Margaret Brent

Margaret Brent ( – c. 1671), was an English settler in the Colony of Maryland, settled in its new capital, St. Mary's City, Maryland. She was the first woman in the English North American colonies to appear before a court of the common law.

Brent was a significant founding settler in the early histories of the colonies of Maryland and Virginia. Leonard Calvert, Governor of the Maryland Colony, appointed her as the executrix 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, thereby very likely having saved the colony from violent mutiny, However, in the rough, male-dominated world of the colonies, her stance for her rights and her independence was unusual in actual practice Although Richard Brent served as the local sheriff, and the family was at least nominally part of the Church of England, their religion and political loyalty became suspect when one daughter (Catherine) proclaimed her return to the Catholic church and emigrated to Belgium. Under the religious name Christina, she ultimately became abbess of the English convent of Our Lady of Consolation in Cambrai), and was joined by two more sisters during the drawn out religious conflicts which culminated in the English Civil War.

Immigration to Maryland Margaret, her sister Mary, and her brothers Giles Brent 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. 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. Governor Leonard Calvert, when he returned, recruited armed men from across the Potomac River in the nearby colony of Virginia for help against the raiders. The raiders were repulsed. However, the colony had been reduced to about 100 residents, and Calvert fell sick and died before paying the mercenaries. The dying man reportedly told his sister-in-law Margaret Brent, whom he named his executrix, "Take all, spend all." Brent liquidated his estate to pay the soldiers who had saved the colony, which later caused a controversy with the governor's surviving brother, Lord Baltimore, Margaret stated in her request to the Maryland General Assembly, "I've come to seek a voice in this assembly. And yet because I am a woman, forsooth I must stand idly by and not even have a voice in the framing of your laws." 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."

Move to Virginia Given Lord Baltimore's (and Governor Stone's) hostility to the Brent family, Giles and his young wife Mary moved to Chopawamsic Island in the Potomac River in 1649, then to Virginia's Northern Neck in 1650. The two sisters, Margaret and Mary Brent, also bought Virginia land starting in 1647, and they moved by 1650. They lived on a plantation called "Peace" in what was then Westmoreland County, Virginia. No records exist of her practice as an attorney in Virginia, but records do exist of her sagacious land investments, including in what during the following century became Old Town Alexandria, Virginia and Fredericksburg, Virginia, as well as George Washington's Mount Vernon. Margaret Brent also 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). Historian Lois Greene Carr believes the two sisters had taken vows of celibacy under Mary Ward's Institute in England.

Exact dates of Margaret Brent's birth and death are not known, in part because Brent family estates were burned by British raiders in the American Revolutionary War and War of 1812. Furthermore, Union troops vandalized the Brent family graveyard (on George Brent's property) during the Civil War. The remaining gravestones were documented by a WPA historian, and the property acquired and preserved by a local church.

Legacy and honors

Margaret Brent is today seen as a "founding mother" of Maryland, alongside its "Founding Fathers". Margaret 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 explains that she did not advocate for all women's rights, only her own right to execute Lord Baltimore's estate as he intended. 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. The Public Honors College, St. Mary's College of Maryland, also located in modern-day St. Mary's City, has a building named after her. It is called Margaret Brent Hall. A street on the campus is also named Margaret Brent Way. The school also maintains a scholarship and academic program for gifted and talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds called the DeSousa-Brent Scholars Program, partly named in her honor. In 1978, Virginia erected a historical marker in Jones Point Park commemorating Mistress Margaret Brent's fight for women's rights, as well as her ownership of the land which became Alexandria, Virginia. In 1998, Virginia erected a historical highway marker commemorating Margaret, Giles and her sister Mary Brent for constructing the first Roman Catholic Settlement in Virginia, along historic Route 1 near the former Brent family graveyard. In 2010, Virginia erected a historical highway marker (about a mile south of the 1998 religious markers) noting Margaret Brent's role as guardian for Mary Kittamaquund, who was a Native American princess Margaret Brent was named a member of the inaugural class of Virginia Women in History in 2000. In 1985 she was one of the first group of women inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame.