Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/85

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AUGUSTINE HERRMAN

man felt quite at liberty to withdraw from New Amsterdam and proceed with what arrangements he could make with Calvert.

Information relative to Herrman’s actual preparation of the map between the years 1660–1670, the date of his finishing it, according to an inscription, is scant. Although his name occurs at frequent intervals in the colonial records of Maryland during those years, it is usually in connection with some lawsuit or to some public office to which he had been elected.[1] Up until 1662 he made frequent trips back to New Amsterdam to liquidate his business interests there. For his permanent residence he chose a place on the Bohemia River, so named by himself after his native land. In 1658 Dr. George and Anna Hack had acquired four hundred acres of land called “Anna Catherine Neck”, so named, perhaps, after their two daughters, in the upper headwaters region of Chesapeake Bay and in what is now Cecil County, Maryland.[2] It is possible that the Hacks may have spent part of the winter of 1659–1660 here and that Herrman stopped with them a while after his mission at St. Mary’s was finished. Seeing the natural beauty and the fertility of the soil here, he decided to settle on an adjoining estate. Herrman’s house lay in latitude 39 degrees, 45 minutes. By 1661 he must have acquired a large amount of land there, as he refers to a colony and expresses a hope that people will come to settle there. During the next decade it is likely that the greater part of his time was consumed making constant trips to Virginia and the eastern side of Delaware Bay.

It took eight to ten years to gather the material for the map, with a total expenditure of some two hundred pounds of

  1. Maryland Archives. Prov. Court; Proc. of Council; Proc of General Assembly. Index vols.
  2. Maryland Land Records, Annapolis, Liber Q. Folio 456.