Barney Grinsell, age 11, of Baltimore, Md., for his question:
HOW DID MARYLAND RECEIVE ITS NAME?
Maryland is about at the middle of the East Coast of the United States. Shaped somewhat like a triangle, it is in the northeastern corner of the Southern States. Maryland was named for Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I of England.
Charles chartered the Maryland territory to Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore. Calvert was a Roman Catholic who strongly believed in religious freedom. Ha welcomed settlers of all faiths to Maryland.
During most of the time that Maryland was an English colony, Lord Baltimore ruled it. During the Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress met for three months in the city of Baltimore.
In 1788, Maryland became the seventh state of the United States.
After the war, the Congress of the Confederation met for several months in the Maryland State House in Annapolis. In 1791, it gave part of the land to the federal government for the District of Columbia.
About 8,000 Indians were living in the Maryland area when white men first arrived. Most lived along the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers in bark puts. They belonged to two large tribes: the Algonqulns and the Iroquois.
The first settlers arrived from England in 1634. They were English, Scotch and Irish. Within a few years blacks were brought into the colony as slaves. There were not too many of them, however, until the start of the 18th Century.
In 1730 a large number of German settlers from Pennsylvania moved to North Central Maryland because of a free land offer.
Many additional settlers came from Ireland in the 19th Century and they were employed on canal and railroad projects. After a revolution attempt in Germany failed in 1848, many more Germans migrated to Maryland.
After 1900, with a new demand for factory workers, many settlers cane, including Poles, Greeks, Czechs, Italians, Lithuanians, Russians and Finns.
According to the 1980 census, 74.9 percent of Maryland's population was white. In 1790 that figure stood at 93 percent. Maryland's 1980 black citizens made up 22.7 percent of the population.
Today Baltimore is the state's largest city. It is also one of the greatest port cities in the world. The capital of Maryland is Annapolis, which also is the home of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Chesapeake Bay slices Maryland into two parts. The part to the east of the bay is called the Eastern Shore, while the part to the west is called you guessed it the Western Shore.
Most of the people in Maryland make their living in manufacturing. The Baltimore area is the state's most important industrial section. Just outside of Baltimore is one of the largest steel mills in the world. Other large factories produce stainless steel, copper and aluminum.
Chief manufactured products of Maryland include food and food products, primary metals and electrical machinery.