#144 Three Lost Voices From Early Maryland
The History of the Americans
Jack Henneman
4.9 • 632 Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
This episode tells the story of three “lost voices” from early Maryland, surprising people who remind us of the complexity of the 17th century Atlantic world. Mathias de Sousa was of African descent, and is called “the first Black colonist” of Maryland. He would skipper a pinnace in the Chesapeake, trade with the local tribes, and sit in the Maryland Assembly. Margaret Brent was a stone-cold businesswoman, executor for the estate of Leonard Calvert, and would become famous for demanding not just one vote, but two, in the Maryland Assembly. Trust me when I say she had her reasons. Finally, there is Mary Kittamaquund Kent, “the Pocahontas of Maryland.” Her similarities to the actual Pocahontas were, it must be said, something of a stretch.
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Selected references for this episode
David S. Bogen, “Mathias de Sousa: Maryland’s First Colonist of African Descent,” Maryland Historical Magazine Spring 2001.
Lois Green Carr, “Margaret Brent – A Brief History”, Maryland State Archives.
Kelly L. Watson, “‘The Pocahontas of Maryland’: Sex, Marriage, and Diplomacy in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake,” Early American Studies, Winter 2021.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 144 12 squared. |
| 0:12.4 | I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this episode on February 27th, |
| 0:18.2 | 2024 in Princeton, New Jersey. I suspect the sound will be a little different since I don't |
| 0:24.3 | have a walk-in closet here. Anywho, we are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United |
| 0:30.5 | States from the beginning without intentional presentism. We are still bouncing around the mid-1600s on the timeline. Our high-water mark |
| 0:42.1 | remains the end of New Sweden in 1655. I flew right over Tenicum Island yesterday and got a picture of it |
| 0:50.7 | and put it on Twitter. I've got a sense of the topics to cover in the next couple of months, unless my muse leads |
| 0:58.1 | me astray as often happens, before we reach the big wars in the last three decades of the century, |
| 1:04.1 | including King Phillips War in Massachusetts, which finally ended the long peace between Plymouth |
| 1:10.6 | and the Wampanoags, |
| 1:12.3 | Berkeley's Rebellion in Virginia, and the Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico in 1680. |
| 1:18.9 | Before then, my obsessiveness requires me to cover the new Haven colony, at least a little bit, |
| 1:25.2 | for which I still need to finish a huge book. |
| 1:28.8 | The last years of New Netherland is a Dutch colony, Roger Williams saving Rhode Island yet |
| 1:34.5 | again, the further impact of the English Civil War on the colonies, the wars of Iroquois |
| 1:39.5 | expansion known variously as the Beaver Wars or the Morning Wars, the origins of plantation slavery, |
| 1:46.8 | and probably the founding of South Carolina. If there are any other subjects in the years from |
| 1:52.8 | 1650 to 1670 that you think I should hit, please send me a note. Along the way, there will be |
| 2:00.5 | some smaller stories to tell that fit into the timeline. |
| 2:04.2 | One of those will be the witchcraft prosecution in Springfield, to which I alluded in the |
| 2:09.2 | episode on William Pension. That's a good one. |
| 2:12.9 | In this episode, which tells the story of three remarkable people in early Maryland. |
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