A Walking Tour of Easton, Maryland
There was nothing random nor serendiptious about the founding of Talbot Court House. It was not built on any navigable waterway and the site selected was not located on an established trade route.The name said it all - this was going to be a government town, centrally located to all sections of the county.
That court house was built in 1711; the county, named for Lady Grace Talbot, sister of the second Lord Baltimore, had been established a half-century earlier in 1661. From its very beginning as an English colony the county economy was based on tobacco agriculture and the bountiful harvest of Chesapeake Bay from its over 600 miles of tidal shoreline, the most of any county in the United States.
Talbot Court House was never envisioned as a bustling town - just a place to conduct occasional official business and move on. As such for decades the settlement consisted primarily of taverns and a few scattered houses. But in 1788 the Maryland legislature designated the village the “East Capital” of Maryland and renamed it Easton.
In short order Easton had become the largest town on the Eastern Shore. The founding families of the Delmarva Peninsula, which dominated the Eastern Shore social, political, and economic history - the Tilghmans, Lloyds, Goldsboroughs, Hollydays and Stevens built their principal seats of residence in town. Easton had the Shore’s finest bank, its first newspaper, its first Federal offices, its first brick hotel, its first steamship line.
This wealth and building boom brought skilled artisans to town as well and the early 1800s buildings of Easton, many of which still stand, were the equal of those found in the big cities of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Our walking tour will start in the historic Town Center where a Visitor Center has been created and parking available...
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