Portal:Maryland

Possible portrait by Justus Engelhardt Kühn, c. 1700–1720

Charles Carroll I (1661 – 1720), sometimes called Charles Carroll the Settler to differentiate him from his son and grandson, was an Irish-born planter and lawyer who spent most of his life in the English Province of Maryland. Carroll, a Catholic, is best known for his efforts to hold office in the Protestant-dominated colony which eventually resulted in the disfranchisement of Maryland's Catholics. The second son of Irish Catholic parents, Carroll was educated in France as a lawyer before returning to England, where he pursued the first steps in a legal career. Before that career developed, he secured a position as Attorney General of the young colony of Maryland. Its founder George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore and his descendants intended it as a refuge for persecuted Catholics.

Carroll supported Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, the colony's Catholic proprietor, in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the Protestant majority from gaining political control over Maryland. Following the overthrow of the Calvert proprietorship and the subsequent exclusion of Catholics from colonial government, Carroll turned his attention to owning slave plantations, law, business, and various offices in the proprietor's remnant organization. He was the wealthiest man in the colony by the time of his death. In the last years of his life, Carroll attempted to regain some vestige of political power for Catholics in the colony, but the Protestant colonial assembly and Governor John Hart disfranchised them. His son, Charles Carroll II of Annapolis, became a wealthy planter and his grandson, Charles Carroll III of Carrollton, also wealthy, was the only Catholic signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. (Full article...)

• November 1, 2007 - Westboro Baptist Church ordered to pay US$11 million to family of fallen US soldier
• September 30, 2007 - Interview with gay marriage movement founder Evan Wolfson
• September 1, 2007 - Four jackpot winners confirmed in US 'Mega Millions' lottery drawing
• May 20, 2007 - Horse racing: Curlin wins 2007 Preakness Stakes

The Maryland portal currently doesn't have any anniversaries listed for August 18. You can help by viewing the page source of an existing entry at /On this day to see how the entries should be formatted, then adding the missing entry.

Anna Pauline "Pauli" Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985) was an American civil rights activist, advocate, legal scholar and theorist, author and – later in life – an Episcopal priest. Murray's work influenced the civil rights movement and expanded legal protection for gender equality.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Murray was essentially orphaned and then raised mostly by her maternal aunt in Durham, North Carolina. At age 16, she moved to New York City to attend Hunter College, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1933. In 1940, Murray sat in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus with a friend, and they were arrested for violating state segregation laws. This incident, and her subsequent involvement with the socialist Workers' Defense League, led her to pursue her career goal of working as a civil rights lawyer. She enrolled in the law school at Howard University, where she was the only woman in her class. Murray graduated first in the class of 1944, but she was denied the chance to do post-graduate work at Harvard University because of her gender. She called such prejudice against women "Jane Crow", alluding to the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. She earned a master's degree in law at University of California, Berkeley, and in 1965 she became the first African American to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School. (Full article...)

An 1881 map shows the planned Southern Maryland Railroad, which would become the Washington, Brandywine & Point Lookout Railroad

The Washington, Brandywine & Point Lookout Railroad (WB&PL) (originally, the Southern Maryland Railroad) was an American railroad that operated in southern Maryland and Washington, D.C., from 1918 to 1942. It and other, shorter-lived entities used the right-of-way from 1883 to 1965. The single-track line connected Mechanicsville, Maryland, to the Pennsylvania Railroad in Brandywine. Most of the rail was constructed by the Southern Maryland Railroad, which also built a section of track in East Washington that was intended to connect with this line but never did. The WB&PL was later acquired by the Navy, which extended the line to Cedar Point and the Patuxent Naval Air Station. In 1962, the Pennsylvania Railroad constructed a spur from Hughesville, Maryland to the Chalk Point Generating Station. During the 1960s and 1970s, the section from Hughesville to Cedar Point was abandoned and removed, and this area has since been repurposed for a highway, roads, a utility corridor, and a bike trail. The section from Brandywine to Hughesville, extending to Chalk Point, remains in use, though infrequently, as the plant ceased using coal in 2022. (Full article...)

• ...that unlike most other American courts, the judges on the Maryland Court of Appeals wear crimson (not black) robes, and neck bands, reminiscent of British court dress?
• ...that Kent Island was founded in 1631 as part of Virginia, three years before St. Mary's City was founded?

• ...that the Thomas Viaduct (pictured) over the Patapsco River was the first multi-span masonry railroad bridge in the United States when it was constructed between 1833 and 1835?