(March 25, 1634), was founded by Leonard Calvert (1606–1647), who arrived in the Chesapeake Bay area with two ships, the Ark and the Dove. Commissioned by his brother Cecilius Calvert (1605–1675), Second Lord Baltimore, to lead the expedition and serve as its governor, Leonard Calvert, along with over 230 emigrants, founded the first capital, St. Mary’s City, on Saint Clement’s Island. One of those original colonists, Father White, described their arrival:
We celebrated mass. … This had never been done before in this part of the world. After we had completed, we took on our shoulders a great cross, which we had hewn out of a tree, and advancing in order to the appointed place, with the assistance of the Governor and his associates … we erected a trophy to Christ the Savior.305
The Assembly of Maryland, in eulogy of Leonard Calvert, passed in a vote this proclamation three years after his death:
Great and manifold are the benefits wherewith Almighty God hath blessed this colony, first brought and landed within the province of Maryland, at your lordship’s charge, and continued by your care and industry, in the happy restitution of a blessed peace unto us, being lately wasted by a miserable dissension and unhappy war.
But more estimable are the blessings poured on this province, in planting Christianity among a people that knew not God, nor had heard of Christ. All which, we recognize and acknowledge to be done and performed, next under God, by your lordship’s pious intention towards the advancement and propagation of the Christian religion, and the peace and happiness of this colony and province.306