Somerset County, Maryland: History
=== Initial settlements ===
Somerset County was settled and established by English colonists in part due to a response to the Province/Dominion of Virginia passing a law in 1659/1660 requiring Quakers in the colony to convert to Anglicanism or leave the colony. A group of Virginia Quakers living in Accomack County, Virginia, on the southern tip of what later became known as the Delmarva Peninsula, petitioned Charles Calvert, third Lord Baltimore in 1661 to migrate to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to the territory under his governance. The governor considered this an opportunity to fortify the borders of his territory on the Delmarva Peninsula against the pressing encroachment of the Virginians.
The Royal Charter that Lord Baltimore had received from King Charles I in 1632 had granted Maryland the land north of the entire length of the Potomac River up to the 40th parallel. Later surveys authorized by Baltimore on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay indicated that the southern boundary would continue across the peninsula at the mouth of the Pocomoke River. It was marked on the north shore by a rock outcropping labelled as "Watkins' Point". The Virginian Quakers settled just north of that point, on the southern bank of the Annemessex River in November 1662, A separate group of Anglican Virginian settlers were granted permission to make another settlement, further north along the Manokin River.
In conjunction with the two new settlements, Lord Baltimore set up a three-man commission for the Eastern Shore territory, made up of two Marylanders and one Virginian. Its purpose was ostensibly to oversee the territory, found new settlements, and maintain a detailed recording of all land and civic transactions in the area. Lord Baltimore intended to use the commission to reinforce Maryland's claim to the area and to monitor any encroachments by Virginians. …