Page 90 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

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Maryland
Annapolis, capital city of Maryland
Founded 1649 Incorporated 1708 Elevation 12 m (39 ft) Population 38,394
Annapolis, the capital Maryland is a small attractive city situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, 25mi/40km south of Baltimore and about 30mi/50km east of Washington, D.C.
The city began in 1649 as a village named Providence on the north shore of the Severn River. This didn’t turn
out to be the best site, so they moved to the south shore because it was more sheltered. The settlement had various names, finally changing to Anne Arundel’s Towne (after
the wife of Lord Baltimore). In 1694 it was decided to move the capital of Maryland to Anne Arundel’s Towne, and it was renamed Annapolis after Princess Anne of Denmark and Norway, who was due to become Queen Anne of Great Britain.
17th century Annapolis was still little more than a village, but it grew as it became a port for the colonial trade. It was also a major center of the Atlantic slave trade.
Annapolis became the temporary capital of the United States after the signing of the peace treaty with Great Britain. It was in Annapolis on December 23, 1783, that General Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
After the Revolutionary War ships became bigger and the problem for Annapolis was that nearby Baltimore had a deeper harbor, and so trade switched away from Annapolis. Instead it changed to a harbor for seafood catching. Today that has switched again to a harbor for leisure craft.
The effect of trade moving to Baltimore is that the growth of Annapolis stopped, and is often the case with places that stop growing, the buildings were not pulled down and replaced. This has left Annapolis as a jewel of a town, with many 18th-century houses. The names of several of the streets, such as King George’s, have still been retained from colonial days.
The big change to Annapolis came with the founding