History of 17th & 18th Century Maryland

One thing we do know about the family is that they were prominent landowners and most probably quite wealthy. From this we can infer that they were most probably involved in the politics of their time. Several members of this early family belonged to the House of Burgess, one was a sherriff, some were Revolutionary Soldiers and Frontier Rangers. Many were referred to as Gentlemen Planters or as Genteman of the Manor.

Colonial Maryland underwent numerous social, political and financial upheavels during it's first two hundred years. One major conflict, of course, involved the battle for Independance. The attept at making America a British colony, subject to the rules of the Crown, did not sit well with the independant spirit of most colonists and ultimately resulted in The American Revolutiuon. There were Indian uprisings, epidemics, sometimes local, sometimes widespread. Then there were the religious struggles. In early Maryland we find Catholics, Quakers, Presbyterians, and many other religious preferences, many of whom fled to America to escape religious persecution. This melting pot of differing beliefs surely caused  friction among the colonists, and ultimately resulted in the shaping of our current religious beliefs.

On this page, we are not going to attempt to write the history of early Maryland, since so many others have already done so, and have done an excellent job to boot. What we're going to do instead is provide a list of links to pages that contain histories and genealogies that pertain to Maryland during the timeframe that the O'Neale's resided there. On some of these pages you will even find histories of the O'Neale's as well as histories of their allied families, such as the  Calverts, Coles, Digges, Lamares, Lowes, Neales, Sparks, etc.