I love a good ferry ride. I’ve
been for a ride on some big ones – the ferry to Whidbey Island in the Puget
Sound, the ferry across Long Island Sound, and the Staten Island Ferry. But my
favorites are the small ones like Whites Ferry across the Potomac. The latter,
which ceased operations in December 2020, was the last ferry operating on the Potomac.
Three hundred and fifty years ago there were numerous ferry crossings on the
Potomac and the smaller rivers throughout Charles County.
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Left: White's Ferry, Poolesville, Maryland Right: MV Kittitas, Puget Sound, Mukilteo,Washington |
Transportation in the early
years of the county was hampered by dust in summer, impassable roads in winter,
and mud during heavy rains. The problem of travel was so important that the
Charles County Court took up the matter in the second month of the county’s
existence. On 4 June 1658, the court noted that the Governor, Council, and
Commissions had ordered Samuel Harris to keep a ferry over the Wicomico River
at a yearly salary of 2,000 pounds of tobacco. The county was ordered to pay
the salary and to furnish Harris with a boat. Harris was ordered to keep the
ferry from sun up to sun set and to provide passage between Metomkin Point and
Richard Trew’s marsh on the Charles County side of the river.[1]
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Road Trace at Rich Hill near Bel Alton on a dry day. This road was in use by the early 19th century if not during the 18th century and connected interior areas of the county to Port Tobacco and Bryantown. |
Evidently Harris’s ferry was
never instituted or was short lived because the Maryland Assembly passed An Act for Ferry on 6 September 1664.
The Act established ferries over the St. George River in St. Mary’s County,
over the Wicomico River between St. Mary’s and Charles Counties, and across the
Patuxent between Calvert and Charles Counties. The Act specified that St. Mary’s
and Charles Counties were to either construct or buy a convenient
“boate of 14 foote or thereabouts by the Keele for conueying any persons
whatsoever trauelings on foote” over either the St. George’s or Wicomico
Rivers. The counties were enabled to set up and keep the ferry at the most
convenient place on the rivers by the last day of November 1665 on peril of
being fined 3,000 pounds of tobacco in caske. Further, both counties were
ordered to maintain the ferries through a levy on the inhabitants. The ferry
over the Patuxent was ordered by the Assembly to be able to transport “all
passengers whatsoever wth their horses trauelinge either on foote or
on horse back.” The Patuxent ferry was also a larger ferry, measuring 18 feet
in length by the keele. The keepers of all three ferries were ordered to
provide passage to anyone at any time of the day between sun rise and sun set provided they were not hindered by violent weather.[2] The Wicomico River ferry
was probably up and running during 1665 as in December of that year, Charles
County paid Arben Codington, 200 pounds of tobacco for keeping the ferry for
two months and Thomas Brandson, who is identified as a ferriman, the sum of 2,000
pounds of tobacco.[3]
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Market Street Ferry Boat and Landing at Camden, New Jersey in 1779. Thomas Birch, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, # 4307 While ferries in shallow water could be poled, deeper rivers like the Potomac River, or the Delaware River in the painting, required oarsmen to pull across wide deep water and a helmsman to steer. Some ferries were pulled across by cables. |
The ferry system across the
Potomac was a lucrative business and there was some cut throat competition
involved. The widow Ann Lynes of Charles County presented a petition to the
General Assembly on 10 October 1710 in which she complained that unnamed
persons had illegally set up a ferry landing on her property and that the
passengers from the ferry were traveling across her planation and damaging her
tobacco and corn. She pointed out to the Assembly that not only did she have a
very good ferry boat of her own, but her late husband Philip Lynes Esquire had
kept the ferry under privilege granted by the late Governor Seymour. All she
wanted the Assembly to do was to order the usurpers off her property and to be able
to continue to run her late husband’s ferry. The assembly granted her petition
with the caveat that she was not to charge more than what her late husband had
been limited to.[4]
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The Potomac River facing downstream toward Mount Vernon from Piscataway National Park |
Henry Thompson, who kept a
ferry across the Potomac in northern Charles County felt compelled in June 1746
to blast his competition in the pages of the Maryland Gazette for spreading
false rumors about his ferry:
Whereas I am informed that some evil-minded, spiteful
Person, in order to prevent me getting Custom to my Ferry, has industriously
spread a Report that I have given up keeping the said Ferry.
This, he stated, was simply not true. He had a good Yawl to take people over without their horses, and a good boat. Further he was “now building a very commodious and neat Ferry-Boat sufficient to carry six horses, etc. to Ducking-Stool Point, with great Safety.” Other ferry landings included Capt. Hoe’s “or any other Part of the South Side of Potomack.”[5]
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An Ice Bound Yawl Portion of "Ships in Ice off Ten Pound Island, Gloucester" Fitz Henry Lane, 1850s Boston Museum of Fine Art |
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Henry Thompson's Rant About his Ferry Maryland Gazette, 24 June 1746. No. 62, page 2. |
Although Thompson did not say who his competition was, it’s possible that it was George Dent. In June 1747, Dent advertised in the Maryland Gazette that his ferry in Charles County, located just two miles above Thompson’s Ferry, was superior to Thompson’s in that it “avoided a Creek that lies in the usual Way to Thompson’s Ferry, [that is] dangerous to Strangers.” Further, Dent had set up marks along the road from Port Tobacco to direct people to his ferry.[6]
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Dent's Advertisement About His Ferry With a Dig at Thompson Maryland Gazette, 2 June 1747, No. 110, page 3. |
By 1747, there were numerous ferries
across the Potomac in the northwestern portion of Charles county. A commission
for the main roads in the county lists at least four ferries in the area: “The Road
from Richard Thompsons to Pickawaxen Church that makes out of that to Thompsons
Ferry and also the Road to Jones’s Ferry from Philpotts Gate across Pickawaxen
main Road to Lees Ferry and the Ferry Roads by Capt.n Howards to Pickawaxen
Church.”[7] Henry Thompson went out of
business two years later and his ferry was taken over by Benjamin Fendell who
claimed he had “a choice large new Ferry-Boat with able and Skilful Hands” that
would see to the fastest and best passage to Virginia on this part of the
Potomac. Fendall also included the ferriage in his advertisment for a person and their
horse: 5 shillings paper or 4 shilling silver.[8]
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Photograph of the possible 19th-century Ferry House near Ludlow's Ferry Site in Charles County. The ferry was known by several names including Laidler's and Ladlor's The photograph was taken in the late 1980s when the building was used as a hay barn. Nicholas Cresswell wrote in his journal that he breakfasted at Ladlor's Ferry House on the Morning of 21 May 1774. Maryland Inventory of Historic Places CH-96 |
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Mount Vernon from Locust Grove on the Charles County Side of the Potomac River Locust Grove is just upstream from Marshall Hall |
Posey’s ferry was used by George Washington when he traveled to Williamsburg. Although this route caused him to cross the Potomac twice, once at Posey’s ferry near Marshall Hall and again at Ladlor’s Ferry south of Port Tobacco, it saved him numerous stream crossings on the Virginia side of the river. His diary entry for 19 April 1769 notes that he:
“Crossd at Mr. Possey’s Ferry and began my journey to
Williamsburg about 9 Oclock. Abt. 11 I broke my Chair and had to Walk to Port
Tobo. where I was detaind the whole day getting my Chair mended—no Smith being
with 6 Miles. Lodgd at Doctr. Halkerston’s.”[11]
Hence the famous story about
Washington spending the night in Port Tobacco.
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In front - a reproduction riding chair at Mount Vernon In back - an 18th-century riding chair. |
Ferries continued to be
important linkages between Charles County and Virginia into the nineteenth
century. The 1794 Map of Maryland by Griffith shows a warehouse landing at Pomonky
not far from Dent’s house, one south of Stump Neck and Chickamuxen Creek, that
later became Budd’s Ferry, another at Maryland Point, and Laidler’s or Ludow’s Ferry
at Cedar Point (labeled “L Ferry” on the map). Many of these ferry landings
would become steamboat landings during the nineteenth century.
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Portion of the 1795 Dennis Grffith Map of Maryland Ferry Landings are Circled in Red Pomonky Warehouse is Circled in Blue Although the map shows Mattawoman Neck as part of Prince George's County It was actually ceded to Charles County by an Act of Assembly in 1748. |
It wasn’t until 1938 that a bridge was constructured across the Potomac River near the old Laidler’s or Ludow’s Ferry landing. The very scarey Harry Nice Bridge carrying U.S. Route 301 across the river was recently replaced by the much less scarey Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial/Senator Thomas “Mac” Middleton Bridge, which opened in 2022.
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Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge Looking Toward Virginia April 2015 |
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Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial/Senator Thomas “Mac” Middleton Bridge with a view of the remnants of the old bridge and the Morgantown Power Plant in Charles County on 26 March 2023, 5 days after demolition of the old bridge began. |
[1]
Proceedings of the County Court of
Charles County, 1658 to 1666. Maryland Archives, Volume 53, pages 7, 42.
[2]
Proceedings and Acts of the General
Assembly January 1637/8-September 1664. Maryland Archives, Volume 1, pages
534-353.
[3]
Proceedings of the County Court of
Charles County, 1658 to 1666. Maryland Archives, Volume 53, page 619.
[4]
Proceedings and Acts of the General
Assembly, March 1707-November 1710. Maryland Archives, Volume 27, pages
498-499.
[5]
Maryland Gazette, 24 June 1746. No.
62, page 2.
[6]
Maryland Gazette, 2 June 1747, No.
110, page 3.
[7]
Proceedings of the County Court of
Charles County, 1746 to 1747. Maryland Archives, Volume 862, page 192.
[8]
Maryland Gazette, 25 October 1749,
No. 239, page 4.
[9]
Maryland Gazette, 19 April 1764, No.
989, page 2.
[10]
Maryland Gazette, 22 July 1762, No.
898, page 4.
[11] Diary Entry: 19 April 1760. Founders Online, National Archives. Electronic Document. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-01-02-0005-0004-0019. Accessed 2 October 2023.
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