George Calvert was the first Lord of Baltimore. His oldest son, Cecil Calvert, was the second Lord Baltimore. George Calvert, after a visit to Virginia, petitioned King Charles I of England to grant him permission to colonize the land north of the Potomac. He died in 1632, at age 52, just 66 days before the colony's official charter was issued, but his son Cecil Calvert carried out his father's dream.
             Cecil Calvert had the difficult task of planning and carrying out the colonization of Maryland. He recruited settlers and arranged for the Ark and the Dove to take them to Maryland. Cecil Calvert spent a great deal of money on that first voyage. The two ships arrived at Maryland in early March 1634.
             Cecil Calvert supported his father's idea of making Maryland a haven for all types of Christians. He was responsible for the Act Concerning Religion, a law that tried to eliminate religious prejudice among Christian Marylanders.
             Because England's monarchs could not be trusted to leave the American colonies alone, Cecil Calvert spent the remaining years of his life in England protecting his ownership of Maryland. Despite a couple of interruptions, Maryland remained a Calvert possession for well over a century. Maryland's Cecil County was named for him, and Anne Arundel County was named for his wife.
             When Europeans arrived in the 1600's about 3,000 Indian people lived on the land that is now called Maryland. No one is certain when they met the Europeans for the first time. Some historians think that french traders ben to buy furs from the Indians that lived along Chesapeake Bay in the early 1500s.
             During the 1660s many land disputes arose because of settlers farming land which was close to other state=s borders. Consequently, disputes came about as to border lines. These disputes involved the states of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Over the next 100 years Maryland lost many thousand acres of land to these states.
             The F...