View From the Shore

Maryland formally recognizes March 25th, as the day of its founding. It was on that day in 1634 that the first settlers sent by Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore established the first settlement in land chartered to the Calvert’s.

Mathias de Sousa, listed in records as a Mulatto, was of probable African and Portuguese descent. He was one of nine indentured servants at that first settlement. His indenture service ended in 1638 and he became a full free member of the colony becoming a mariner and fur trader. As a freeman he was allowed to participate and vote in the colonial assembly.

When those first settlers arrived there were already pockets of settlers on lands that would become Maryland. In August of 1631 William Claiborne, a resident of the Virginia colony of Jamestown, founded a settlement near the southern end of the the largest island of the Chesapeake Bay. The trading post bore his name and was established with the purpose of trading with Native Americans. He named the island Kent Island after his birthplace of Kent, England.

For the first 150 years of the English settlement the peninsula colonial borders were questioned. Maryland felt that the entire peninsula north of the Potomac parallel should be part of the Maryland Colony.

When Cæcilius Calvert was given the grant for Maryland in 1632, the charter stated his control was eastward to the Delaware River and Bay on lands not already settled by Europeans. The Dutch settlement of Hoerekil was founded in 1631, near Lewes, Delaware and was one of the first settlements of Delaware. In fact it’s because of this settlement that Delaware is not part of Maryland.

Near the town of Lewes lies Cape Henlopen. It’s the southern Cape of the Delaware River. Originally spelled Cape Hinlopen, Cape Henlopen is named after Thijmen Jacobsz Hinlopen. This spelling caused confusion with another Cape Hinlopen located about 24 miles south at Fenwick Island. Cape Hinlopen was decided to be the beginning of the Transpeninsular Line, as surveyed by Mason and Dixon and established the southern border of Delaware to Maryland. The Calvert’s intended for the Lewes’ Cape to be the start of the line. Had it began at Cape Henlopen at Lewes, Delaware would have been about 1000 square miles smaller.

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This was also published at ChesaDel Crier – Art and Entertainment Between the Bays

St. Patrick is considered the Patron Saint of Ireland, but he was born in Britain. He was born near the end of the 4th Century to wealthy parents and was abducted by Irish Raiders and held in captivity in Ireland for 6 years. During this captivity he became a devote Christian.

He is believed to have died on March 17, 460 AD and it is on this day that the Irish and those once a year Irish celebrate St. Patrick Day.

Even before St. Patrick, who is credited as banishing all snakes from the island, there were no snakes in Ireland. He couldn’t have banished any.

St. Patrick Day has a celebrated history of parades. The first St. Patrick Day parade was not in Ireland, but in New York City. On March 17, 1762 Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through the city. Although this year, 2020, with the coronavirus scare the parade in New York and elsewhere were canceled.

Leprechauns and St. Patrick are classic symbols of Ireland and are a natural combination. Leprechauns have their origins from old Celtic folklore and were cranky souls known for their trickery to protect their much-fabled treasure. It wasn’t until Walt Disney and the film Darby O’Gill & the Little People which introduced a cheerful, friendly leprechaun, that they became a part of the Irish celebration.

Many of us will have Corn Beef and Cabbage on St. Patrick Day, but this too is a fairly recent invention. Cabbage has long been a Irish food, it was usually served with bacon. That was until around the beginning of the 20th century when immigrants in New York City substituted corned beef to save money. This idea came from their Jewish neighbors.

Recently as I was discussing with a friend about Easter, I recalled that Easter Sunday was related to the Spring Equinox and the Full Moon. It’s one of those random facts I discovered while doing “6 Things to Consider”. Here is that posting.

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Easter occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.

The first full moon after the Spring Equinox is also the date of the Jewish Holiday of Passover and is the first full moon of their year. It will also fall between March 22nd and April 25th.

The name “Easter” is thought to be derived from the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess called Eostre. Pagans held a Spring Festival in her honor.

The White House Easter Egg Roll is a popular event on the Monday after Easter. The tradition began when Dolley Madison, wife of James Madison, 4th President of the United States felt that it would be good for the children of Washington DC to roll Easter eggs just like Egyptian children rolled colored eggs on the site of the Pyramids. Until 1877 the Easter Egg Roll was the grounds of the United States Capitol moving to the White House lawn in 1878.

In 1885 Tzar Alexander III of Russia commissioned Peter Carl Fabergé to create an egg as an Easter surprise for his wife Maria. The Tzarina so loved the gift that Fabergé was commissioned to make one each year, which he did until 1917 when the Tzar was overthrown. In all there are sixty-one eggs.

Handel’s Messiah is a work deplicting Jesus”life. It has three main sections. Even though it is mainly thought to be a Christmas piece the second section is for the Easter Passion. The “Hallelujah” chorus concludes this second part.

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About “6 Things to Consider”
Between 2016 and 2011 I published a site titled 6 Things to Consider. During those years I would put together 6 paragraphs on a random subject with new posts appearing 6 days a week. After five years of this, I stopped publishing new pieces. The site, while still online, became dormant for several years until the beginning of 2018 when due to a technical issue it was taken down. I have a backup of most of those posts and will randomly post them here as part of my “View from the Shore”.

We spring ahead an hour in the spring and fall backward one hour, in the fall. Some people mistakenly call it Daylight Savings Time, but it is Daylight Saving Time. Starting in 2007, with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that President George Bush signed into law in 2005, the new dates for Daylight Saving Time are for it to begin on the second Sunday of March and end on the first Sunday of November.

Daylight Saving Time is not a modern idea. Benjamin Franklin first mentioned it in a letter to the Journal of Paris in 1784. He didn’t really say that the clocks should be changed, but that to take advantage of the extra daylight, one should arise from bed earlier.

It wasn’t put into practice until the German government put it in place in 1916 between April 30 and October 1. In the same year the United Kingdom adopted it from May 21 to October 1st.

The U.S. Congress established it at the same time they formally adopted the Rail Road Time Zones in 1918, observing it for seven months in 1918 & 1919 It became so unpopular that the law for DST was repealed in 1919.

In 1942, during World War II, DST was reinstated in the U.S. although from the end of the war in 1945 until 1966, there wasn’t a Federal Law that addressed DST.

In 1966 DST was established and has been in place since, although the law gave states the capability to exempt themselves and a few, such as Arizona and Hawaii have. Many countries follow some sort of DST plan.

It was the summer of 1973 when Paul Simon begged ‘Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away’. Mama has finally taken it away. Mama is Kodak and they did discontinued Kodachrome film.

Kodak first introduced the film, which was the first successfully mass-marketed color still film using a subtractive method, in 1935. Since it required a complex processing amateurs can not do it, but it was a favorite of many professional photographers.

Until a 1954 ruling Kodak sold the film with the cost of processing included. Before this time Kodak had the only processing center. The United States sued saying this was anticompetitive. They entered into a consent decree that allowed processing plants in the US to acquire the required chemicals to process.

Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas was the last that was able to process the film. They stopped their processing line on December 30, 2010, marking the absolute end of Kodachrome.

Paul Simon’s song Kodachrome reached the number 2 spot on the US Billboard Charts in the summer of 1973 and brought some legal troubles from Kodak. They required the record company to place a note that ‘Kodachrome is a trademark of Kodak’. A few years later beginning in late 1990s Kodak used the song in their advertising.

Because of Kodak’s trademark the song was rarely played in the UK and therefore was not a hit there. The BBC had very strict rules about commercial endorsements and stations didn’t play songs that appeared to push products.

The election of 1828 was not a pretty election. It was a rematch between the same candidates of the 1824 contest between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Jackson felt he should have been the incumbent since he had received the most popular votes as well as Electoral votes. However none of the top four candidates received enough Electoral votes to win and for the first and only time in US election history the US House of Representatives made John Quincy Adams President.

One of the issues that arose against Andrew Jackson, who won by a 56-44 percent margin, dealt with his wife Rachel. Rachel Donelson Jackson was born on June 15, 1762 and through a mistake may have married Andrew Jackson when she was still legally married to another man, Lewis Robards.

The 18 year old Rachel Donelson married 27 year old Captain Lewis Robards on March 1, 1785. Robards appeared to be the perfect economic mate for Rachel. By 1790 things had changed, some of it may have been because she had met and fell in love with Jackson

What happen between 1785 and Rachel’s marriage to Robards and 1794 when Jackson and Rachel married legally may never be truly determined. Whether Robards deserted his wife or Rachel left him for another man, which was unheard of in the 18th century, is clouded in mystery.

But it became an issue in the 1828 election. The press discovered that the couple may have married without benefit of a divorce to Rachel and accused her of adultery. The attacks were ruthless and provide much strain on the health of an already sick Rachel. She dearly love Jackson and wished to see him as President.

Rachel did see her husband elected President, but she was unable to join him as his First Lady in the White House. A few days before Christmas on December 22, 1828 she died and was buried on Christmas Eve in her white inauguration gown. Andrew Jackson for the rest of his life blamed his political enemies for his wife’s death.

It didn’t take long for Congress to start debate on Amendments to the United States Constitution. Congress first convened on March 4, 1789 and on June 8th of the same year James Madison read his thoughts regarding a Bill of Rights. During the course of debates through the ratification process of the Constitution many states express concerns that certain rights weren’t part of the Constitution.

Between June 8th and September 25, 1789, when the 12 proposed Amendments, the Bill of Rights, were submitted to the states, Congress compiled and debated the articles. First it was the house which used many of Madison’s proposals. The Senate modified them. On September 21, 1789 the House and the Senate together worked to resolved the differences, which was settled when the Senate passed them.

George Washington signed the resolution on October 2, 1789 and the proposed 12 amendments were sent to the 11 states that had already ratified the United States Constitution.

Each of the 12 articles would be voted on separately by states with an article being ratified when it received approval of three quarters of the states. Six weeks after receiving the Bill of Rights North Carolina ratified the Constitution. They had been holding out because it didn’t have individual state rights guarantee. Also during the ratification process, Vermont was admitted to the United States and Rhode Island, the last of the original thirteen states, ratified the Constitution.

Virginia became the 11th and deciding state to ratified the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution on December 15, 1791. They approved all 12 of the articles, but only Articles 3-12 were ratified. Article 1 had been rejected by Delaware while New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island had rejected Article 2.

Article 1 of the 12 original Amendment Articles will probably never be passed, it established a formula for the number of House representatives. “Article I. After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons”

Article 2, which simply stated, “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”, became the 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution on May 5, 1992, over 202 years after original Congressional approval, when Missouri and Alabama became the 37th and 38th state to ratify it. Seven states ratified it after that date bringing the total to 45. New York, who rejected it in 1790, Nebraska with a 1987 rejection along with Massachusetts, Mississippi and Pennsylvania are the states who have not approved the Article.