Emigration To Maryland
Margaret, her sister Mary, and her brothers Giles Brent and Fulke Brent sailed together from England and arrived at St. Mary's, Maryland on November 22, 1638, where they hoped to improve their fortunes. In England the father's estate went to the eldest son, and the remainder of the children had to make their own ways. Margaret Brent was about 37 and unmarried.
In the colony, the Brents secured large land grants and corresponding political offices due to their prestigious ancestry and/or political affiliations. Fulke Brent returned to England, but the other three stayed on in Maryland. On October 4, 1639, Margaret Brent became the first Maryland female land owner. She obtained the first recorded land grant in St. Mary's, a 70.5-acre (285,000 m2) patent, with which she and her sister Mary established the "Sister's Freehold", and an adjacent 50 acres (200,000 m2) titled St. Andrew's. The Brent sisters had land entitlement letters from Maryland's Proprietary Governor, awarding them land portions equal in size to those of arrivals in Maryland in 1634. Their initial entitlement was enlarged to 800 acres (3.2 km2) per sister. Later, Giles Brent transferred a 1,000-acre (4 km2) land tract on Kent Island, Maryland to Margaret as payment of a debt he owed his sister, although he may have continued to manage it himself.
Margaret Brent also received credit or headrights for the five men and four women servants she had brought with her, and additional headrights for indentured servants she later imported (some of whose indentures she sold to other colonists). The colony's Proprietor issued headrights to encourage the gentry and sea captains to transport workers for labor in the growing colony. However, records concerning her trading or exercise of the headrights are missing, whether because lost or nonexistent, given the colony's instability. Brent became an ally of the governor, Leonard Calvert. Together they became guardians of seven year old Mary Kittamaquund, the daughter of a Piscataway chief, whose deathly ill son had recovered under the ministrations of Jesuit Rev. Andrew White. The colonists promised to educate the young girl in English language and culture. In 1644, Giles Brent married Mary Kittamaquund. Upon her father's death, he asserted his rights to tribal lands, contrary to both tribal custom and Governor Calvert's own claims.
Meanwhile, by the mid-1640s, the English Civil War spilled over to Maryland. Protestant sea captain Richard Ingle raided the colony and burned down structures in early 1645. He took the Acting Governor, Giles Brent, and two Jesuit priests as prisoners back to England. Governor Leonard Calvert fled across the Potomac River to the nearby colony of Virginia seeking help against the raiders. There, he recruited armed men who helped his forces to repel the invaders. However, the colony had been reduced to about 100 residents, and Calvert fell sick and died before paying the mercenaries. The dying man reportedly told Margaret Brent, whom he named his executor, "Take all, spend all." Brent liquidated his estate to pay the soldiers who had saved the colony, which later caused a controversy with the governor's surviving brother, Lord Baltimore.
Lord Baltimore had always managed his proprietorship from England, where he worked to keep political support for the colony, as well as to prove his loyalty (as a Catholic) to the new government of Protestants. He had appointed his brother as governor and to manage his lands. During the emergency after Calvert's death, the Provincial Court on January 3, 1648 appointed Brent attorney-in-fact for Lord Baltimore, as there was no time to contact him about financial matters, and he had not appointed a successor to Calvert. She collected his rents and paid his debts.
Thus, as Lord Baltimore's representative (as well as Calvert's executor and a landowner in her own right), on January 21, 1648, Brent attended the provincial assembly, where she requested a voice in the council, as well as two votes in its proceedings (one as an independent landowner and the other as Lord Baltimore's attorney.) Governor Thomas Greene refused her request, as the assembly at the time considered such privileges for women to be reserved for queens. Brent left but said that she "Protested against all proceedings ... unless she may be present and have vote as aforesaid."
That same day, Brent called for corn to be brought from Virginia to feed the hungry troops camped at St. Mary's. Some accounts suggest that she had spent all of Leonard Calvert's personal estate by this time, and proceeded to sell Lord Baltimore's cattle to pay the soldiers' wages, although there is disagreement among historians on this matter. English law would not permit the sale of such possessions without a court order or a special act of the legislature. But Calvert's lands and buildings were added into the inventory of his estate. Brent and then Governor William Stone also disagreed upon the act of a sale of a 100-acre (0.4 km2) land tract entitled "The Governor's Field".
Brent appeared at the assembly a final time as Lord Baltimore's attorney, on February 9, 1648 in a case against Thomas Cornwallis. She may have been replaced by Thomas Hatton, the new Provincial secretary.
From England, Lord Baltimore wrote to the assembly objecting to the sale of any of his property after the death of his brother. He may have been suspicious of Brent's motives in managing his assets, or not realized that the colony had been in danger of extinction, had the mercenaries not been paid to leave. While the assembly had refused to give Margaret Brent a vote, it defended her stewardship of Lord Baltimore's estate, writing to him on April 21, 1649, that it "was better for the Colony's safety at that time in her hands than in any man's ... for the soldiers would never have treated any others with that civility and respect ...".
Read more about this topic: Margaret Brent