Tobacco

The key to Maryland's success was one crop: tobacco. Maryland's soil and climate were ideal for the growth of tobacco, and the demand for it in England and Europe was great. Very quickly Maryland followed the pattern of her older neighbor, Virginia, and became a tobacco colony. Even though the market for the crop fluctuated, there was always a demand, and even small farmers could support their families by planting the "sotweed." The tobacco was sent back to England for consumption there or reexport to the Continent. In return came coffee, tea, sugar, rum, tools, clothing, and other necessities and luxuries of life. Except for food for the table, Marylanders grew little else but tobacco.

Maryland's tobacco planters did not live together in towns and villages like the settlers of New England. Instead, Maryland's geography -- the great water highway system of the Chesapeake -- encouraged the dispersion of the population. Wrote Lord Baltimore in 1678: "The people there not affecting to build nere each other, but soe as to have their houses nere the Watters for conveniencye of trade and their Lands on each syde of and behynde their houses by which it happens that in most places there are not fifty houses in the space of Thirty Myles." Port cities and harbor towns were unnecessary and nonexistent in early Maryland. The ships from England called at all the little local landings to collect tobacco and deliver orders of goods from home. The largest town in seventeenth-century Maryland was the provincial capital, Saint Mary's City, and it was a mere village.

This picture of a prosperous, growing province should not obscure the fact that life could be hard for the individual settler in early Maryland. So many of the luxuries were not present here. Housing was crude. The work was hard. Life expectancy was not long, and disease took many before their time. Nevertheless, Maryland grew, by immigration and natural increase. The twin promises of land and freedom made Maryland a beacon for those seeking better lives in a new land.