Mary Kittamaquund

Mary Kittamaquund (c. 1634 – c. 1654 or 1700), daughter of the Piscataway chieftain Kittamaquund, helped establish peaceful relations between English immigrants to the Maryland and Virginia Colonies and their native peoples. Life After Jesuit missionary Rev. Andrew White healed his son in 1639, Kittamaquund converted his family to the Catholic faith. Two years later, he sent his seven-year-old daughter, renamed Mary at her baptism, to be raised by Governor Leonard Calvert and by Margaret Brent. Kittamaquund wanted the English colony's leaders to educate Mary so she could communicate between the two cultures, and solicit their help against hostile tribes. The Mary Ward society was founded on the pattern of the Society of Jesus, and pioneered in the area of apostolic congregations of sisters. Maryland Trading, the lust for land, and religious conflicts, including the religious wars resuming in England, shaped Mary Kittamaquund's life. In late 1644, in Governor Calvert's absence, Margaret Brent had allowed her 38-year-old brother Giles to marry Mary Kittamaquund, though she was just 10 or 11 years old at the time. Years later, Leonard Calvert's cousin George Talbot, while negotiating with William Penn about lands claimed by both Maryland and Pennsylvania, stated, "Capt Brent who in right of his wife the Piscataway Emperors daughter and only Child pretended a right to the most part of Maryland but could doe noe good on't after a great bustle about it." According to various reports. Calvert was either in England with his brother soliciting support for the Maryland colony, or collecting debts and hiring soldiers in Virginia to protect it. In any event, during his absence, on February 14, 1645, raiders led by Protestant sea captain and merchant Richard Ingle and his ally Virginia fur trader William Claiborne burned the Catholic chapel and other buildings at St. Mary's City and tried to destroy the new colony. The previous year, during Governor Calvert's absence, Giles Brent had briefly jailed Ingle for treason against King Charles I. When Ingle returned, he carried letters of marque and reprisal against the king's supporters issued by the Protestant Parliament. The Ingle/Claiborne raiders also raided and burned houses of Catholic settlers on Kent Island, which had begun competing with Claiborne's former post there (which burned down in 1631 but had been rebuilt) and another of his posts at Palmer's Island.