had probably made that old repair. It is interesting that this fascinating document was not officially recorded in the Talbot County Land Records until 1854. That Kerr had the document recorded shows its importance, and the fact that the document was returned to him indicates that it was regarded as his private property and not the property of either the Town of Easton or the Circuit Court of Talbot County.

One thing about the original document that still puzzles me is what was “Talbot so.” At first I thought it was Co. as an abbreviation for county, which would have made sense, but that letter wasn’t a c, but an s. Kerr’s 1854 transcript has it Sc., while Harrison’s 1878 has it So. I have no clue what Talbot Sc. or Talbot So. meant, but there’s nothing like a little mystery to keep things interesting.

Pleafe lett mee know iff yew have annie clews.

James Dawson is the owner of Unicorn Bookshop in Trappe.

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Queen Anne’s County

The history of Queen Anne’s County dates back to the earliest Colonial settlements in Maryland. Small hamlets began appearing in the northern portion of the county in the 1600s. Early communities grew up around transportation routes, the rivers and streams, and then roads and eventually railroads. Small towns were centers of economic and social activity and evolved over the years from thriving centers of tobacco trade to communities boosted by the railroad boom.

Queenstown was the original county seat when Queen Anne’s County was created in 1706, but that designation was passed on to Centreville in 1782. It’s location was important during the 18th century, because it is near a creek that, during that time, could be navigated by tradesmen. A hub for shipping and receiving, Queenstown was attacked by English troops during the War of 1812.

Construction of the Federal-style courthouse in Centreville began in 1791 and is the oldest courthouse in continuous use in the state of Maryland. Today, Centreville is the largest town in Queen Anne’s County. With its relaxed lifestyle and tree-lined streets, it is a classic example of small town America.

The Stevensville Historic District, also known as Historic Stevensville, is a national historic district in downtown Stevensville, Queen Anne’s County. It contains roughly 100 historic structures, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is located primarily along East Main Street, a portion of Love Point Road, and a former section of Cockey Lane.

The Chesapeake Heritage and Visitor Center in Chester at Kent Narrows provides and overview of the Chesapeake region’s heritage, resources and culture. The Chesapeake Heritage and Visitor Center serves as Queen Anne’s County’s official welcome center.

Queen Anne’s County is also home to the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center (formerly Horsehead Wetland Center), located in Grasonville. The CBEC is a 500-acre preserve just 15 minutes from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Over 200 species of birds have been recorded in the area.

Embraced by miles of scenic Chesapeake Bay waterways and graced with acres of pastoral rural landscape, Queen Anne’s County offers a relaxing environment for visitors and locals alike.

For more information about Queen Anne’s County, visit www.qac.org.