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Volume  1
  TOGA NEWS 
Issue 3, December, 2001
 
Continued from Page 2 

Beautiful women, the queens of Maryland issued from that race, and men of great ability, who, from the founding of the colony down to the day of her death, made and were making great history. On both sides of the Chesapeake Bay and on both banks of the turbulent Potomac lived families of the first distinction in whose veins ran the
same blood that coursed through young Rose Maria's. Southern people, particularly those from Maryland and Virginia, paid more attention to their birthright than did
the people of the other colonies, and that characteristic alone set them apart, as different from their neighbors to the north. It was a remarkable connection in which
to be bred and educated. No aristocratic race was ever finer. And we shall see that this famous woman, descended from Irish and Spanish royalty and having the
best qualities of each, was ever and always an aristocrat , deeply attached to the soil which her ancestors had cultivated, and deeply loyal to the traditions which
made Maryland  one of the foremost States in the Union. 
Blood kin to many of the first families in Southern Maryland, she knew the history of each family and also the history of the other great families who lived on the
shores of the Potomac and were neighbors to Wolleston Manor. Around one little town - a consequential town in colonial days and down to this century -Port
Tobacco, there clustered the homes of some of the most distinguished men and women of their times - homes where Washington and Lafayette and other leaders in
the War of Independence were often guests, wining and dining, dancing and reclining, and sitting down to a stout game of cards. 
At Mulberry Grove lived John Hanson, President of the First Congress organized under the Articles of Confed-eration. in 1781, and often called the First President
of the United States, who extended to Washington the official thanks of his country when that great soldier came to Philadelphia to make formal announcement of the
surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. 
Nearby is LaGrange, named in honor of the home of Lafayette, where resided Doctor James Craik, the first Surgeon General of the United States Army, but whose
chief claim to our remembrance is that he was Washington’s most intimate friend, who closed his eyes in death. 
Neighbor to LaGrange is Rose Hill, where Doctor Gustavus Brown , the consulting physician in  Washington' s last illness, with his incomparable wife, dispensed a
hostility that is traditional even in our times. 

 Just beyond Rose Hill is Habre-de-Venture, the seat of Thomas Stone, one of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, although he did not favor a war with
England. His fame lingers on with the passing years. Around it clings a romantic aura, for he died of a broken heart, while still a young man, grieving over the loss of his beautiful young wife. 
Some miles to the southeast of this cluster of historic halls stood  Wolleston Manor, a great house older than any of the others. Here Captain James Neale, on October 21, 1642, established his residence, on a grant of two thousand acres, given him by Governor Leonard Calvert. 
Maryland Antiquarians are not agreed as to the origin of the Neale family, which is the family of Mrs. Greenhow. Raphael Thomas Semmes, who was a collateral member of the family, spent a lifetime of research on its history. He is certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that the American gens were descended from Shane 0'Neill, the Earl of Ulster. and the last of the Irish Kings. Christopher Johnston, another antiquarian of note, is just as certain that the Neales of Maryland were descended from an ancient English family of that name. 
The Rev. Fr. Charles Warren Currier, who wrote a history of "Carmel in America," a monastery founded by a member of the Neale family, and first located near
Port Tobacco, agrees with Mr. Johnston. He quotes a letter from the Rev. Pye Neale, S. J., to this effect: 
I don't See why it is improbable that Capt. Jas. Neale sprung from those Neales who lived at Alleslay, near Coventry in England, where tombs with the names may
be seen , and that he was related to Father Thomas Neale, who was sent by Bishop Bonner to watch the sham consecration of Matthew Parker, Capt. James Neale
is said to have stood on the scaffold and waited on Charles 1, who gave a present to each of his ‘faithful attendants present.’ 
His present to Neale was ring of a remarkable kind, that I have heard described by Mr. Ben Harris of Baltimore. Neale named his daughter Henrietta Maria, after
King Charles' wife, and left her the ring; she named her daughter Henrietta Maria, and left it to her; and so it has been handed down with the name of Henrietta
Maria, going, from family to family, Protestant and Catholic, from Virginia to Maryland, from Eastern to Western shore, and is now in Baltimore, with whom I don't
remember. It was last with the Olivers, I was told by Miss Tilghman, in whose family it had been.