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The Talbot PatriotEaston, MarylandMD
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Section

23 stories

Local History

Town biographies and the county record older than this edition.

Local History is the Patriot's home for Talbot County lives that still shape the map: the towns, the plantations, the harbor, and the chapel. These are biographies, not news briefs. Frederick Douglass remains a county figure on the Local History index, not a town card.

  • Town biographies tied to Easton, St. Michaels, Oxford, Trappe, Tilghman, and Chapel / Cordova
  • County collections: Historical Society, Douglass sites, Archives
  • No invented quotations, meetings, or numbers

Recent Coverage

Biographies

Tench Tilghman, frontispiece engraving from Samuel Harrison's 1876 memoir. Not a photograph; he died in 1786.
Local History

Tench Tilghman of Fausley

Born Christmas Day 1744 two miles from Easton. Washington's most loyal aide, serving August 1776 to November 1783. The rider who took Yorktown to Congress.

Miles River harbor at St. Michaels, empty of a landing party
Local History

Perry Benson at St. Michaels

A Revolutionary captain with a ruined left arm, later major general of militia. He had the Miles River in August 1813. The lanterns entered the story two generations later.

Oxford harbor on the Tred Avon, empty wooden wharf
Local History

Robert Morris of Oxford

A Liverpool sailor's son who, in twelve years on the Tred Avon, made a small landing the Eastern Shore's chief port. A salute fired in his honor killed him at thirty-nine.

John Dickinson, engraving after Charles Willson Peale's 1770 portrait. Not a photograph; he died in 1808.
Local History

John Dickinson of Croisadore

Born on a Choptank plantation near Trappe in November 1732. The Penman of the Revolution. He would not sign the Declaration. He signed the Constitution. He wrote the Articles in between.

Matthew Tilghman, oil portrait by John Hesselius, 1748. Not a photograph; he died in 1790.
Local History

Matthew Tilghman of Rich Neck

Born 1718 at the Hermitage in Queen Anne's. Seated at Rich Neck above Claiborne. The island took the family name. Later writers called him the father of Maryland's Revolution.

Dark-brick chapel and dwelling in one pile among fields in the old Chapel District
Local History

Joseph Mosley at Tuckahoe

An English Jesuit who, in 1765, took a farm in the old Chapel District and made it a mission. He built the brick chapel in 1782 and is buried under the floor.

Photograph of Frederick Douglass, circa 1879. Public domain.
Local History

Frederick Douglass of Tuckahoe

Born on a Talbot farm. The principal Black voice of the nineteenth century. He belongs to the whole county.

Empty Main Street in Trappe, Maryland, looking toward the church
Local History

Nathaniel Hopkins of Trappe

Enslaved, soldier of the 30th U.S. Colored Troops, school founder, and the man who put Emancipation Day on the Trappe calendar in 1867.

Quiet residential street on The Hill in Easton, empty of people
Local History

Grace Brooks of The Hill

A midwife who bought her family out of slavery and, in 1792, bought land in Easton. The neighborhood she helped seat is still lived in.

White country church and graveyard at Unionville, empty of a crowd
Local History

The Unionville Eighteen

Eighteen veterans of the United States Colored Troops came home to Lombardy Neck in 1867 and built a village. They named it for the Union.

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