MARYLAND

Sail into Annapolis on the cross-bay ferry or top the crest of many a rolling hill as you motor the State's highways, and before you spreads a panorama that reminds you of an English village, snuggling close about the slender spire of its parish church.

At St. Anne's Church in Annapolis (named for Princess Anne) parishioners today take communion from a silver service bearing the coat of arms of King William III. The roster of the town and county names reveals how thoroughly the roots of the Old Line State were embedded in Britain.

Here in Maryland are spacious manorial estates where colonial English gentlemen and their ladies lived graciously and entertained lavishly. Some are still held by descendants of the original owners, and the leisure of colonial living still lingers.

Over on the Eastern Shore stands an old frame tavern whose doors continue to swing to trade beneath its sign bearing the date 1744. In one of its ledgers, kept between 1789 and 1793, I thumbed through the entries of "grogg, toddy, horsefeed, dinners and suppers" which, though charged in pounds, shillings, and pence, were often paid off in lambs, butter, a cow, or a calf.

Here in Maryland, too, "knights" ride in tilting tourneys; other horsemen compete in steeplechases closely akin to that at Aintree; still others in hunting pink ride to hounds and thrill to the shout of "Tallyho, the fox!"

Yet one must not overplay the English parallel.

Maryland was one of the leaders in the struggle to cast off the English yoke. First of the plantation colonies to join the Continental Association, she outdid the others in enforcing her nonimportation pledge. So thorough ndeed was one committee sitting in judgment that it even ordered the destruction of a smuggled tombstone!

In the old Senate Chamber of the Annapolis Statehouse, used for several months as the Capitol of the United States, George Washington resigned his commission as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army on December 23, 1783. In this same room the treaty of peace made with England at Paris was ratified a few weeks later.

Standing ever for autonomy, religious and individual liberty, and laws "consonant to reason," the Old Line State has contributed much toward shaping the course of popular government in the Nation.

Geographically, Maryland has been aptly described as a delightful miniature of America. Her activities, too, afford a representative cross section of the country's development.

Maryland gave the United States its first public railroad, first dental school, first linotype machine-yes, also its first American-made umbrella! The first telegraphic message, "What hath God wrought," was flashed between Washington and Baltimore.

A century ago Baltimore gained fame for the fleet, ocean-roving clipper ships that it launched from its skidways; now it constructs ships of steel and fashions air Clippers to link with the Orient. Entering their sixth year of service across the 8,500-mile span of the…”