Margaret Brent

Painting of Margaret Brent speaking to the Assembly, c. 1934

Margaret Brent (c. 1601–c. 1671), an English immigrant to the Colony of Maryland, was the first woman in the English North American colonies to appear before a court of the Common Law. She was a significant founding settler in the early histories of the colonies of Maryland and Virginia. Lord Calvert, Governor of the Maryland Colony, appointed her as the executor of his estate in 1647, at a time of political turmoil and risk to the future of the settlement. She helped ensure soldiers were paid and given food to keep their loyalty to the colony.

With Anne Hutchinson, Brent ranks among the most prominent women figures in early Colonial American history. Hailed as a feminist by some in modern times in advancing rights of women under the laws, her insistent advocacy of her legal prerogatives as an unmarried gentlewoman of property, while notable in its exceptional energy, was consistent with English law.^[1]

Early life and education

Born into a Catholic family in Gloucestershire, Margaret Brent and her siblings were all adults when they emigrated from England; it was a period of agitation by the government against those suspected of recusancy, preceding the English Civil War. She was one of six daughters of a total of thirteen children of the Lord of Admington and Stoke, Richard Brent, and his wife, Elizabeth Reed (daughter of Edward Reed, Lord of Tusburie and Witten, all of Gloucestershire, England). Four of her sisters became nuns.^[2] (Ode Brent, a knight in 1066, is direct ancestor to the Brents of Stoke, by their lineage account, while Elizabeth Reed's family claimed descendancy from William the Conqueror of 1066.)^[3]

Emigration to Maryland

Margaret, her sister Mary, and her brothers Giles and Fulke Brent sailed together from England and arrived at St. Mary's, Maryland on November 22, 1638, where they hoped to improve their fortunes.^[3] In England the father's estate went to the eldest son, and the remainder of the children had to make their own ways. Margaret Brent was about 37 and unmarried.

In the colony, the Brents secured large land grants and high political offices due to their prestigious ancestry and/or political affiliations. Fulke Brent returned to England, but the other three stayed on in Maryland. On October 4, 1639, Margaret Brent became the first Maryland female land owner. She obtained the first recorded land grant in St. Mary's, a 70.5-acre (285,000 m²) patent, with which she and her sister Mary established the "Sister's Freehold", and an adjacent 50 acres (200,000 m²) titled St. Andrew's. This was land they developed for agriculture. Later her brother Giles Brent transferred a 1,000-acre (4 km²) land tract on Kent Island, Maryland to her as payment of a debt he owed her, but likely he continued to manage it himself.

As Margaret Brent continued to import bondservants and sell their indentures, she was awarded grants of land by headright; the colony wanted to encourage the gentry to transport workers for labor in the growing colony. She was not known to exercise her rights to claim the land, given the instability in the colony.^[3] In addition, Brent became an ally of the governor, Leonard Calvert. Together they were guardians of the young Mary Kitomaquund, the daughter of a Piscataway chief, whom they had promised to educate in English language and culture.

In 1644, her brother Giles Brent married Mary Kitomaquund; he may have hoped to get control of some of the tribal land.^[3] By the mid-1640s, political conditions in the colony were unstable, as the English Civil War's divisions spilled over to Maryland. The Protestant Richard Ingle raided the colony and burned down structures in early 1645; he took the Acting Governor, Giles Brent, and two Jesuit priests as prisoners back to England.^[3]

Governor Leonard Calvert had fled to the colony of Virginia, where he asked for support from its government and recruited militia soldiers, promising to pay from his own estate. Brent recruited armed volunteers to assist his forces in suppressing the rebellion. When many of the Protestants moved to the Northern Neck of Virginia, the colony was reduced to about 100 residents. The following year, the ailing Calvert appointed Brent as executrix of his estate on June 9, 1647. He died without a will and was reported to have said, "Take all, spend all."^[4] Brent used his estate to pay the soldiers who had served the colony, but it was not sufficient.

He also gave the Brent sisters land entitlement letters from Maryland's Proprietary Governor, Lord Baltimore, awarding them land portions equal in size to those of arrivals in Maryland in 1634. Their initial entitlement was enlarged to 800 acres (3.2 km²) per sister, as written in the colonization inducements (or headrights) offered to women. Brent received credit for the five men and four women servants she had brought with her.^[3]

Lord Baltimore had always managed his proprietorship from England, where he worked to keep political support for the colony, as well as to prove his loyalty (as a Catholic) to the new government of Protestants. He had appointed his brother as governor and to manage his lands. At risk was potential loss of the colony to Virginia due to the political unrest. During the emergency after Calvert's death, the Provincial Court on January 3, 1648 appointed Brent attorney-in-fact to Lord Baltimore, as there was no time to contact him about financial matters, and he had not appointed a successor to Calvert. She collected his rents and paid his debts.^[3]

Appointed as Baltimore's representative, On January 21, 1648, Brent attended the Provincial Court's assembly to request a voice in the council; she also asked for two votes in its proceedings (one as an independent landowner and the other as Lord Baltimore's attorney.)^[5] Governor Thomas Greene refused her request, as the assembly at the time considered such privileges for women to be reserved for queens. Brent left but said that she "Protested against all proceedings ... unless she may be present and have vote as aforesaid."^[3]

That same day, Brent called for corn to be brought from Virginia to feed the hungry troops camped at St. Mary's. Some accounts suggest that she had spent all of Leonard Calvert's personal estate by this time, and proceeded to sell Lord Baltimore's cattle to pay the soldiers' wages, although there is disagreement among historians on this matter. English law would not permit the sale of such possessions without a court order or a special act of the legislature. But, Calvert's lands and buildings were added into the inventory of his estate. Brent and then Governor William Stone disagreed upon the act of a sale of a 100-acre (0.4 km²) land tract entitled "The Governor's Field".

Brent appeared at the assembly a final time as Lord Baltimore's attorney, on February 9, 1648 in a case against Thomas Cornwallis. She may have been replaced by Thomas Hatton, the new Provincial secretary.

From England, Lord Baltimore wrote to object to the assembly sale of any of his property. He was concerned about actions in his absence after the death of his brother.^[3] He may have been suspicious of Brent's motives in managing his assets. While the assembly had refused to give her a vote, it defended Brent's stewardship of Lord Baltimore's estate, writing to him on April 21, 1649, that it "was better for the Colony's safety at that time in her hands than in any man's...for the soldiers would never have treated any others with that civility and respect...".^{[3] [6]}

Move to Virginia

Given Baltimore's hostility to the Brent family, Giles and his young wife Mary Brent moved to Virginia in 1650. The two sisters Margaret and Mary Brent also left Maryland to move across the Chesapeake Bay to Virginia, where they bought land. Margaret Brent founded a plantation called "Peace" in Westmoreland County, Virginia on the Northern Neck.^[6]

She held festive annual court leets for her people. Neither she nor her sister Mary ever married; they were among the very few unmarried English women of the time in the Chesapeake colony, when men outnumbered women there by 6:1 (but most were lower class indentured workers). The historian Lois Greene Carr has speculated the two sisters had taken vows of celibacy under Mary Ward's Institute in England.^[3]

In 1658 Mary Brent died, leaving her entire estate of 1000 acres (4 km²) to her sister.^[3] In 1663 Margaret Brent wrote her will. In 1670 she assigned one half of her 2,000 acres (8 km²) in Maryland to her nephew, James Clifton. Most of the remainder went to her brother Giles and his children. Her will was admitted into probate on May 19, 1671. She died at "Peace", Stafford County, Virginia in 1671.^[3]

Exact dates of her birth and death are not known.

Legacy and honors

• Margarent Brent is memorialized at Historic St. Mary's City. The museum at the former site of Maryland's colonial capital features her in exhibits and its publications for her role in women's rights. The St. John's site archaeology museum, located above the exposed foundations of the house where Brent appealed to the Assembly, includes an exhibit devoted to her life. The Historic St. Mary's City grounds also include a garden dedicated in memory of Brent.
• A street on the campus of the neighboring St. Mary's College of Maryland is named Margaret Brent Way.
• A Liberty Ship of World War II was named after her; the SS Margaret Brent (launched 1943).
  Further information: List of Liberty ships (M–R)
• Several public schools in the state of Maryland are named for her, such as Margaret Brent Middle School.

References

1. ^ The same law by which a Reigning Queen ruled the throne of England.
2. ^ Bruce E. Steiner, "The Catholic Brents of Colonial Virgina: An Instance of Practical Toleration," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 70 (1962), 392-393 and note 21.)
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Lois Green Carr (7 February 2002). "Margaret Brent -- A Brief History". Maryland State Archives. http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/002100/002177/html/mbrent2.html. Retrieved July 31, 2006. 
4. ^ Waisman, Charlotte S.; Jill S. Tietjen (2008). Her Story. Collins. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-06-124651-7. 
5. ^ Archives of Maryland, I, 215
6. ^ ^{a b} James Henretta, "Margaret Brent: A Woman of Property", Early American Review, 1998, reprinted with permission from James A. Henretta, Elliot Brownlee, David Brody, Susan Ware, and Marilynn Johnson, America's History, Third Edition, Worth Publishers Inc., 1997, accessed 8 October 2011

Further reading

• W. B. Chilton, comp., "Genealogies of Virginia Families: The Brent Family", in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 1, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1981
• Jeanne Cover, Love, the Driving Force: Mary Ward's Spirituality, Its Significance for Moral Theology, Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 1997
• David M. French, The Brent Family, The Carroll Families of Colonial Maryland (privately published), Alexandria, VA, 1981
• Allen Johnson, ed. Dictionary of American Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936.

Persondata
Name	Brent, Magaret
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1601
Place of birth
Date of death	1671
Place of death