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Neavitt, Maryland
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Neavitt, Maryland
Neavitt is an unincorporated community in Talbot County, Maryland, United States. It is located on a peninsula at the southern terminus of Maryland Route 579 on the north bank of the Choptank River, southwest of St. Michaels and northeast of Tilghman Island.
Originating on land granted to Quaker colonists in the 17th century, Neavitt emerged as a small agricultural and fishing community during the mid-19th century. Following the establishment of several community institutions and services by the 1880s, many by the local Neavitt family that gave the community its name, Neavitt attracted commercial activities that had arisen throughout the Eastern Shore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most notably oystering and canning. Its proximity to the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway (BC&A) and its steamboat network brought further investment, infrastructure, and tourism from metropolitan areas such as Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
Following the closure of BC&A rail service in 1931 and the decline of its industries after World War II, Neavitt became the focus of greater tourism and settlement by retirees from around the region, particularly after the opening of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1952. Several large farms were subdivided in the 1950s and 1960s in anticipation of further development, which occurred throughout the rest of the 20th century. Today, Neavitt remains a small village that continues to attract retirees, vacationers, and local watermen that engage in crabbing, oystering, and fishing.
Neavitt and its surrounding region has been inhabited by humans since the arrival of the Paleo-Indians over 11,000 years ago. Paw Paw Cove Site, a Paleo-Indian archaeological site on nearby Tilghman Island discovered in 1979, has produced artifacts including fluted points and tools dating between 11,500 and 10,500 years before present. The Choptank, an Algonquian-speaking people, inhabited the Choptank River system prior to the establishment of the Province of Maryland by England in 1632. The English colonial government moved all tribes, including the Choptank, onto reservations by the end of the 17th century, and by the mid-18th century most of the Eastern Shore's Native American population had left due to encroachment by colonists.
The first colonial land grant in present-day Neavitt was acquired by Ralph Elston Sr., an English Quaker, in 1661. Elston eventually expanded his "Long Point" parcel, which originally consisted of 50 acres at the end of the Neavitt peninsula between Harris and Broad Creeks, in 1673 to include 180 additional acres of Long Neck. The property, which was called Elston Point, likely contained a house built by Elston shortly after his land was surveyed.
Elston, a widower, married widow Mary Ball in 1694; Mary's husband, John Ball, had died between 1686 and 1693. The Balls, also Quakers, were an Anglo-Irish family that had migrated to Maryland from Dungannon, County Tyrone in April 1686. While Elston Point was eventually sold out of the family in 1705, Mary's son from her first marriage, Benjamin Ball, eventually repurchased it and sold it to his brother Thomas Ball. In 1720, Thomas built a house along Balls Creek on the foundations of Ralph Elston's building, which he named Long Point. The structure, a gambrel roof brick dwelling and the oldest building in Neavitt, is still extant. A wharf off of the Long Point estate was used to transport tobacco to the nearby port of Oxford, which Thomas had helped establish in 1694.
The Ball family expanded their landholdings in Talbot County throughout the 18th century, and eventually became involved in shipbuilding, for which they used enslaved labor and indentured servants. They worshipped and participated in Talbot County's Quaker society at the Third Haven Meeting House in Easton. In 1799, Rachel Ball and her husband William Shield put Long Point up for sale, ultimately selling it to Joseph Harrison in 1803.
Other early residents during the colonial period included the Haddaways, who first received a land grant in the Neavitt area in 1678. The family built Lancashire, a 1+1⁄2-story brick structure, on the property around 1783. Located near the southeast corner of Bozman-Neavitt Road and Neavitt Manor Road, this house was the birthplace and boyhood home of Joseph B. Seth, a Maryland politician, businessman, and Haddaway family descendent, during the mid-19th century.
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Neavitt, Maryland
Neavitt is an unincorporated community in Talbot County, Maryland, United States. It is located on a peninsula at the southern terminus of Maryland Route 579 on the north bank of the Choptank River, southwest of St. Michaels and northeast of Tilghman Island.
Originating on land granted to Quaker colonists in the 17th century, Neavitt emerged as a small agricultural and fishing community during the mid-19th century. Following the establishment of several community institutions and services by the 1880s, many by the local Neavitt family that gave the community its name, Neavitt attracted commercial activities that had arisen throughout the Eastern Shore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most notably oystering and canning. Its proximity to the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway (BC&A) and its steamboat network brought further investment, infrastructure, and tourism from metropolitan areas such as Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
Following the closure of BC&A rail service in 1931 and the decline of its industries after World War II, Neavitt became the focus of greater tourism and settlement by retirees from around the region, particularly after the opening of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1952. Several large farms were subdivided in the 1950s and 1960s in anticipation of further development, which occurred throughout the rest of the 20th century. Today, Neavitt remains a small village that continues to attract retirees, vacationers, and local watermen that engage in crabbing, oystering, and fishing.
Neavitt and its surrounding region has been inhabited by humans since the arrival of the Paleo-Indians over 11,000 years ago. Paw Paw Cove Site, a Paleo-Indian archaeological site on nearby Tilghman Island discovered in 1979, has produced artifacts including fluted points and tools dating between 11,500 and 10,500 years before present. The Choptank, an Algonquian-speaking people, inhabited the Choptank River system prior to the establishment of the Province of Maryland by England in 1632. The English colonial government moved all tribes, including the Choptank, onto reservations by the end of the 17th century, and by the mid-18th century most of the Eastern Shore's Native American population had left due to encroachment by colonists.
The first colonial land grant in present-day Neavitt was acquired by Ralph Elston Sr., an English Quaker, in 1661. Elston eventually expanded his "Long Point" parcel, which originally consisted of 50 acres at the end of the Neavitt peninsula between Harris and Broad Creeks, in 1673 to include 180 additional acres of Long Neck. The property, which was called Elston Point, likely contained a house built by Elston shortly after his land was surveyed.
Elston, a widower, married widow Mary Ball in 1694; Mary's husband, John Ball, had died between 1686 and 1693. The Balls, also Quakers, were an Anglo-Irish family that had migrated to Maryland from Dungannon, County Tyrone in April 1686. While Elston Point was eventually sold out of the family in 1705, Mary's son from her first marriage, Benjamin Ball, eventually repurchased it and sold it to his brother Thomas Ball. In 1720, Thomas built a house along Balls Creek on the foundations of Ralph Elston's building, which he named Long Point. The structure, a gambrel roof brick dwelling and the oldest building in Neavitt, is still extant. A wharf off of the Long Point estate was used to transport tobacco to the nearby port of Oxford, which Thomas had helped establish in 1694.
The Ball family expanded their landholdings in Talbot County throughout the 18th century, and eventually became involved in shipbuilding, for which they used enslaved labor and indentured servants. They worshipped and participated in Talbot County's Quaker society at the Third Haven Meeting House in Easton. In 1799, Rachel Ball and her husband William Shield put Long Point up for sale, ultimately selling it to Joseph Harrison in 1803.
Other early residents during the colonial period included the Haddaways, who first received a land grant in the Neavitt area in 1678. The family built Lancashire, a 1+1⁄2-story brick structure, on the property around 1783. Located near the southeast corner of Bozman-Neavitt Road and Neavitt Manor Road, this house was the birthplace and boyhood home of Joseph B. Seth, a Maryland politician, businessman, and Haddaway family descendent, during the mid-19th century.