Baltimore’s location on the Patapsco River influenced settlement in area in the early 17th century. It was a natural harbor, with incoming streams from the north and west toward the Patapsco fall line, ideal for water-driven mills.
During the 1660s the Maryland General Assembly appointed commissioners who granted land to colonists.
The sandy plains bordering the Chesapeake Bay were ideal for growing tobacco, and a tobacco-based economy quickly developed in pre-Revolutionary Maryland. By 1742 regular tobacco shipments were leaving Baltimore harbor for Europe. When the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777, Baltimore became the meeting place of the Continental Congress.
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Maryland became a U.S. state on April 28, 1788 as the 7th state. Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian explorer in the 1500s, was the first European to visit the Chesapeake. Later came English settlers, who left England for more economic opportunities and to escape religious oppression. In 1608, Capt. John Smith explored the Chesapeake Bay area. Maryland was named after Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I, by Cecil Calvert, who was granted a charter for the land in 1632. The leader of the colonists and first Governor of Maryland was the brother of Cecil, Leonard Calvert.

Trade restrictions and high taxes led to the Revolutionary War in 1775. Marylanders opposed the Stamp Act, protested the Boston Port Bill by burning a boat and the tea cargo, and attended the First Continental Congress in 1774 in Philadelphia.
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