Talbot County, Maryland, is old. Very old. One of the earliest buildings, a Quaker meeting house, dates to 1682. But even more than the origin of its buildings, three favorite sons of the county encapsulate its history in different but fascinating ways. Two were symbols of the Revolutionary War and the other the Civil War. One was a resident of St. Michaels, another Oxford, and the third his very own island, Tilghman.
Frederick Douglass, whom many consider the most eminent and respected African American of the 19th century, was a runaway slave in 1838 at the age of 20. I already knew that much, but it was an aha moment on a recent trip here to discover that this was the very county of his birth and the one from which he ultimately escaped.
Tours here take visitors past his childhood home, areas where he played as a boy and farms where he was indentured, as well as those areas he visited when he returned in his 60s. Douglass recounted in multiple autobiographies the influence of Talbot County on his life as well as his influence across the county and the decades.
In St. Michaels, we drove along the road he walked when, in 1834, his master “rented” the difficult Douglass to Edward Covey, known as the cruelest “slave breaker” in the neighborhood. I wanted to drive the 7 miles as slowly as possible so as to put off the metaphorical but inevitable lashes as long as possible. Douglass endured many.
From St. John’s Methodist Church, you can see the fields of the Covey farm where Douglass toiled between his frequent punishments. Another area of Covey’s personal homestead, where his whip was often engaged, literally—and ironically—was located in a part of town known as Mount Misery.
It’s one thing to know about the many cruelties of slavery—and another to experience them through the eyes of an actual person. Douglass finally escaped in 1838 to Baltimore and went on to become the icon we all revere today. But he did return to Talbot County, having said of his hometown, “It is always a fact of some importance to know where a man is born, if, indeed, it be important to know anything about him.”
That tour was one of triumph.
Another famous name associated with Talbot County, Robert Morris, spent little time there—just two years in his early teens—and yet the most famous inn in the area bears his name. He went on to become a prominent merchant, and as one of the nation’s Founding Fathers, he was considered the financier of the American Revolution.
The Robert Morris Inn, which opened in 1710 as the River View House—the oldest full-service inn in America—still retains so much of that century’s ambience that I could easily picture him in the room next to mine. That’s not really such a far-fetched idea, since he lived there as a child. He also later dined there with a friend of his: George Washington. Four of the 314-year-old rooms were indeed slept in by not only those Founding Fathers but many other dignitaries of the day. Much of the original structure remains, and the inn exudes history.
As does the town in which it is located. Oxford, founded in 1670 and still looking much the same, is more than just a step back in time; it is a visceral reemergence into a pre-Revolutionary War timeline. It is a town where people still do not lock their doors, so quiet it closes up by 9 p.m. on a Saturday night. Old homes, waterways, and few cars contribute to the sense of calm and isolation that pervades the town, a veritable throwback to congenial Americana.
Benches at almost every street corner invite you to sit, relax, and watch either worn working boats traversing multiple waterways or old homes such as the Barnaby House, dating back to 1770, with 95 percent of its original structure still intact. Even more inviting? A sign that says, “Welcome to our porch.” As one shopkeeper opined, commenting on the cohesiveness of the community, “I have to go downtown to find out what my plans are each day.”
Less a household name (except perhaps in Talbot County) is Mathew Tilghman, who came to Talbot much later than the other two gentlemen and without some of their distinction, though he, too, served honorably in the American Revolution and was the head of the Maryland delegation to the Continental Congress. By a fluke of family providence, in the mid-18th century, he inherited a tiny island at the end of the Chesapeake Bay. It was 3 miles long by 1 mile wide, and it became a sanctuary for oyster-dredging watermen and hasn’t moved much beyond since. Tilghman Island—whose street signs are shaped like little boats—makes Oxford look like a metropolitan thoroughfare.
The sign at Dogwood Harbor—basically a small pier—reads: “Home of the last working fleet of skipjacks in North America and Chesapeake Bay commercial watercraft.” One of those is the Minnie V, a Chesapeake Bay skipjack built in 1906 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
