Maryland

A colony named for a queen

Maryland was founded as a proprietary colony of the Calvert family, the Lords Baltimore. King Charles I granted the charter in 1632 and named the colony for his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria; the Latin form, Terra Mariae, “Land of Mary,” appears on the Great Seal. The first settlers arrived in 1634 and founded St. Mary’s City, near the mouth of the Potomac. Maryland became known for its 1649 act of religious toleration, passed under its Catholic proprietors. On April 28, 1788, a state convention ratified the US Constitution, making Maryland the seventh state.

Annapolis, a national capital

In 1694 the colonial assembly moved the capital from St. Mary’s City to a town halfway up the Chesapeake Bay, renamed Annapolis in honor of Princess Anne. It has been the capital ever since. Its State House, begun in 1772, is the oldest state capitol still used by its legislature, and from November 1783 to August 1784 it served as the capital of the United States, when the Continental Congress met there. In its Old Senate Chamber, George Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Continental Army on December 23, 1783. The capital page tells the story.

Old Line, Free State

Maryland has two traditional nicknames, neither of them set in law. “The Old Line State” honors the Maryland Line, the state’s regular troops in the Revolutionary War; some historians credit George Washington with the phrase. “The Free State” was popularized in the 1920s by Hamilton Owens, editor of the Baltimore Sun, to mock Prohibition supporters who attacked Maryland for refusing to pass a state law enforcing it.

Maryland’s flag and seal carry an Italian motto, Fatti maschii parole femine, “Strong deeds, gentle words,” the motto of the Calvert family. It appears on the seal but has never been adopted separately as a state motto.

No state song

From 1939 Maryland’s state song was “Maryland, My Maryland,” written in 1861 by James Ryder Randall, which called on Marylanders to join the Confederacy and called Abraham Lincoln a “despot.” In 2021 the legislature repealed it without choosing a replacement, and Maryland has had no state song since.

Crabs, terrapins and firsts

Maryland has 31 official symbols, many of them tied to the Chesapeake Bay. The Maryland blue crab is the state crustacean, the rockfish, or striped bass, the state fish, the diamondback terrapin the state reptile and the skipjack, the last working sailboats in the country, the state boat. The Baltimore oriole, named for the Calverts’ colors, is the state bird, and the black-eyed Susan the state flower. Maryland was the first state to name an official sport, jousting, in 1962, and the first to name an official exercise, walking, in 2008, and in 2026 it became the first to name a state shark, the extinct megalodon. Smith Island cake, with its eight to ten thin layers, is the state dessert. See every symbol on the Maryland symbols page.

The flag, the only state flag based on English heraldry, combines the gold-and-black arms of the Calverts with the red-and-white arms of the Crosslands.

Land and people

Maryland covers 12,406 square miles, of which more than a fifth is water, much of it the Chesapeake Bay. It ranks 42nd in area but 19th in population, with about 6.27 million residents in 2025, and fifth in density. It borders Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, and has a short Atlantic coast around Ocean City. Baltimore, with about 570,000 people, is by far the largest city; Frederick, Gaithersburg, Rockville and Bowie follow far behind.