riverretreat: SCENES ON THE POTOMAC AND PORT TOBACCO RIVERS

Saturday, March 17, 2007

SCENES ON THE POTOMAC AND PORT TOBACCO RIVERS

Two of my favorite photographs of the Port
Tobacco River Bay: one taken in the early
morning and one taken at evening......

Canadian geese and Mallard female

A great blue heron in silhouette with Mt. Vernon in the background. Taken near Pascataway Park, Tayak. (Click it to look closer)

Some ducks raised by local camper

Marshes at mouth on back waters of the Port

Tobacco River. I call the photograph of the
heron at right "The Sentinel."

It was directly across from our camper and

used to stay there almost unmoving for

hours on end.

The photograph at right is the home of a local

artist who lives on the River. Someday I

would like to give it to her.

I hope she would like it.

The other is a photograph of a scene across the

river from where we live, and I took it because it

is a portrait of a friend's home as well.

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Definitions

Rivers: ...magnets for the imagination, for conscious pondering and subconscious dreams, thrills, fears. People stare into the moving water, captivated, as they are when gazing into a fire. What is it that draws and holds us? The rivers' reflections of our lives and experiences are endless . . .
Coastal Marsh: In geography, a marsh is a type of wetland, featuring grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, and other herbaceous plants (possibly with low-growing woody plants) in a context of shallow water. A marsh is different from a swamp, which is dominated by trees rather than grasses and low herbs. The water of a marsh can be fresh, brackish, or saline. Coastal marshes may be associated with estuaries and along waterways between coastal barrier islands and the inner coast.
river-delta marsh (′riv·ər ¦del·tə ′märsh) (evolution) A brackish or fresh-water marsh bordering the mouth of a distributary stream.

HISTORY OF PORT TOBACCO

Port Tobacco* is one of the oldest communities on the East Coast of the United States. It first existed as the Native American settlement of Potopaco and it is listed in Captain John Smith's map of Virginia in 1608. In his map Potopaco lies on the Patawomeck fla. (river) south and across the river from an area inhabited by the Patawomeck peoples and also south of another group labelled in the map as the Noushemuck (near what is now the Nanjemoy River).

It was colonized by the English 1634, and became a major port. Today a small historic town continues as Port Tobacco Village, Maryland. During the late 1600s, Tobacco became the second largest river port in Maryland and was the original county government seat of Charles County. The village developed near the confluence of what is now the Port Tobacco and Potomac Rivers, sometimes having homes on the eastern side of the river and at other times on the western edge. Vessels went from plantation to plantation along the water front, to load with the favorite crop. Planters who lived back from the water brought down their tobacco by "rolling roads" where "the cask with and axle through it, and an ox or horse in a pair of pole shafts, was at once the load and vehicle."

In 1658 Port Tobacco, at a time later with its name changed to Charlestown, formed a nucleus for trade and government and became the county seat of the new County of Charles.

The early inhabitants of Port Tobacco were products of the religious turmoil in England, and their deeply felt convictions were to be a powerful determinant in the course of Maryland's history. After the Toleration Act of 1649 these settlers constructed their first simple Anglican church of logs at the head of the Port Tobacco Creek. The year was 1683, nine years before the Establishment Act.

The Act required a tobacco poll tax of 40 pounds per head 1692-1776 from all settlers, Anglican or not, and Christ Church prospered. Faced with the loss of this colonial financial support after the American Revolution, members of the parish were successful in constructing a second building in 1709 that served them for nearly a century. In 1732 tobacco was made legal tender in Maryland at one dollar a pound. The church was destroyed by a tornado in 1808, replaced by a brick structure and again replaced with stone. After the county seat was changed to La Plata, church members rebuilt the stone edifice in La Plata, where it was moved by ox cart from its footprint in Port Tobacco.

For two centuries of its life Port Tobacco was a busy trading town and county seat. Local patriots fought for independence in the American Revolution and the War of 1812, It saw its patriots, John Hanson, President of the United States in Congress Assembled, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, a signer of the Constitution of the United States, and Thomas Stone, one of the four signers of the Declaration of Independence for Maryland, help form a strong confederation; it saw the occupation of its town by Union troops, the intrigue perpetuated by the Lincoln assassination, and it was there when a strong Union was established after the Civil War.

The Court House was burned in 1892 by a mysterious fire that consumed its inside walls at a time when its citizens were in controversy over whether to move the county seat to nearby La Plata. With the burning of the Court House, the question was settled and La Plata became the county seat. *Source, with several additions and editing: Wikipedia

Tour in the United States; ....Customs, John Ferdinand Dalziel Smyth 1784

On the day following I returned home to my own house, having dined at another small town named Port Tobacco, sixteen miles from Piscattaway, which is built upon a creek of the same name, that falls into the Potomack, as well as Piscattaway Creek. Port Tobacco is not larger than Piscattaway, neither of them containing more than forty or fifty houses, ...the most beautiful place and most elegant situation in the world in the possession of the reverend father Hunter, who was the principal or head of the Society of the province; ...There are at this time numbers of beautiful girls, many of them as fair as any living, who are absolutely slaves in every sense to these priests....a degrading (and) unfortunate situation.

WATCH LIST BIRDS FOR PORT TOBACCO RIVER AREA

American Black Duck, Black Rail, Upland Sandpiper, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Acadian Flycatcher, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Sedge Wren, Bewick's Wren (Appal. Sub. Sp.), Wood Thrush, Yellow-throated Vireo, Blue-winged Warbler, Golden-winged Warbler, Northern Parula, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Prairie Warbler, Cerulean Warbler, Prothonotary Warbler, Worm-eating Warbler, Swainson's Warbler, Louisiana Waterthrush, Kentucky Warbler, Field Sparrow, Henslow's Sparrow, Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow, Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow, Seaside Sparrow

riverretreat

Saturday, March 17, 2007

SCENES ON THE POTOMAC AND PORT TOBACCO RIVERS

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TIDES AT PORT TOBACCO

MARSHES ALONG THE RIVER'S EDGE

Definitions

Introducing Ourselves

SPACE VIEW OF SOUTHERN MARYLAND

HISTORY OF PORT TOBACCO

Tour in the United States; ....Customs, John Ferdinand Dalziel Smyth 1784

LOCAL SITES OF INTEREST

WATCH LIST BIRDS FOR PORT TOBACCO RIVER AREA

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