March 19, 2024

Celebrate Maryland Day in St. Mary’s

Maryland Day

Historic St. Mary’s City invites the community to celebrate Maryland Day with them by offering free admission to the outdoor exhibits on Saturday, March 25.

Living history sites will be open from 10am to 4pm. Plan to visit the Godiah Spray Tobacco Plantation to see heritage breed cows, pigs, and chickens, and the Woodland Indian Hamlet and learn about the people and culture that were here on this land now called Maryland. Step on board the Maryland Dove to imagine the risks taken on the original journey in 1634; and explore the reconstructed Town Center, the place for all government business in the 1600s.

The highlight of the celebration will be the annual HSMC Maryland Day ceremony, under the Margaret Brent Pavilion (parking in the State House parking lot, 47418 Old State House Road), beginning at 1pm. The featured keynote speaker will be Tuajuanda C. Jordan, president of St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Longtime HSMC volunteers Tyler Bell and Jane Kostenko will receive the museum’s highest honor, the Cross Bottony award, for their years of support to the institution. The program will close with the Ceremony of the Flags, as children from across Maryland present their county colors.

Historic St. Mary’s City is an outdoor museum of living history and archaeology, dedicated to telling the diverse stories of Maryland’s beginnings.

For more information, contact 301-994-4370, 800-SMC-1634, or [email protected].

Maryland DayThe community can also celebrate Maryland Day at Maryland’s birthplace, St. Clement’s Island.

St. Clement’s Island Museum will offer a full day of fun from 10am to 5pm March 25, including free museum admission, kids’ activities, free water taxi rides (10am – 2pm), lighthouse tours, a food truck, and special exhibits. The event will also include a public ceremony (10am) held on the mainland and a public Mass (11am) commemorating the first Mass said in the English-speaking New World, featuring the Papal Nuncio to the US, Archbishop Christophe Pierre.

Maryland Day commemorates the first landing of English colonists on St. Clement’s Island on March 25, 1634 – a significant part of St. Mary’s County’s and the state of Maryland’s story.

The St. Clement’s Island Museum, which sits just a half-mile from the island from which it takes its name, is under the care of the St. Mary’s County Museum Division and interprets the fascinating stories of the island and surrounding Colton’s Point from colonial times until the present.

“Maryland Day is the most important event in our program year, since it marks the beginning of both St. Mary’s County and the state of Maryland in 1634,” said Karen Stone, manager of the St. Mary’s County Museum Division. “On this day, we honor the meeting of two cultures – the newly-arrived English and the native Piscataway – and the friendship and collaboration that ensued. It is also a day on which we celebrate Maryland’s religious history and its place in the development of the statutes of religious freedom that are so pivotal in this country’s history.”

For more information, click here or call 301-769-2222.

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