In the 1650s, Quaker settler John Shaw and his wife, Sarah, established a plantation here called Shaw’s Folly.

John Shaw reportedly moved here from Virginia. The Shaws cleared forest, cultivated tobacco, and then abandoned worn-out land for other parts of their 360-acre plantation. Records suggest that the Shaws had indentured English or Irish servants.

After John died in 1674, his widow, Sarah, married neighbor Major Thomas Francis in 1675. She died in 1676, leaving the Shaw children orphaned. Major Francis acquired control of the Shaws’ land and also acquired the nearby “Francis Field,” where he is buried.

Major Thomas Francis
SERC staff discovered the grave of local resident Major Thomas Francis. On March 19, 1685, Francis took his new wife on a boating trip to visit their neighbors across the Rhode River at a plantation called Tulip Hill. He never returned. Francis drowned on the way back at the age of 42. His tombstone bore a poetic inscription urging his family not to mourn, but to hope for a reunion after death.

Image: Major Thomas Francis’s tombstone is reportedly the oldest in Anne Arundel County. (Courtesy of Christine Dunham)
Left image: Shaw’s Folly may have resembled the reconstructed Godiah Spray tobacco plantation house at Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland. (Courtesy of Historic St. Mary’s City)
Image above: The Quaker Burying Ground near Galesville was the site of the first Quaker regional gathering in Maryland in 1672. (Courtesy of Christine Dunham)

Quaker Settlers
John and Sarah Shaw became members of the Society of Friends, a religious community commonly known as Quakers. The Quakers left England in search of economic opportunity and to escape political upheaval and religious controversies. They were often strong abolitionists and helped establish the nearby freed African American community at Mill Swamp.
Above image: Archaeologists created this magnetometry simulation of the Shaw’s Folly site, showing the location of the house and a trash midden. Magnetometry measures variations in the geomagnetic field, allowing archaeologists to “see” into the ground.
Above image: Archaeologists excavate the site of Shaw’s Folly.

What did archaeologists find here?
Above image: Archeologists discovered a surface midden (a trash dump) on the west side of the house containing ceramics and tobacco pipes (right). These artifacts helped date the occupation of the house to between the 1650s and 1680s. Artifacts are not shown to scale.
Above image: Bones and teeth from cattle, pigs, sheep, and poultry tell us what the Shaw family ate. Imported from Europe, these animals pushed out native species and permanently altered the environment.
Image: The site of Shaw’s Folly