Frontier Country. Patrick Spero

half a world away, the three Penn brothers, who had inherited the colony when their mother died, and Charles Calvert, the Fifth Lord Baltimore, stood around a large map of the region trying to find a permanent settlement for the dispute. The proprietors carried an air of formal diplomacy throughout the negotiations, as if they were kings of independent nations. They had good reason to act that way. Proprietary colonies were, in some respects, feudalistic fiefdoms in which the proprietors, as lords of the manor, could negotiate with other political entities over jurisdictional and diplomatic matters. In theory, proprietors were subordinated to the monarch, but in an empire in which communication was slow and control weak, proprietors could operate with only minimal oversight from the Crown. Left to their own devices, the two proprietary families agreed to mediate the dispute themselves rather than depend on the whims of the empire, an entity neither family fully trusted because it had no clear means of solving these disputes.¹⁸

      Early on in the meeting, the Penns had agreed to let Baltimore commission a map that would serve as the basis for their negotiations. Baltimore decided on a map drawn by his agents in Maryland, which he sent to an English engraver to have further refined. Once Baltimore’s map had been done to his liking, the two proprietary families began divvying up the Middle Colonies. The negotiations lasted throughout the spring of 1732. Finally, on May 10, 1732, the two proprietary groups signed an agreement at Baltimore’s palatial home.¹⁹

      There was a problem for Lord Baltimore, however, one that he would realize only after it was too late. The map used to draw the lines was deeply flawed. Somehow a “false cape” existed on the map that led Baltimore to agree to give away far more land than he intended. Evidence suggests that the Penns knew of the error, but they said nothing. Baltimore’s eventual discovery of the mistake (he would say deceit) after it was too late would doom the agreement and signal the escalation of hostilities.²⁰

      But for the moment at least, optimism reigned. Since everyone knew that the boundaries sketched neatly on the map would be tougher to draw in reality, in the summer Baltimore and the youngest Penn, Thomas, departed for the region to oversee the official surveying. Thomas was a smart choice. Aged thirty-one, he was the youngest of the three Penn sons born to William’s second wife, Hannah. Thomas, like his brothers, had lived through his father’s shaky finances. Indeed, Thomas had felt their father’s financial straits more than the others. As the youngest brother, he had been apprenticed to a merchant in London because the family expected he would have to find his own way in the world. When Thomas and his brothers inherited Pennsylvania, they knew their future depended upon realizing what their father could not: the vast wealth a proprietary colony was supposed to offer its owners. The older brothers thus turned to the youngest brother, whose business acumen left him well-equipped to lead a proprietary colony.²¹

      They all recognized that the Agreement of 1732 was an important step toward solvency. Land grants and the collection of quitrents in the contested region had virtually stopped in both colonies because new settlers refused to pay for land with uncertain titles. The slowing of revenues left the Penns in a precarious financial position, but they expected the new agreement would change that. The proprietors realized that the recent expansion of the colonial government—its legal institutions, markets, and order—had made these lands all the more valuable. Richard Penn, for instance, speculated that the quitrents on new grants could be higher than ever before because the “lands … are more valuable now, then they were before any form of government was settled, any plantation made, or any markets found.”²²

      As Charles Calvert, the Fifth Lord Baltimore, crossed the Atlantic, he harbored similar dreams. While Baltimore was only two years older than Thomas, he had had a far different upbringing, and he had developed a different character. Baltimore grew up the privileged oldest son of a wealthy baron. His father died when he was sixteen, leaving him a fortune, including the rights to Maryland. By 1732, Baltimore had controlled his colony for more than half of his life. As he matured, he became enmeshed in imperial politics by holding various court appointments and several ministerial posts. His personality mixed with his background left him far more brash, assertive, and abrasive. He was prepared, like his grandfather before him, to confront the Penn family if necessary.²³

      Baltimore and the Penns did have one thing in common. The patriarchs of both families secured their charters in spite of their contentious religious beliefs. By the early eighteenth century, their heirs abandoned the faiths of their fathers and joined the Church of England, a move meant to ingratiate them with the Crown. Baltimore’s father renounced his Catholic faith and joined the Anglican confession in 1713. The conversion allowed him to regain control over Maryland’s government, something the family had lost with the ascension of William and Mary. The Penns, meanwhile, knew that Quakerism created political problems at a time when they could ill afford such hassle, and so they distanced themselves from the meetings. Thomas would make the split complete with his marriage in an Anglican Church in 1751. Unlike Baltimore’s move to conformity, Penn’s conversion only distanced him from the Quaker governing elite in Pennsylvania, even as it drew him closer to imperial circles. It also allowed him to embrace the military means necessary to defend his colony from a rival.

      After arriving in their respective colonies in the fall, the proprietors and their commissioners met to implement the agreement on October 6, 1732, in Newtown, Delaware. The conference began with a bang—Thomas Penn spent over £100 treating the Marylanders to drinking and displays of gunfire—but ended with a thud. For almost a year, commissioners met sporadically to discuss the articles but were never able to agree on the proper boundaries. The diplomatic charade went on until November 1733, when the warring commissions finally agreed to disagree and wrote an official report about their failure. Indeed, once Baltimore saw the land in person, he was sure that the map used in 1732 was not only inaccurate but somehow the work of the Penns to defraud him. Incensed, Baltimore left for England in May 1733, effectively declaring the agreement dead. At the time, James Logan, who had once wondered how two colonies could go to war with one another, concluded “tis now all over … the dye is cast and nothing but war remains.”²⁴

      “He Would Defend Him from the Proprietor of Pensilvania”

      By the time Baltimore left, he and his agents had designed a new strategy for Maryland to win the disputed land. First, Samuel Ogle had to establish Maryland’s firm control over the land west of the Susquehanna by convincing settlers to become loyal tenants of Baltimore. Second, Ogle had to establish Maryland’s legal jurisdiction through the appointment of justices of the peace and other offices. Samuel Blunston described these tactics as an effort “to alienate the minds of the inhabitants of this province and draw them from obedience to their party.” In England, meanwhile, Baltimore prepared to press his case in court using the loyalty of the settlers, the establishment of legal offices, and the taxes paid to him as evidence supporting the validity of his claim. In short, Baltimore hoped that a functioning legal jurisdiction would equal political possession.²⁵

      Ogle knew that the implementation of such a plan would require muscle, and he looked to Thomas Cresap to supply it. When Baltimore made Cresap a justice of the peace sometime in 1732, he expected that Cresap’s ardor would serve his purposes well. The terms of Cresap’s commission reinforced the often personal relationship between proprietors and their tenants. Proprietors felt duty-bound to protect those loyal to them, and settlers would only give their fealty to a government that proved it could provide security. As one of the Marylanders stated, because Baltimore “had recd money for that land on which … Cressop lived, he would defend him from the proprietor of Pensilvania.” Cresap soon enlisted others to support him, formed militias to protect Marylanders, and empowered constables, all of which built a bulwark to fend off Pennsylvanian attacks at the same time that it established Maryland’s legal jurisdiction.²⁶

      Cresap also initiated a policy of accepting a variety of people seeking refuge, such as runaway servants from Pennsylvania and new immigrants, and he invited a number of relatives to join him. Moreover, sometime around 1732, a German community, which had settled near the Codorus Creek on the west side of the Susquehanna River before the conflict between the colonies began, decided to pay taxes to Maryland in exchange for formal recognition of their land ownership. The community was considered a large settlement for the time, with at least fifty heads of household. Their