Maryland Day (Maryland, United States)

Maryland Day is a legal holiday in the U.S. state of Maryland. It is observed on the anniversary of the March 25, 1634, landing of the first European settlers in the Province of Maryland, the third English colony to be settled in British North America. On this day settlers from The Ark and The Dove first set foot onto Maryland soil, at St. Clement's Island in the Potomac River. The settlers were about 150 in number, departed from Gravesend on the Thames River downstream from London. Three Jesuit priests were collected from Cowes on the Isle of Wight in England where they avoided having to give the oath of allegiance and supremacy to the King. The colony's grant was renewed to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, (1605-1675), two years prior by Charles I of England, after first being given to his father Sir George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, (1574-1632), along with the title of "Lord Baltimore", and a first grant of the Province of Avalon, in the Newfoundland Colony,, who had served the King in many official and personal capacities as Secretary of State, 1619-1625. In thanksgiving for the safe landing, Jesuit Father Andrew White celebrated the Mass for the colonists led by the younger brother of Lord Baltimore, Leonard Calvert, (1606-1647), who served as the first colonist ruler of the English landing at Blackistone Island, later known as St. Clement's Island off the northern shore of the Potomac River, which was the new border between the new colony and the earlier English settlements in Virginia) and erected a large cross. The landing coincided with the Feast of the Annunciation, a holy day honoring Mary, and the start of the new year in England's legal calendar. Maryland Day on 25 March celebrates the 1634 landing at St Clements. Later the colonists and their two ships sailed further back down river to the southeast to settle a capital at St. Mary's City near the point where the Potomac flows into the Chesapeake Bay.

Maryland is a state in the Southern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east, as well as with the Atlantic Ocean to its east, and the national capital and federal district of Washington, D.C. to the southwest. With a total area of 12,407 square miles (32,130 km²), Maryland is the ninth-smallest state by land area, and its population of 6,177,224 ranks it the 18th-most populous state and the fifth-most densely populated. Maryland's capital city is Annapolis, and the state's most populous city is Baltimore.