Bound by God for Merryland The Voyage of the Constant Friendship 1671-1672

9780942370478

0942370473

The Maryland State Archives is the historical agency for Maryland. It serves as the central depository for state, county, and local government records which are to be kept forever. These include state executive, legislative, and judicial records; county probate, land, and court records; and some municipal records. Any government record created prior to April 28, 1788 (when Maryland ratified the U.S. Constitution), must, by law, be deposited at the State Archives. A multitude of records created after that date are also available either in their originally created form or in microform.Records are stored in a humidity- and temperature-controlled stack area, and preservation requirements, including deacidification, lamination, mylar encapsulation, and archival bookbinding, are carried out by the staff of an in-house conservation laboratory. Records are made accessible to the public in a search room open five days each week, through photocopies produced by an in-house photolab, and through the interlibrary loan of microform. The State Archives also maintains several special collections, including maps, photographs, church records, and newspapers.The books listed here represent but a small selection of Maryland materials published by or available from the Archives. In addition to other works in history, biography, records, and genealogy, the Archives offers historic maps, the state flag and seal in various forms, a paper preservation kit, the complete Archives of Maryland in microfilm, and more.This pamphlet, the fourth in the Studies in Local History series published by the Archives and the Maryland Historical Trust, recounts the voyage of the Constant Friendship to the settlementat Providence, near Annapolis, in the fall of 1671 and back again to England the following spring. It is based on an eighteen-page journal kept by the ship's mate and navigator, Edward Rhodes. Such journals are very rare, and Rhodes's provides a look into a seventeenth-ce