Four Ships Cleared Oxford on Sept. 9, 1775. None Came Back: The Oxford Museum on the Port the Revolution Closed

OXFORD, MARYLAND — On Sept. 9, 1775, the last day before the colonial export embargo took hold, four ships cleared the port of Oxford and set sail. The last left on Sept. 11. None came back, and no others followed, according to the Oxford Museum's exhibit text on Oxford and the American Revolution.

Oxford was then a legally designated port, one of few in the Maryland colony. Its chief rivals were Annapolis and Fells Point, later part of Baltimore, and to a lesser extent Chestertown. Its main export was tobacco, which also served as currency with the trading houses until about 1748. The leading trading house in town was the Liverpool firm of Foster Cunliffe & Sons, run by Robert Morris Sr. as chief factor until his death in 1750.

The break with Britain came in steps. On May 24, 1774, Talbot County residents issued a statement of support for Boston that became known as the Talbot Resolve. The First Continental Congress set a boycott on imports from Great Britain, Ireland and the West Indies starting Dec. 1, 1774, and an embargo on exports starting Sept. 10, 1775. Counties formed Committees of Observation to watch the ports, Oxford among them.

The museum's exhibit describes two cases that came before the Committee of Observation for Talbot County. The owner of the ship Baltimore, Charles Crookshanks, offered to send its goods back to Glasgow unopened, and the committee let the ship clear. In a second case, the committee voted to bar a ship's captain it did not trust from the Talbot County courts if he ever returned.

With its trade gone, the town shrank. Its population dropped below 100 people, with only 13 occupied houses, the exhibit says.

Jeremiah Banning, a former ship captain and militiaman whom George Washington later appointed Oxford's collector of customs, described the town in his memoir: "The once well worn streets are now grown up with grass, save a few narrow tracks, made by the sheep & swine."

The Oxford Museum, 101 S. Morris St., is a seasonal museum open Fridays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. until it closes in late fall. Admission is free.