Porto Bello (Drayden, Maryland)

The St. Marys River (sometimes spelled St. Mary's River) is a 22.3-mile-long (35.9 km) river in southern Maryland in the United States. It rises in southern St. Mary's County, and flows to the southeast through Great Mills, widening into a tidal estuary near St. Mary's City, approximately 2 miles (3 km) wide at its mouth on the north bank of the Potomac River, near the Chesapeake Bay to the east.

West St. Mary's Manor is a historic house on West St. Mary's Manor Road in rural St. Mary's County, Maryland. Built in the 1780s according to dendrochronology and with a four-room center-hall plan, and is located on the first recorded English land grant in what is now Maryland. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

Maryland Dove is a re-creation of the Dove, an early 17th-century English trading ship, one of two ships (Dove and The Ark) which made up the first expedition from England to the Province of Maryland. The 1978 Dove was designed by the naval architect and naval historian William A. Baker. The Dove was a trading vessel that could be sailed by a crew of seven. The much larger Ark, was a passenger ship, and was sailed by a crew of 40 or more. The Dove was left behind as a local trading vessel to facilitate commerce between Maryland and the other colonies.

The James P. Muldoon River Center, located in Saint Mary's City, Maryland, is a 13,000 square foot eco-friendly facility of the St. Mary's College of Maryland. The facility houses a marine biology laboratory classroom, a seminar room, boat repair facilities, a safety monitor station, water sports equipment storage, small locker rooms, offices for waterfront staff and biology faculty, a multi-purpose room, instructional space for water-based activities, and a deck that overlooks the waterfront basin and Horseshoe Bend on the St. Mary’s River. It is the home venue of the St. Mary's Seahawks sailing team.

St. Mary's College of Maryland (SMCM) is a public liberal arts college in St. Mary's City, Maryland. Established in 1840, St. Mary's College is an honors college that claims to "offer an experience similar to that of an elite liberal arts college". With about 1,600 enrolled students, the institution offers bachelor's degrees in 21 disciplines, as well as a master's program and certification programs. The college shares much of its campus with Historic St. Mary's City, the site of Maryland's first colony and capital. It is also the site of the fourth colony in British North America. The Historical Archaeology Field School is jointly operated by St. Mary's College of Maryland and Historic St. Mary's City. The campus and the rest of St. Mary's City combined are considered to be one of the premier archaeological sites in the United States.

The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America from 1634 until 1776, when it made common cause with the group of Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and, finally in 1781—as the 13th signatory to the Articles of Confederation—it ratified its perpetual union with that group as the state of Maryland. The province's first settlement and capital was St. Mary's City, located at the southern end of St. Mary's County, a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay that is bordered by four tidal rivers. The province began in 1632 as a proprietary colony granted to Cecil Calvert, the English 2nd Baron Baltimore, whose father, George, had long sought to found a colony in the New World to serve as a refuge for English Roman Catholics at the time of the European wars of religion. Thus, provincial Maryland served an early pioneer of religious toleration in the English colonies. However, religious strife among Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers was common in the early years and Puritan rebels briefly seized control of the province. Later, in 1689, the year following the Glorious Revolution in Great Britain, John Coode led a rebellion that removed Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, from power in Maryland. That power was restored to the Baltimore family in 1715 after Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, declared in public that he was a Protestant. Despite early competition with the colony of Virginia to its south, and the Dutch colony of New Netherland to its north, the province of Maryland developed along similar lines to Virginia. Its early settlements and population centers tended to cluster around the rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay, and, like Virginia, Maryland's economy quickly became centered on the cultivation of tobacco for sale in Europe. However, after tobacco prices collapsed, the need for cheap labor to accommodate the mixed farming economy that followed led to a rapid expansion of the Atlantic slave trade and the concomitant American enslavement of Africans—as well as the expansion of indentured servitude and British penal transportation. Maryland received a larger felon quota than any other province.Maryland was an active participant in the events leading up to the American Revolution, echoing events in New England by establishing committees of correspondence and hosting its own tea party similar to the one that took place in Boston. By 1776 the old order had been overthrown as Maryland's colonial representatives signed the Declaration of Independence, presaging the end of British colonial rule.

St. Mary's City (also known as Historic St. Mary's City) is a former colonial town that was founded in March 1634, as Maryland's first European settlement and capital. It is now a state-run historic area, which includes a reconstruction of the original colonial settlement and a designated living history venue and museum complex. Half the area is occupied by the campus of St. Mary's College of Maryland. The entire area contains a community of about 933 permanent residents and some 1,400 students living in campus dorms and apartments.The City is an unincorporated community under Maryland state law and is located in southern St. Mary's County, which occupies the southernmost tip of the state on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay. The community is bordered by the St. Mary's River, a short, brackish-water tidal tributary of the Potomac River, near where it empties into the Chesapeake. St. Mary's City is the historic site of the founding of the Colony of Maryland—then called the Province of Maryland—where it served as the colonial capital from 1634 until 1695. The original settlement is the fourth oldest permanent English settlement in the United States.Notably, St. Mary's City is the earliest site of religious freedom being established in the United States, as it is the first North American colonial settlement established with a specific mandate of providing haven for people of both Catholic and Protestant Christian faiths.It is also an internationally recognized archaeological research area and training center for archaeologists, and is home to the Historical Archaeology Field School. There have been over 200 archeological digs in St. Mary's City over the last 30 years. Archaeological research continues in the city.

Drayden is an unincorporated community in St. Mary's County, Maryland, United States. West St. Mary's Manor was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. Porto Bello was listed in 1972.The Drayden Schoolhouse was a small, one-room African American children's school featuring grades 1–7. It was open and operational from 1890 to 1944. The land was donated by Mary Ellen and Daniel A. Gross in 1889. The schoolhouse was a one-room design based on a Victorian design like other one-room schools already operational in St. Mary's County. The original green paint is still inside the structure. Exterior paint was added in 2000 to preserve the original sliding planks.The Drayden schoolhouse was one of three for African American children in the Valley Lee District. One teacher taught grades 1-7 and could have had as many as forty students in the single room. At this time there were no public high schools open to African American students. They did not have a public high school for African American children until 1934. Until that time, most African American children did not have the ability to attend school beyond the seventh grade. Schools were not de-segregated in St. Mary's County, Maryland until 1967.

Cross Manor is a historic home located at St. Inigoes, St. Mary's County, Maryland, United States. It is a 2+1⁄2-story brick house with a side-hall double parlor plan and Greek Revival and Federal influenced woodwork. The house was constructed in three main stages with the earliest reportedly dating to before 1765. Other estimates date the house's origin to "before 1798", with further additions during the 19th century.Cross Manor was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. News anchor Ted Koppel is the most recent owner of the house and estate and writes that the house dates to "at least 1765."

Naval Outlying Field Webster also Webster Field (ICAO: KNUI, FAA LID: NUI), is a military base with an airfield. It is a site of the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) serving Navy test pilots and avionics engineering and development, located on the west side of St. Inigoes, Maryland, United States. It is near Coast Guard Station, St. Inigoes.

St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church, also known as St. Inigoes Church or The Cove Church, is a historic Catholic parish located in St. Inigoes, St. Mary's County, Maryland. It is a direct descendant of Maryland's first Catholic chapel, in St. Mary's City, whose communicants formed the first nucleus of American Catholicism. The parish fell under the umbrella of the first establishment of religious freedom in America by George Calvert and his sons, who established the Maryland colony as a refuge for persecuted Catholics.St. Ignatius and its adjacent burial ground are situated on about two acres of land that are enclosed within a late 19th-century iron fence. The church was constructed between 1785 and 1787, with the sacristy added in 1817. The church walls are 21 inches thick, of brick laid in Flemish bond. Atop the roof is a small wooden belfry that in 1933 replaced a larger one in this same location. The church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

Beachville-St. Inigoes is an unincorporated community in St. Mary's County, Maryland, United States. Located here is Webster Field, a branch of the larger Patuxent River Naval Air Station.See also St. Inigoes Shores, which has much more information on these communities.