A tobacco crop growing in an ACLT field on Scientists Cliff Road, 1998
Scientists Cliffs, Calvert County, Maryland
American Chestnut Land Trust
https://www.acltweb.org/
The theme for this week is Free Space. I am going back in time, all the way to 1666, when Henry Hayman set foot in Somerset County, Maryland and was granted 200 acres of free land as a head right. He named his first piece of land "Second Choice" and became a planter of tobacco in the area. The Hayman family in Maryland continued on with a strong tradition of land ownership; it all began with Henry's "Second Choice". Here is his story....
To encourage settlement in the colony of Maryland, Lord Baltimore offered grants of acreages of land for each settler. This privilege was called "headrights", as it literally meant a right to land for every head settled in the colony. Headrights were common in other colonies as well and helped increase the labor force and profitability of large plantations. Henry Hayman was thought to have come from Devon, England with his family. He was granted a patent of 200 acres on Great Monie Creek in Maryland; 50 acres for himself, his wife Elinor, and his son Henry Jr., as well as another 50 acres granted by a Lieutenant William Smith. The headright system offered Henry a unique way to own land, something he may have not been able to do back in England where land was controlled by the nobility.
Monie
Somerset County, Maryland
Google Maps 2024
Land names...
Henry applied for a warrant from the Provincial Land Office to obtain his patent for the land. His warrant was excepted and the land was surveyed and then named, as was customary in Maryland. Henry may have named this parcel "Second Choice" after a previous land survey fell through. The land was then patented and Henry had full rights to the land. Every step of this process appears in a set of records known as the "Patent Record", and the original records are now held in the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis. These land names followed the land parcel from the creation point forward, and were often the only way used to describe parcels instead of using traditional metes and bounds.
Henry continued to acquire land as his family grew. His next land acquisition was in 1672 and was also located at the headwaters of the Great Monie Creek. He named his 150 acres "Washford". This acreage may have been resurveyed from a property called "Shapleigh's Neglect". His next acquisition was for 200 acres which he named "Castle Haven". This acreage was located 10 miles from the Monie Creek land and was about 4 miles west of Salisbury, Maryland on the Wicomico River.
In 1685 another tract of land was surveyed for Henry's son Henry Jr. in Monie and was named "Henry's Enjoyment". Eventually, "Second Choice" and "Henry's Enjoyment" were resurveyed into "Covington's Conclusion".
What did Henry do with all that land?
When Henry died in 1685 all of his land holdings passed on to his son Henry Jr. and his wife Elinor was appointed executrix. An inventory was taken of Henry's assets and 8150 pounds of tobacco were appraised. In Elinor's last appraisal before her death in 1688 she recorded 5,000 pounds of tobacco worth 20 pounds, 16 shillings in coin. Henry was a typical Maryland planter, growing tobacco as his cash crop. His sons, grandsons and great grandsons would continue in his footsteps, eventually acquiring more land and also the needed labor force to work that land....slaves.
Haymans of the Eastern Shore of Maryland 1666-1800, written by Douglass F. Hayman, has been the primary source of my Maryland Hayman family information. The book was a result of meticulous research into the Maryland State Archives and other original sources to compile a comprehensive genealogical history of the Haymans in Maryland, based on their property ownership, tax lists, wills and other records. The author added a wonderful description of the typical Maryland planter on page 17. In this description we can get a sense of who and what Henry Hayman was as a person. I have excerpted this passage...
Istock photo of the Eastern Shore of Maryland
"From freed servants and other immigrants with slender resources came the much misunderstood 'planter' of early Maryland, who established his type in the tidewater during the second half of the seventeenth century. His plantation, literally a planted place, consisted of a few acres cleared from the ubiquitous hinterland that extended from the bayside back into the hinterland and almost unpenetrated by whites. Here he built a rude dwelling, usually a single room, and planted his corn and his market crop, tobacco. From the beginning the Maryland planter practiced commercial agriculture and his wellbeing depended on a few hogsheads of tobacco he marketed each winter. With the proceeds he bought, first of all, necessary implements---axes and hilling hoes, guns, needles and the like, then whatever luxuries he could afford----sugar and occasionally rum. For the rest he lived off his own cornfield, vegetable garden and orchard, supplemented by hunting and fishing....Nearly every planting family kept chickens, cows and pigs. Part of his living he made with his own hands: cups and bowls from dried gourds, plates and trenchers from slabs of wood, benches and bedsteads from hewn logs, even his mattress from corn shucks. These were the realities that appeared in the thousands of inventories of their modest estates preserved in probate records.....nearly all were unlettered....and illiterate...they made their marks. ....The small planter had...the opportunity to rise in the economic scale. He and his kind cleared the forest, made the roads, planted the orchards. All this he did with his own hands, aided by the simplest tools....capital formation was the beginning of a different style of life".
The tax list of 1783 named 15 families headed by Haymans, owning nearly 1500 acres of land mostly clustered in a small area then called "Hayman's Savannah" in today's Somerset, Worchester and Wicomico Counties. They were all descendants of Henry and Elinor Hayman. Most made their living through agriculture. Some could write their names, but many signed by mark. Some among the third generation owned slaves by 1748 and by 1783 the combined Hayman families owned a total of 27 slaves.
The Revolutionary War created divided loyalties among the Hayman families ....some fought in the war against England, and then there were family members that remained stanchly loyal to the British Crown and fought with the Maryland Loyalists. The Loyalist branch of the family ended up in New York, and from there landed in New Brunswick, Canada to start a new life. The British offered them.....free land! Martin Hayman was granted 100 acres on the St. Croix River as well as farming tools, building materials and army rations for 3 years from the British government. He came with Captain Nehemiah Marks and this group formed the town of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada.
This is the branch that our Maine and Oregon Haymans came from!
Martin Hayman was given land on the St. Croix River, bordering Maine, in 1784. He was my 5X great grandfather.
Canadian Heritage Rivers System/St. Croix River
*Fun land names from other Hayman family members:
"Hayman's Exchange"
"Friend's Goodwill"
"Hopewell"
"Little Profit"
"Adley's Chance"
"Fat Arse Quarter".......my personal favorite!
"Paul's Folly"
"Hayman's Hardship"
"Hayman's Purchase'
"Hayman's Addition"
"Hayman's Outlet"
Google Maps showing Monie and Hayman Drive in Somerset County, Maryland. A reminder that the Hayman family was there way back when.
References:
Haymans of the Eastern Shore of Maryland 1666-1800 by Douglass F. Hayman, Jr. Publisher Douglas F. Hayman Jr.; 1387 Stonecreek Road, Annapolis, Maryland 21403 February 1993.
Accessed on FamilySearch 640017 August 2024.
Archives.com Essential Records for Finding Your Colonial Maryland Ancestors by Michael Hall October 16, 2012 https://www.archives.com/experts/hait-michael/records-for-finding-ancestors.html
American Chestnut Land Trust --Tobacco Landscape
https://www.acltweb.org/index.php/the-land/cultural-history/tobacco-landscape/
Loyalist Settlements in New Brunswick based on an article by Linda Hansen Squires
https://www.uelac.org/education/WesternResource/303-NB.pdf
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