Robert Gilmor and William Trippe papers
Collection
0147-MDHC
The Robert Gilmor and William Trippe papers bring together the men and places of Dorchester County, a heart-shaped area of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and provides a window on their lives for a seven month period from November 1776 to May 1777. The collection focuses on Captain William Trippe's (1725-1777) schooner "Hazzard" and trips made for Robert Gilmor and Co. for supplies during the Revolutionary War. It includes business accounts for goods received, goods delivered, and wages paid to sailors, as well as correspondence and intelligence reports concerning the British fleet in the Chesapeake Bay.
This collection is open for research.
Photocopies of original materials may be provided for a fee and at the discretion of the curator. Please see our Duplication of Materials policy for more information. Queries regarding publication rights and copyright status of materials within this collection should be directed to the appropriate curator.
0.25 Linear Feet
The Robert Gilmor and William Trippe papers consists of 31 items, including correspondence, receipts and account statements, dating from November 1776 to May 1777, between merchants, militia officers and seamen in residence on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Chincoteague Island, Virginia, and between merchants in Dorchester County and Baltimore.
Located on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Dorchester County is bounded on the three sides by water. In the eighteenth century, the people of Dorchester County depended on the rivers and bays for transportation of their products. The Choptank River, the city of Cambridge, the small town of New Market, and Ennalls Ferry are on its northern border with Talbot County. Its western border is unbroken by the Chesapeake Bay. To the south is the Nanticoke River and Vienne. To the southeast beyond Somerset County are the Pocomoke River, Pitts Landing and Chincoteague, Virginia and finally the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1776 and 1777, the principal crops of Eastern Shore farmers were tobacco, corn and wheat. Area merchants bought the tobacco and other crops grown in the area and hired schooners to take it to the French West Indies for sale. The schooners returned with molasses, salt, coffee and rum and other commodities to be sold mainly in Baltimore. Many Eastern Shore men joined colonial militias to fight the British who had warships in the Chesapeake and along the Atlantic coastline.
Cap Francois, Hispaniola is now known as Cap Haitien, Haiti and is located on the northern coast of that island. The island is one of several formerly referred to as the French West Indies.
Chincoteague Island, Va., was a safe haven on the Atlantic where the "Hazzard" docked to and from Cap Francois.
Ennals Ferry was on the Choptank River near New Market, Md., in Dorchester County.
New Market, Md., is today known as East New Market and is about 11 miles east of Cambridge, Md.
Pitts Landing in Accomack County, Va., was on the Pocomoke River, across from Maryland; it had a tobacco warehouse.
Vienne, now Vienna, Md., is located on the western bank of the Nanticoke River in Dorchester County. In 1776, it was a trading center with a tobacco warehouse.
The collection is organized into one series
The Robert Gilmor and William Trippe papers were purchased by the University of Maryland Archives from Chesapeake Galleries, Baltimore, in 1982.
The collection was processed in May 1982 by Mary Boccaccio. In 2012, Terry Ann Sayler reorganized the papers and created a new guide for the collection.
Part of the Special Collections and University Archives