Talbot History is Our History

Born on Christmas Day 1744 on his father’s plantation at “Fausley,” just two miles from what is today Easton in Talbot County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Tench Tilghman was the eldest of ten children of James and Anne (Francis) Tilghman.

The Colonel Tench Tilghman Chapter of the Maryland Society of the Sons of the American Revolution and The Mid-Shore Constitution Alliance sponsored a celebration of the fourth annual Constitution and Citizenship Day hosted at the Academy Art Museum in Easton on Sept. 17.

Each September, Americans commemorate Constitution Week — a time to honor the 1787 signing of the United States Constitution and reflect on the principles that continue to shape our nation. This year, Talbot250 is marking the week by sharing the voices of our own community leaders.

Maryland has long been touted as “America in Miniature,” and while that venerable tourism-boosting label refers to geographical diversity, the Maryland-as-microcosm description perfectly encapsulates the Old Line State during the Civil War. Perched on the faultline of a nation ripped in two, Maryland was home to North America’s largest free Black population, but it also was home to a vociferous secessionist element and had a slaveholding governor (pro-Union but pro-slavery Thomas Holliday Hicks of Dorchester County) at the war’s outset.

The following article was first published in the Gazette, June 2, 1899. The article was contributed by Tilghman Watermen’s Museum.

The only sign of Sharps Island today is a noticeably leaning, sparkplug-style lighthouse. It marks the shoals at the mouth of the Choptank River off Poplar Island and Black Walnut Point. It’s hard to imagine that the area near Sharps Island light was once an island up to 700-acres large, but some people in Tilghman still remember when there was some island left to see.

The Tilghman Watermen’s Museum, which records the lifestyle of watermen and the things they do, was founded by Hall and Mary Kellogg in 2008 because the couple saw the old Tilghman Island way of life disappearing.