Maryland's Forgotten Bohemian
by Dr. Charles J. Scheve, Historian
Baltimore County Historical Society
In the early days of colonial Maryland, Lord
Baltimore was in the role of a developer who needed to offer prospective colonists in
England a good description of the colony and an accurate map to show them how to get to
any part of it. So when in 1660 he came across a likely mapmaker, he offered him the job
and a grant of 5,000 acres of land just to take it.
The cartographer he found was Augustine Herrman
(1621--1686), a Bohemian from Prague who had emigrated to the Netherlands, studied there,
and gone on to become a prosperous import merchant in New Amsterdam (later New York),
where he sold everything the colonists there needed. He also had become a diplomat for the
governor, Peter Stuyvesant, who sent him on missions up and down the east coast and even
as far south as the Dutch West Indies.
On one of these missions he was sent to
Maryland to discuss the boundaries of the colony with Lord Baltimore, for the Dutch had
colonies in some of the lands claimed by Maryland, most notably land along the Delaware
River. Maryland's charter granted Lord Baltimore all the land between the south shore of
the Potomac River and the 40th parallel, and between the mountains in the west to the
Atlantic Ocean. Herrman liked what he saw of Maryland, especially the land at the head of
the Chesapeake Bay. He showed Lord Baltimore a sample of his cartographic skill and
offered to make a map of Maryland if he would be given a grant of land. So it was that he
was given an initial grant of 5,000 acres in what is now Cecil County just for agreeing to
make the map, and a promise of more land when he would finish it. Herrman found Lord
Baltimore a more agreeable master than the abrasive Peter Stuyvesant. And so he moved his
family, servants, and probably slaves, from New Amsterdam with its neat little rows of
houses, shops, a church, and a fort to settle in the woods of northern Maryland. His Dutch
wife, Janetje, must have been appalled at the move. His children--he had two boys and three
girls by 1662--may have found it more interesting. Since English speaking neighbors were
nowhere near them, they probably spoke Dutch in their little colony for a number of years.
Although he had been given the land by Lord
Baltimore, he had to purchase it from the other owners, the Susquehannock Indians. He did
this on Spesutie Island, the estate of fellow Marylander Nathaniel Utie, at the head of
the Bay.
He named his land Bohemia Manor and the nearby
river to the south Bohemia River. Although he probably had servants and slaves, initially
his "manor house" must have resembled the simple post and wattle houses we see
at historic Jamestown. Such houses the colonists called "sorry houses."
The manor house and its outbuildings must have been surrounded by a palisade of
vertical logs as a defense against attacks by marauding Indians, most notably the warlike
Susquehannocks.
Over the next ten years, he made periodic field
trips from this home base to gather data for his map. Maryland today has about 3,000 miles
of coastline. Add to this the coastlines of Virginia and Delaware, and we have some idea
of the distances he had to travel. He must have been away from home for weeks, even months
at a time engaged in his surveys. Judging by the excellent map he produced, he must have
had available to him the best surveying instruments of the 17th century: surveying chains,
a quadrant, and a surveying compass. With him he must have taken a crew of assistants: a
guide and translator, a boatmen, guards, and a cook.
It took him ten years to gather the data and
draw his map. In 1670 he sent it to England to have it engraved and copies of it printed,
since there were at that time no facilities in the colonies for doing that. We don't know
how many copies were printed, but only four of these original copies exist today. A
photocopy of one of these forms part of a collection of Maryland maps at the Maryland
Historical Society.
The map measures about two and a half feet by
three feet and is printed on four adjoining sheets of paper. In the 17th century there
were no printing presses capable of printing the whole map on one sheet. It is much larger
than most other early Maryland maps and much more detailed. It covers all of
Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and that part of Pennsylvania and New Jersey up to the 40th
parallel. That latitude crosses through north Philadelphia today. It gives the names of
rivers, counties, towns, manors, and native-American settlements. Comparing its contours
to those of modern maps, it looks very exact. Since it was to be used by prospective
settlers, water depths near the mouths of rivers were conveniently indicated in fathoms.
The king of England, Charles II, declared it to be the best map made of any country. It
became the basic map of Maryland for the next hundred years.
Lord Baltimore was so pleased with his new map
that he granted Herrman over the years an estate measuring about thirty square miles of
land, making him the largest landholder in the American colonies. Earlier, in 1662, he had
made him a "denizen" (naturalized) citizen of Maryland. Knowing the
"lay of the land" better than anyone else in his day, he was the first to
propose building a canal to link the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River. Today at the
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal museum in Chesapeake City, his portrait greets visitors as
they enter.
By his map and by his vision of a canal
Augustine Herrman helped to bring to realization the developer, Lord Baltimore's, dream of
a well populated and thriving Maryland. We have all benefited from his work and
foresight. He should not remain our forgotten Bohemian.
Suggested Reading:
Lloyd A. Brown, The Story of Maps (1949).
Charles B. Clark, The Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia, Vol. 1
(1950).
Dictionary of American Biography.
Thomas Capek, Augustine Herrman of Bohemia Manor (1936).
John A. Wennersten, Maryland's Eastern Shore, Centreville, Md., 1991.
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