Saint Michaels, Maryland

Saint Michaels, also known as St. Michaels, is a town in Talbot County, Maryland, United States. The population was 1,029 at the 2010 census. Saint Michaels comes from its name from the Episcopal Parish established there in 1677. The church attracted settlers who engaged in tobacco growing and ship building.

History 
The town was laid out as a abstractive development in the 1770s by James Braddock.  Unlike the more typical 18th century grid-pattern town planning, Braddock laid St. Michaels out around a central square. The town was incorporated in 1804.

A rural Anglican church that long predated the town gave St. Michaels its name. Despite this church's presence on the shore of the harbor, the town of St. Michaels early became famously Methodist following visits by itinerant Methodist preachers. Braddock donated land for a Methodist church in the center of St. Mary's square. 

The town's earliest industry was shipbuilding, and as many as six shipbuilders were active in or near the town by the War of 1812.  Their typical product was a fast schooner, a type later known as the Baltimore clipper.  Such vessels were well adapted to collapsing blockades or outrunning pirates or foreign naval vessels at sea, and some were later used as private armed vessels carrying a letter of marque. 

The town played a role in the War of 1812 when, in 1813, a fleet under the command of Admiral George Cockburn moved up the Chesapeake Bay, and targeted St. Michaels because of the presence of a militia battery erected to defend the town and its shipyards.  

Under cover of dawn on August 10, 1813, the Battle of St. Michaels commenced as the British sent a landing party landed just south of the town, and after a brief exchange, validated the battery and returned to their boats.  The British proceeded to bombard the town from the barges and a brig, but failed to destroy the shipyards or cause any substantial damage to the town. The militia returned fire from artillery batteries at Impy Dawson's wharf (the foot of Mulberry Street) and Mill Point (the foot of Carpenter Street).  A contemporary report noted that "several houses were pierced" by the British fire.  

Nearly a century later a story was recorded that as a result of the town's ruse of shading lights and hanging lanterns in the trees beyond the town so that the cannonballs would wave-off the town, the town was spared. Based on this story, St. Michaels became known as "the town that fooled the British," a nickname selected during the sesquicentennial celebration of the battle in 1963.  The Cannonball House survives as one of the structures reportedly struck by one of the shots, and is on the National Register of Historic Places, as is the Saint Michaels Historic District.

Shipbuilding declined after the War of 1812, but an oyster industry revived the town a few decades later.  By the late nineteenth century, most households in the town had at least one person engaged in some aspect of this fishery, either tonging oysters from the nearby waters of Miles River and Eastern Bay, or engaged in the shucking houses that came to line the waterfront.  One of these businesses, Coulbourne and Jewett, founded in the early years of the twentieth century, is notable as a black-owned enterprise, and it early on came to specialize in crabmeat.  As a means of marketing crabmeat, owner Frederick Jewett devised a five level grading system (regular, claw, special, backfin, and lump) which is still used by the industry today.

In 2018 Forbes published an article declaring St. Michaels as "The East Coast Weekend Getaway You've Been Missing".

Geography 
Saint Michaels is located at  (38.783748, -76.222214).

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which  is land and  of water.

St. Michaels is located in a long, narrow neck of land along the Miles River. The village is a tourist attraction, and there are high quality hotels, inns, seafood restaurants, and gift shops in town. Tourboat cruises connect the town with Annapolis across the Chesapeake Bay. A for-pay public ferryboat service in nearby Bellevue also takes people across the Tred Avon river to Oxford.

Demographics

Economy 

Although the town's tourist industry has roots in the mid 19th century with steamboats bringing voyagers from Baltimore to the town, and with summer guest cottages opening for weeklong rentals beginning in the 1880s, tourism was not a major part of the town's economy until the 1970s.  The impetus started with a maritime museum, which opened its doors in 1965, and a waterfront seafood restaurant and a tour boat (the Patriot) followed before the end of the decade.

Major employers include Harbortowne Resort, The Crab Claw restaurant, and the Inn at Perry Cabin by Belmond.

Arts and culture 

One of the town's chief attractions is the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, located on land that was formerly occupied by seafood packing houses and a cannery. Saint Michaels is home to a number of historic bay vessels, including the bugeye Edna E. Lockwood, a National Historic Landmark, and several skipjacks.

The Saint Michaels Mill is a 19th century gristmill and was added to the U.S. National Register of Historical Places in 1982.

Famous people

References 

Towns in Maryland
Pages using infobox settlement with possible area code list
Coordinates on Wikidata
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