Antiques.

 
ANTIQUES. 
 
 
Trafique is Earth's great Atlas, that supports 
The pay of Armies, and the height of Courts, 
And makes Mechanicks live, that else would die 
Meer starving Martyrs to their penury: 
None but the Merchant of this thing can boast, 
He, like the Bee, comes loaden from each Coast, 
And to all Kingdoms, as within a Hive, 
Stows up those Riches that doth make them thrive. 
Be thrifty, Mary-Land, keep what thou hast in store, 
And each years Trafique to thy self get more. 
 
George Alsop, A Character of the Province of Maryland, 1966 

George Alsop, who spent four years as an indentured servant in the household of Thomas Stockett in Baltimore County, was Maryland's first propagandist, trying to lure settlers from England with his pamphlet. The colony had only been settled since 1634, two years after George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, gained proprietary control of the Chesapeake region. From the town of Saint Mary's the colonists spread north along the Potomac River and settled around the many inlets that form the convoluted region of the upper Chesapeake Bay. Marshy tongues of land determined property lines more than geometric principles of land settlement.

Maryland's early economy was based on tobacco, which became the colony's medium of exchange for clothing and other manufactures and to pay taxes, tithes, and fines. Tobacco was also the chief export to England and a very profitable one. It was shipped from the wharves on the property of the planters, since roads were primarily muddy paths and nearly ...