Gary's Chance:
Events at the Property, 1651-1672
On this page . . .
John and Judith Gary, the Land Patent, and Peter Sharp
John Gary was an English Puritan who migrated to the colony of Virginia in the 1630s or 1640s with his wife, Judith (nee Troth), and four children: John Jr., Judith Jr., Jane, and Elizabeth.(Endnote 1) Some historical documents spell the family name as Garey, Garie, or Geary.
Puritans did not conform to the practices of the Church of England, which they viewed as too close to those of the Roman Catholic Church. Gary was one of several Puritan migrants to Virginia who planned to form communities with those who shared their beliefs. In the 1640s, however, Virginia strengthened the requirement that residents follow the dictates of the Anglican church, the colony's established church. A series of controversies and power struggles arose between Virginia Puritans and Anglicans between 1643 and 1649, intensified by news of the English Civil War. These circumstances led many Puritans to move to Maryland after that colony's 1649 passage of the Religious Toleration Act, a guarantee of freedom of worship to all Christians. The Gary family arrived in 1651.
Another important draw for all immigrants to Maryland, including Puritans, was the promise of land. For those who paid for their own passage and brought family or others with them to help populate the colony, it was easy to qualify for a land grant. What procedures governed the allocation of land? First, a settler who met the conditions of plantation recorded his right and requested a grant. The conditions changed over time.(Endnote 2) In 1651, the "head right" was generally 100 acres per person, qualifying the six members of the Gary family for 600 acres. If conditions were met, the governor or secretary issued a warrant to the surveyor general, who surveyed a tract of land. Soon after his arrival in Maryland, John Gary obtained a warrant for 600 acres and a survey was made for Gary's Chance, on the Chesapeake, about one mile south of Parkers Creek.
Typically, the person with the warrant and survey occupied the land in advance of the issuance of the patent and began to do clearing and preparation that created the required plantation. Wealthy individuals with multiple holdings were often absentee owners and engaged others to carry out the labor. In time, the colony's secretary issued a patent that completed the arrangement, describing the boundaries and conditions of tenure.
The documentation we have found provides a handful of facts (and some guesses) about Gary's circumstances in 1651 and the years that immediately followed. The evidence suggests that he died between 1651 and 1654, when his widow Judith Gary figures in the legal action concerning their daughter Elizabeth, described in a later section on this page. By 1657, Judith had wed Peter Sharp (often spelled Sharpe), a physician and a Quaker who patented the nearby tract Sharp's Outlet (or Sharpe's Outlett).​
Map of Properties
PCHT project mapping of Gary's Chance and
Sharp's Outlet; both patents were granted in 1666. The underlying basemap is as-of 2024. The green dashed lines represent ACLT hiking trails and the red icon represents the ACLT South Side Trailhead.
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For more on land patents and a discussion of
how the Parkers Creek Heritage Trail project
made a "best effort" to develop its maps, see
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This was a politically uncertain period for all seekers of land. The Puritans' own actions in the early 1650s delayed the patent process. From 1652 to 1655, Puritan Commissioners from the English Parliament clashed with Maryland Governor William Stone and his followers, forcing Stone to resign in 1655. In March of that year, Stone's supporters attacked a group of Puritans near Annapolis in the Battle of the Severn, with 19 killed. Things went back and forth after the battle. Cecil Calvert (2nd Lord Baltimore, identified as Cecilius in patent documents) and his backers did not regain control until 1658. While in power, the Puritans issued their own patents in the name of the Parliament, which Lord Baltimore didn't recognize. After the 1658 compromise, Baltimore issued (or reissued) grants essentially on the same terms, with a few exceptions.(Endnote 3)
Meanwhile, since Gary's widow Judith was still alive, John Gary's estate will not have been closed. The patent document granting the land to John Gary was issued in 1666, more than ten years after his death: "Cecilius [Calvert] . . . doe hereby grant unto him the said John Gary a parcell of land called Garyes Chance lying on the West side Chesapeak Bay on the Clifts in Calvert County."
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​For the family, English law protected the widow Judith Gary's dower share. Her marriage to Peter Sharp would have also brought the English legal doctrine of coverture into play, the concept that a married woman's legal existence is merged with that of her husband. This does not mean, however, that he owns her property. For example, Sharp had no right to sell Gary's Chance. He had a right to manage the dower and to take the profits.
Land Rights: Politics and Law
Segment of the patent for Gary's Chance, Maryland State Archives.
Cecilius &c To all persons to whom these presents shall come Greeting in our Lord God everlasting know yee that wee for and in consideration that John Gary of Our Province of Maryland planter hath due unto him six hundred acres of Land within our said province for transporting himself John Gary Jun Judith Gary Scenr Judith Gary jun Elizabeth and Jane Gary thither to inhabit in Anno one thousand six hundred and fifty one and upon such conditions and termes as are expressed in our condition of plantation of our said province of Maryland under our greater seal at armes bearing date at London on the Second day July in the year of our Lord God one thousand six hundred and forty nine with such alteration as in them is made by our Declaration bearing date the six and twentieth day of August Anno One thousand six hundred fifty and one and remaining upon Record in our said Province of Maryland doe hereby grant unto him the said . . . (continues in endnote 4)
Where did Peter and Judith Sharp live from the late 1650s until Judith's death in 1671 and Peter's in 1672? (Endnote 5) We believe it likely that they occupied a dwelling on Gary's Chance, although they may have lived at Sharp's Outlet nearby. Other evidence--including elements in the tragic story of an infanticide in 1664, described in later section of this webpage--indicates that John Gary Jr. also occupied a dwelling on Gary's Chance at this time. Under the legal principle of primogeniture, John Gary Jr. would inherit the property after his mother's death extinguished her dower right. He may have anticipated that outcome: source documents from the 1664 event give his location as Garriden, a name that we speculate Gary Jr. chose to signal his ownership.
1657 Event: Elizabeth Gary Raped by Robert Harwood, then Marries Him
This incident involving John and Judith Gary's daughter is described in Amanda Lea Miracle's 2008 dissertation Rape and Infanticide in Maryland, 1634-1689.(Endnote 6) Miracle's analysis is careful and scholarly, preceded by this evocative summary:
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Nervous, confused, and embarrassed, Elizabeth Gary sat beside her friend and told her that another young member of the rising elite took sexual liberties with her. And, he had been her betrothed--Robert Harwood. She had been on her way to the garden, to gather a salad, when he forced her to lay with him. As her friend tried to console her, Gary looked up and swore that she would not be comforted for she would not have him for a husband and could not have anyone else. Rumors spread among the community of Gary’s ordeal and Harwood’s bad behavior. The matter came before the Provincial Court because Gary’s stepfather, Peter Sharpe, a wealthy and politically powerful member of the Maryland elite pursued the matter in court--Sharpe alleged that Harwood’s actions reflected badly on his entire family. Harwood countersued swearing that he, in fact, was the victim because Gary had slandered his name. She had taken great liberties with the truth. With the court’s approval, Sharpe and Harwood reached a creative settlement: within 15 days Harwood was to take Gary away for 6 weeks, entirely at his expense, and entice her to agree to be his bride. Harwood’s success in the courtroom depended entirely on his success at wooing her. And if he could not, he would never bother Sharpe, Gary, or any member of Sharpe’s family, ever again.
The incident and its aftermath are also analyzed in Ruth H. Bloch's 2003 book Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650-1800.(Endnote 7) Her account highlights Robert Harwood's argument that Elizabeth Gary had breached her earlier promise to marry him.
. . . Robert Harwood began courting Elizabeth Gary without her mother’s permission in 1654 (she was then around 21). Her mother had then been a single widow, but she remarried to Peter Sharpe sometime between 1654 and 1657. Elizabeth claimed in court that Robert had followed her in the spring of 1656 into the garden and "forced me to yeild [sic] to lye with him," and that he then insisted that she had no choice but to marry him. She said that he told her that he had raped her because "he had no other way, to keep me but by that in lying with me." Yet her friend Sarah Benson testified that the previous August Elizabeth had told her both that her mother was preventing the marriage and that Elizabeth herself "would not any other man for her husband, and that She was very Capable of what She did (meaning, one gathers, that she didn't regret the sexual intercourse and did it voluntarily)."
. . . Instead of fining Elizabeth or her parents for breach of promise--or punishing Robert for slander--the court intervened in this courtship in a still more extreme manner. In a complicated compromise arrangement, Elizabeth Gary was sent to live in the home of a neutral third party for several weeks. There, Robert would be allowed to court her under the supervision of chaperones, and she would have the freedom to decide about marrying him without undue pressure from either him or her parents. This remarkable and creative solution shows not only the credence of the claim of breach of promise but the extraordinary lengths to which an early Maryland court would go to regulate the practice of courtship.
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1664 Event: Elizabeth Greene, Unwed Mother, Found Guilty of Killing Newborn Son
Elizabeth Greene was a servant in the household of John Gary Jr., at a location identified in court records as Garriden. This incident is described in Amanda Lea Miracle's 2008 dissertation Rape and Infanticide in Maryland, 1634-1689.(Endnote 8) The following paraphrase presents highlights from Miracle's text:
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On May 19, 1664, Governor Charles Calvert wrote a charge of infanticide against Elizabeth Greene in which he accused Greene of having been "lately brought to bed and delivered of a child and that she hath feloniously murdered and made away her said child." Green, an unmarried indentured servant, was accused of giving birth roughly two weeks earlier, on May 6, delivering a healthy boy and committing infanticide by throwing him into the fire. Consequently, Governor Calvert ordered that the Provincial Court, under the auspices of Major Thomas Brooke, Thomas Leithworth [probably Letchworth], Charles Brookes, and Tobias Norton, or at least a quorum of three of the aforementioned men, examine her for the charge against her. . . .
In July, a special court session met in which the men of the aforementioned examination committee . . . adjudicated at the house of Robert Kingsbury in Patuxent River in Calvert County to investigate the charge against Greene. Several witnesses appeared to testify about the matter, including "Grace Parker, Sarah Waring, Judith Sharpe, Christian Ellinsworth [alternative spelling for Ellingsworth or Illingsworth], Martha Carr, Elizabeth Harwood [of the 1657 incident described above], Sampson Waring, and Nicolas Carr." In front of six justices, all well-respected gentlemen planters, the contingent of witnesses, the sheriff, the defendant, and a host of onlookers, Parker swore that when she questioned Greene, the woman initially denied ever having a child but that when pressed, confessed that she had given birth to a child and burned it. . . .
Two of the other witnesses, Sarah Waring and Martha Carr, both swore to the accuracy of Parker’s testimony, but the three remaining witnesses refused to testify entirely. Judith Sharpe, Christian Ellinsworth and Elizabeth Harwood all "say verbatim the same as the other women but refuse[d] to make [an] oath." Both Judith Sharpe and Elizabeth Harwood were outspoken Quakers and as a result refused to make oaths before the court. The reason these women refused to swear to their testimony was not due to lingering doubt about the veracity of their claims, but due instead to their religious principles. . . .
Several men also testified to conversations they held with Greene. Sampson Waring testified that Greene told him before Mr. George Peake, one of the justices in attendance, that "she had a child and had burned it."
. . . On July 5, 1664, the governor and the council examined Greene and several witnesses, some not previously interrogated and some not fully questioned in the earlier interview. Greene testified that she was born five miles from Norwich [England], was a member of John Gary’s household, and swore that she had a bastard child, but did not murder it, nor was even convinced that it was really a child. . . .
The court then examined both William Wheeler, who had previously testified, and Thomas Taylor, who had not. Wheeler, who testified that he lived in the house with Greene swore that he had no idea she was pregnant, but that she was very big and that he heard a baby cry during the time of her sickness. Taylor swore that when he found Greene laying on the floor of the house "she had milk and water in her breasts." Grace Parker swore that "she was a stranger to the wench and did not see her above once all the time she was with child," but after the delivery "did search her breast and the wench denied she was [with] child but there was milk in her breasts and it was a going away being hard and curdled." Parker also added that when she pressed Greene to explain what she had done with the body, Greene replied that she had buried it. . . .
At the conclusion of the witness testimony, the justices ordered the sheriff to summon a grand jury to investigate the evidence, which returned its findings "billa vera." A petty jury comprised of twelve men unassociated with Greene then evaluated the evidence and pronounced her guilty and sentenced her to "be carried to the place from whence you came, from thence to the place of execution, and there be hanged by the neck till you are dead, and so God have mercy upon your soul." The execution was swift; the sheriff was efficient; and Greene was dead by nine o’clock the next day.
1672: Visits by George Fox, Quaker Founder and Missionary
George Fox (1624-1691) was an English missionary and founder of the Society of Friends, the Quakers. Fox's beliefs were not aligned with those of the predominant Christian churches of the time. He emphasized the importance of inner light, a manifestation of God that Fox believed could be found within every human soul. When a person has what other Christians would call a conversion experience, the Quaker term is convincement, i.e., coming to Quakerism represents being convinced.
As a missionary and a supporter of existing Friends groups, Fox traveled in the American mid-Atlantic and New England in 1672. During that period, he paid one visit to Peter Sharp and a second to John Gary Jr.
George Fox, lithograph published by Lehman & Duval, Philadelphia, 1835, collections of the Library of Congress
Prints & Photographs Division
Fox kept a journal of his travels, later published in book form.(Endnote 9) The entries use the prevailing Julian calendar (Endnote 10) and identify the month with a number, reflecting the Quaker objection to using names derived from pagan gods or deified historic figures.
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[From entries for the 8th Month, i.e., October 1672]: We travelled next day; and the day following, the 28th, had a large and very precious meeting at Peter Sharp's, on the Cliffs, between thirty and forty miles distant from [our previous stop in Anne Arundel County]. Many of the magistrates and people of upper rank were at this meeting, and a heavenly meeting it was. The wife of one of the governor’s council was convinced, and her husband was very loving to Friends. A justice from Virginia was convinced, and had a meeting afterwards at his house. Some Papists were at this meeting, and one of them threatened before he came, that he would dispute with me; but he was reached, and could not oppose. Blessed be the Lord, the truth reached into the hearts of people beyond words, and it is of a good savour amongst them!
[From entries for the 11th Month, i.e., January 1672]: We reached James Preston’s house on Patuxent River . . . . The same week we went to an Indian King’s cabin, where several of the Indians were, with whom we had a good opportunity to discourse; and they carried themselves very lovingly. We went also that week to a general meeting; then about eighteen miles further to John Geary’s [Gary's], where we had a very precious meeting; praised be the Lord God for ever! After this the cold grew so exceedingly sharp, the frost and snow so extreme, beyond what was usual in that country, that we could hardly endure it.
Five years later, minutes of Quaker monthly meetings include the following report from what was called the Clifts (Cliffs) meeting, which alternated with meetings at West River, on the Patuxent, and at Herring Creek.(Endnote 11)
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Meeting held at house of John Gary - 29th day of 9th month, 1677.
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John Gary gives land for burying ground of Cliffs Meeting - 29th day of 9th month, 1677.(Endnote 12)
No trace of the burying ground donated by John Gary has been found. The Hance-Chesley Cemetery is located on the northern edge of the Gary's Chance tract and is sometimes incorrectly identified as a Quaker burying ground.(Endnote 13) The Hance-Chesley Cemetery includes eight marked graves, all persons related by marriage. One of them, Benjamin Hance (1755-1812), was raised in a Quaker family. However, the minutes for a Quaker monthly meeting held at Indian Spring, Maryland, in 1788, include the adverse report that Benjamin Hance and his brother Elisha both "suffered themselves to be married by a priest not of our society." At that point, the brothers left the Society of Friends and Benjamin's interment will not have been in a Quaker burying ground.
Endnotes
Endnote 1. Background information about the Gary family's Virginia connection is referenced in online genealogies, e.g., John Garey,
https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/L66M-KRB/john-garey-1614-1651, and John Garey (abt. 1614 - bef. 1652), https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Garey-245; information about the family in Maryland is provided in Charles F. Stein, A History of Calvert County, Maryland (1976), p. 263; and Carson Gibb's The New Early Settlers of Maryland, https://earlysettlers.msa.maryland.gov;
all sites consulted 26 July 2025.
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Endnote 2. The 1633 conditions provided that a person transporting others received 200 acres for each man transported, 100 acres for each woman, and 50 acres for each child. In 1636, Maryland's Conditions of Plantation used the term adventurer for those who transported five men between the ages of 16 and 50. Adventurers received 2,000 acres, i.e., 400 acres for each able-bodied man they transported. The 1649 conditions, which applied to the Gary family, varied by location, but the core set of ground rules offered 100 acres per person. This information derived from Robert W. Hall and Sandy Hall's Early Landowners of Maryland: Volume 3: Calvert County, 1640-1710 (Colonial Roots: Lewes, Delaware, 2009)
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Endnote 3. Analytic summary from a personal communication from Stephen Stec, via email 28 July 2025.
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Endnote 4. Transcription continues on the next page of the original land record (not reproduced here): John Gary a parcell of land called Garyes Chance lying on the West side Chesapeak Bay on the Clifts in Calvert County beginning at the Southermost Corner tree of a parcell of Land formerly Laid out for Robert Rockwell of this province and Running from the said tree down the Bay South three hundred perches to a marked pohicory tree by the bayside bounded on the West from the said pohicory tree into the Woods west for the length of three hundred and twenty perches to a marked oke in the woods bounded on the North with a line drawn from the said oke North three hundred perches to a marked oke in the woods bounded on the East with a line drawn from the said oke East for the Length of three hundred and twenty perches to the first marked Locust tree by the bayside on the south with the said Bay Containing and now laid out for six hundred Acres more or less . . . .
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Endnote 5. The only information about Judith's death date that this writer found were "family trees" posted on Ancestry.com. No sources were provided. These trees are accessible only by holders of Ancestry accounts; here is one example: https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/56967/person/7000440143/facts, consulted 30 July 2025.
Endnote 6. Amanda Lea Miracle, Rape and Infanticide in Maryland, 1634-1689: Gender and Class in the Courtroom Contestation of Patriarchy on the Edge of the English Atlantic, pp. 41-75. Graduate College of Bowling Green (Ohio) State University, 2008, https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=bgsu1213732534, consulted 26 July 2025.
Endnote 7. Ruth H. Bloch, Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650-1800, pp. 92-93. University of California Press, 2003; ISBN-13: 978-0520234055 ISBN-10: 0520234057.
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Endnote 8. Amanda Lea Miracle, Rape and Infanticide in Maryland, 1634-1689, op. cit., pp. 266-273. Miracle relies upon and cites passages from the Maryland Provincial Court records. These records can be consulted via the Archives of Maryland Online, Proceedings of the Provincial Court, 1663-1666, volume 49, pages 212, 218, and 231-237, accessible online at the Maryland State Archives, https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000049/html/index.html, consulted 26 July 2025.
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Endnote 9. The quotations here are from The Journal of George Fox, vol. 2 of 2, with the subtitle Being an Historical Account of his Life, Travels, Sufferings, and Christian Experiences, London: Friends' Tract Association, 1901, pp. 183 and 189. Gutenberg project version, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/75590/pg75590-images.html.
Endnote 10. Before the 1752 adoption of the Gregorian calendar, the Julian calendar was used in England, Wales, Ireland and the British colonies. The year officially began on 25 March and ended on the following 24 March. Thus 24 March 1750 was followed by 25 March 1751. Fox's Journal entries quoted here are said to be in 1672, including one for the "11th month," January, considered to be 1672 since prior to 24 March.
Endnote 11. Henry C. Peden Jr., Quaker Records of Southern Maryland, Westminster, MD: Family Line Publications, 1992, p. 67.
Endnote 12. The Clifts Meeting in November 1677 (9th month on the Julian calendar) was held at Gary's house south of Parkers Creek. Some years later, a Clifts Meeting House was erected on today's Dares Beach Road. In John Hance's will, probated in 1709, he bequeathed "to Quakers, 3 A., part of 'Neventon' [Newington] where The Clifts Meeting House stands, and £10." Hance was born in 1635, and he patented Newington in 1679.
Endnote 13. To add to the confusion, a posting on the Find-a-Grave web resource describes the burying ground associated with the Clifts Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends as being at Scientists Cliffs, Calvert County, Maryland, https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2287175/clifts-monthly-meeting-of-the-society-of-friends. This web entry includes a list of the deceased drawn from Quaker written records, with no claim of finding actual graves, https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2287175/memorial-search?page=1#sr-163528297. Both URLs consulted 26 July 2025.