Forming the identity of Maryland's Dorchester County

Talar du svenska? Do you speak Swedish? Probably not, but if things had happened a little differently in the early and mid-1600s, we might be using that Scandinavian language now. In those days, one of the regional powers was Sweden, then experiencing its period of greatest expansion and military influence. New Sweden, or Nya Sverige, was a small settlement along the Delaware River. It was based at Fort Christina, now the city of Wilmington, Delaware. The colony extended up both banks of the river, so it included parts of present-day Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Not only Swedes, but also Finns and Dutch came to the region, pursuing Sweden’s goal of creating a tobacco- and fur-trading colony in competition with the French and British.
“The first Swedish expedition to North America embarked from the port of Gothenburg in late 1637,” Wikipedia tells us. “The members of the expedition, aboard the ships Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel, sailed into Delaware Bay, which lay within the territory claimed by the Dutch, passing Cape May and Cape Henlopen in late March, 1638.” They anchored at a rocky point on the Minquas Kill, where they established their fort, named after the Queen of Sweden. “Kill,” by the way, is a Dutch word that simply means “stream.” So if you ever cross the Murderkill River in southern Kent County, Delaware, fear not - its name is derived not from violence, but the more soothing Dutch words for “mother” and “stream.” Not long after the Swedes arrived, disputes with the Dutch, English and Indians arose concerning deeds to property. The Swedes even supported the Susquehannocks in their victory in a 1644 war against the English colony of Maryland.
In 1654, the Swedes took the Dutch Fort Casimir, leading to Dutch reprisals a year later. This was the beginning of the end for the Swedes. Though they maintained a measure of autonomy, within a decade the English conquered the New Netherland colony in 1664. Would Dorchester ever have become Swedish? We can’t know today, but with neighboring Sussex County at one time ruled by Swedes (who called it Hoarkill,) things could have gone differently. Borders were fluid, with a number of groups vying for control, each with documents and claims they considered valid. For instance, Hoarkill County wasn’t finally assimilated into British rule until 1680. But Dorchester’s own maps in 1669 showed the county’s boundaries following the Choptank River and Tuckahoe Creek as far as they went inland from the Chesapeake and then continuing on to Delaware Bay - certainly not something the Swedes were ready to agree to at that time. Today, Dorchester is Maryland’s biggest county.
But in those days, it was considerably larger, at least in terms of square miles - it is estimated that in 1659, there were only 100 homes in Dorchester from the bay to the ocean. By 1669, this had at least doubled and about 1,000 people had settled in this vast area. The early borders formed a rectangle that included what is now Caroline County and half of Sussex. “They gave Dorchester some very nice oceanfront where Delaware Bay and the Atlantic join northeast of Cape Henlopen,” says “Footnotes to Dorchester History” by Walter E. Huelle. In 1669, only Somerset County shared land on the Eastern Shore with Dorchester. Lord Baltimore gave William Stevens of Somerset permission to lay out and grant tracts on Delaware Bay. However, with the ascension in 1685 of King James II, the Catholic Calverts of Maryland fell out of favor and the king gave Delaware to the Quaker leader William Penn. This cut Dorchester’s property in half. English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon finished the job of delineating the county. While the 1773 project gave us their namesake Mason-Dixon line forming the division between North and South, their work extended farther - Caroline County was also carved out during the job, and this completed Dorchester’s borders.
In the end, they did establish boundaries among Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware from the mountains to the sea. “Footnotes to Dorchester History” says, “The stone markers for the Mason-Dixon Line, bearing the arms of Penn on one side and those of the Calverts on the other, were made in England and after being shipped to America, were landed in Dorchester on both the Choptank and Nanticoke Rivers.” So it took nearly one and a half centuries for Dorchester to take its current shape. But for the results of early struggles among colonial powers, history and even language and culture could have ended up quite differently. As it is, most of us would have to tell a Swedish visitor, “Jag pratar inte svenska.” “I don’t speak Swedish.” To read more about Dorchester, visit www.faraway-places.com and click on the “Life on Delmarva” link.