Three Family Trees: Mary Sterling Clack and some Maryland history**

Mary Sterling Clack, my 7th great grandmother on the George Rogers Family Tree.

1700–1763

BIRTH 23 APR 1699/1700/01 • Gloucester, Gloucester, Virginia colony

DEATH 23 MAY 1763 • St Andrews Parish, Brunswick, Virginia colony

She was probably a third generation American, with her grandfather John Sterling I perhaps having been born in Maryland in 1638. I haven't chased down the details of his life yet!

First Ancestry makes me shake my head in disbelief again, because her birth date in 1699 would have been when her mother Mary Martin would have only been 12 years old, so I'm leaning toward Mary Sterling Clack having been born in 1701, at least.

Mary's 7 siblings were born and raised in Maryland, and as she's one of the oldest, I honestly doubt that she was born in Gloucester, Virginia. But that's where she later married James Clack Jr. who was from Gloucester VA. (I shared about him HERE). It's possible it is just where the record of her birth was added, maybe at the time of her marriage. James Jr. was the son of an Anglican minister in the early English based church in Gloucester, VA.

There apparently were religious free-thinkers and Quakers who moved to Maryland in the 1600's from Virginia, just across the Chesapeake (see below detailed history of Somerset County, MD,) But there are also records that the Martins and Sterlings were early Maryland settlers, so how her birth record says she was born in VA is a mystery.

James Clack Jr *

1698–1757

Birth 1698 • Ware, Gloucester, Virginia

Death 29 JUN 1757 • St Andrews Parish, Brunswick, Virginia

The way I learned of the Clack family and it's connection to the Rogers.

And their son (who fought in the Revolutionary War) was:

Col. John Clack

1721–1784

Birth 9 JAN 1721 • Gloucester, Virginia,

Death 18 AUG 1784 • Brunswick, Virginia

[Maryland's] Somerset County was settled and established by English colonists in part due to a response to the Province/Dominion of Virginia passing a law in 1659/1660 requiring Quakers in the colony to convert to Anglicanism or leave the colony. A group of Virginia Quakers living in Accomack County, Virginia, on the southern tip of what later became known as the Delmarva Peninsula, petitioned Charles Calvert, third Lord Baltimore in 1661 to migrate to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to the territory under his governance. The governor considered this an opportunity to fortify the borders of his territory on the Delmarva Peninsula against the pressing encroachment of the Virginians.^[3]

The Royal Charter that Lord Baltimore had received from King Charles I in 1632 had granted Maryland the land north of the entire length of the Potomac River up to the 40th parallel. Later surveys authorized by Baltimore on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay indicated that the southern boundary would continue across the peninsula at the mouth of the Pocomoke River. It was marked on the north shore by a rock outcropping labelled as "Watkins' Point". The Virginian Quakers settled just north of that point, on the southern bank of the Annemessex River in November 1662, A separate group of Anglican Virginian settlers were granted permission to make another settlement, further north along the Manokin River.^[4]

In conjunction with the two new settlements, Lord Baltimore set up a three-man commission for the Eastern Shore territory, made up of two Marylanders and one Virginian. Its purpose was ostensibly to oversee the territory, found new settlements, and maintain a detailed recording of all land and civic transactions in the area. Lord Baltimore intended to use the commission to reinforce Maryland's claim to the area and to monitor any encroachments by Virginians.^[5]

Invasion from Virginia

In 1663, activists from Virginia persuaded the Virginia Assembly to declare that the Virginia-Maryland border was 30 miles north of the Pocomoke Sound, at the mouth of the Wicomico River. The Assembly tried to secure the allegiance to Virginia of all settlers south of the Wicomico River - including the Annemessex and Manokin settlements.^[6] In early October 1663, a militia from Accomac County, Virginia led by a Colonel Edmund Scarborough arrived at the Annemessex settlement. They attempted to secure oaths of allegiance under threat of arrest and property confiscation. Scarborough was also on a personal mission to arrest Stephen Horsey (born on Isle of Wight, England and immigrated to Northampton, Virginia, 1643), the leader of the anti-tax movement and a vocal critic of the colonial government. He along with fellow Northampton County residents William Coulborne,Randall Revell, and Ambrose Dixon signed the Tricesimo die Marty 1651.

Scarborough and his force of 40 mounted men reached Horsey's new residence on October 11, 1663, and presented the Commands of the Assembly of Virginia against him. Horsey was "arrested" by Scarborough, but Horsey refused to accompany the party back to Virginia, declaring that he was going to remain in Maryland and maintain allegiance to the King and Lord Baltimore. The settlers expelled Scarborough and his force from the settlement.^[7] The company moved on to the Manokin Settlement, where they were received much more favorably.^[8] Although the Anglican settlers there were willing to swear allegiance to the Virginia colonial government, they were not willing to take any action against Lord Baltimore's government. Scarborough returned to Virginia without success in taking over southern Somerset County for Virginia.^[9]

Early county leaders

The new settlers established a government for Calvert County, the eighth in the Province of Maryland; it was formed from the southern part of Kent County. This had been organized in 1642 as the Province's second county, encompassing the entire Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake. Horsey was selected to sit on the first county court, which administered the new county. Charles Calvert appointed Stephen Horsey on December 11, 1665, along with Captain William Thorne, William Stevens, George Johnson, John Winder, James Jones and Henry Boston.^[10] Horsey sat as a regular member of the Somerset County Court through the winter and spring of 1666. He traveled across the Chesapeake Bay in 1665 with Captain Thorne to meet with Charles Calvert, who swore them in as county commissioners. Horsey established himself as a nonconformist and someone willing to stand up for his beliefs.^[11]

Map of The Hundreds of Somerset County, Maryland as of 1669. Note the boundaries overlap with Sussex, Delaware and Accomac counties, Virginia.

Settlement growth

The territory continued to attract new settlers, primarily from Virginia, and by 1666, the territory had met the requirements to become established as a county in the province with its own local government. On August 22, 1666, Lord Baltimore issued a proclamation establishing the new county, including the establishment of a complete civil and military organization. The proclamation established a sheriff and a military commander for the county, and five surveyors charged with laying out a highway to serve the county. In January 1667, the county administration laid out the five initial districts, designated as "Hundreds", into which the county would be divided. Additional hundreds were added as additional knowledge of the area was surveyed.^[12]

Religious communities

Settlement of the county generally proceeded from the Chesapeake Bay eastward, and from old Accomac County northward. The original settlers in the first two settlements were Quakers and Anglicans; and both groups continued to grow from ongoing immigration from the northern portions of the Virginia colony. In the 1670s, Scottish and Irish Presbyterians began to immigrate to the county, some from Virginia, some from the British Isles. In December 1680, a prominent member of the county and professed Anglican, William Stevens of Rehoboth settlement, sent a request to the Presbytery of Laggan in northern Ireland to consider sending a Presbyterian minister to Somerset county; and the first Presbyterian (Reformed) minister, Reverend Francis Makemie, arrived in early 1683, quickly followed by a growing list of additional Irish Presbyterian ministers and missionaries. The towns of Rehoboth and Snow Hill along the Pocomoke River in the eastern (seaside) portion of Somerset County became Presbyterian centers in the County. The work of these Presbyterian ministers and missionaries eventually led to the organization of the Presbytery in Philadelphia in 1706, the forerunner of American Presbyterianism.

In 1689, the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 in England resulted in the exile of the Roman Catholic King James II. After conquest by invasion, the Protestant Dutch rulers William of Orange-Nassau and Mary of Orange (James II's Protestant daughter) later became King William III, (1650-1702) and Queen Mary II. The "Protestant Revolution" of 1689 in Maryland overthrew the Roman Catholic government, resulting in the reversion of Lord Baltimore's proprietary charter. The Province was converted into a Royal colony (with a later government controlled by the king and his ministers). The capital was moved from the Catholic stronghold at St. Mary's City in southern Maryland to the more central, newly renamed Annapolis on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, opposite Kent Island.

In 1692, the Provincial General Assembly established the Church of England as the "established church" of the Province. This put pressure on the Quakers and Presbyterians, who were excluded from political office for a period. Their numbers in the county began a slow decline until the American Revolution.^[13]

For more than a century, the county and much of the colony were developed by planters, with the labor of enslave Africans, for tobacco as a commodity crop. For many years they prospered, but tobacco exhausted the soil. By the early 19th century, after the American Revolutionary War, some planters turned to mixed farming.

Source: Wikipedia, Somerset County, MD

Of course if you already knew all that history, you probably skipped reading about early Maryland. I needed to read it several times to let go of some of the mis-information that I'd been carrying around with me. There were other of my ancestors who came from Maryland, and now I know some of what their communities might have been like.

Mary and James Clack had 10 children, only one of whom died at age 14 and the rest lived into adulthood.

Mary outlived James by 6 years, dying in 1763 at age 63 in St. Andrews Parish, Brunswick, VA. Neither of their graves are located anywhere known.

And here's a nice chart of Mary and James Clack Jr.'s children: (Source) (I'm not that sure of it's accuracy, but it's nicely organized)

John CLACK

Birth:

Abt 1719

Gloucester, Va

Death:

Marr: