Editing Somerset County, Maryland (section)

===Religious communities===
Settlement of the county generally proceeded from the Chesapeake Bay eastward, and from old [[Accomack County, Virginia|Accomack County]] northward. The original settlers in the first two settlements were [[Quakers]] and [[Anglican]]s; and both groups continued to grow from ongoing immigration from the northern portions of the Virginia colony. In the 1670s, Scottish and Irish Presbyterians began to immigrate to the county, some from Virginia, some from the British Isles. In December 1680, a prominent member of the county and professed Anglican, William Stevens of Rehoboth settlement, sent a request to the Presbytery of Laggan in northern Ireland to consider sending a [[Presbyterian]] minister to Somerset county; and the first Presbyterian (Reformed) minister, Reverend Francis Makemie, arrived in early 1683, quickly followed by a growing list of additional Irish Presbyterian ministers and missionaries. The towns of Rehoboth and [[Snow Hill, MD|Snow Hill]] along the [[Pocomoke River]] in the eastern (seaside) portion of Somerset County became Presbyterian centers in the county. The work of these Presbyterian ministers and missionaries eventually led to the organization of the Presbytery in Philadelphia in 1706, the forerunner of [[Presbyterian Church in the United States of America|American Presbyterianism]].

In 1689, the "[[Glorious Revolution]]" of 1688 in [[Kingdom of England|England]] resulted in the exile of the Roman Catholic [[James II of England|King James II]]. After conquest by invasion, the Protestant Dutch rulers [[William III of England|William of Orange-Nassau and Mary of Orange]] (James II's Protestant daughter) later became King William III, (1650–1702) and Queen Mary II. The [[Protestant Revolution (Maryland)|"Protestant Revolution" of 1689]] in Maryland overthrew the Roman Catholic government, resulting in the reversion of Lord Baltimore's proprietary charter. The Province was converted into a Royal colony (with a later government controlled by the king and his ministers). The capital was moved from the Catholic stronghold at [[St. Mary's City, Maryland|St. Mary's City]] in southern Maryland to the more central, newly renamed [[Annapolis, Maryland|Annapolis]] on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, opposite [[Kent Island]].

In 1692, the [[Maryland General Assembly|Provincial General Assembly]] established the [[Church of England]] as the "established church" of the Province. This put pressure on the Quakers and Presbyterians, who were excluded from political office for a period. Their numbers in the county began a slow decline until the [[American Revolution]].<ref>Scharf, J. Thomas, ''History of Maryland: From the Earliest Period to 1880'', Louis H. Everts, Philadelphia (1880), p. 68</ref>

For more than a century, the county and much of the colony were developed by planters, with the labor of enslaved Africans, for tobacco as a commodity crop. For many years they prospered, but tobacco exhausted the soil. By the early 19th century, after the [[American Revolutionary War]], some planters turned to mixed farming. The Eastern Shore remained primarily rural and steeped in slave society culture. Other parts of Maryland had an increasing proportion of [[free people of color]], and more than half the blacks in the state were free before the Civil War.