Charles Benedict Calvert

Charles Benedict Calvert (August 23, 1808 – May 12, 1864) was an American politician, planter, and agricultural reformer who served as a U.S. representative from the sixth district of Maryland for one term from 1861 to 1863. An early backer of the inventors of the telegraph, he played a notable role in the development of communications technology in the United States. In 1856 he founded the Maryland Agricultural College, the first agricultural research college in America and the institution that later became the University of Maryland, College Park. A direct descendant of the Lords Baltimore, proprietary governors of the Province of Maryland from 1631 until 1776, he combined an inherited colonial legacy with a prominent role in mid-nineteenth-century public life.

Calvert was born on August 23, 1808, at his family’s estate, Riversdale, in Prince George’s County, Maryland. His mother, Rosalie-Eugénie Stier (1778–1821), was the daughter of Baron Henri-Joseph Stier (1743–1821) and Marie-Louise Peeters, a wealthy Flemish aristocratic family from Antwerp who were descendants of the painter Peter Paul Rubens and who had fled to America in the late eighteenth century as French Republican armies occupied their hometown. His father, George Calvert (1768–1838), was a wealthy Maryland planter and the son of Benedict Swingate Calvert (c. 1730–1788), a Loyalist politician and natural son of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, the penultimate Proprietary Governor of Maryland, and his wife Elizabeth Calvert (1731–1788). Through this lineage, Charles Benedict Calvert inherited both substantial landed wealth and a strong connection to Maryland’s colonial and revolutionary-era political history.

Calvert received his early education at the Bladensburg Academy in Maryland, where he completed his preparatory studies. He later attended the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, from which he received a certificate of completion in 1827, although his attendance there was somewhat irregular. After leaving the university, he returned to Maryland and devoted himself to agricultural pursuits and stock breeding, interests that would shape his public career and reform efforts. His education and family background prepared him to become a leading advocate of “scientific agriculture” at a time when American farming was beginning to incorporate new methods, technologies, and institutional support.

Upon coming into his inheritance, Calvert took over the family plantation at Riversdale, also known as Riverdale, in Prince George’s County. There he introduced scientific agriculture to the estate, adopting ideas published in contemporary agricultural journals and newspapers, exhibiting his work at county and state fairs, and developing a number of his own innovations in crop and livestock management. He was able to implement these improvements in part because of the large enslaved labor force at his command—by 1850 he held as many as fifty-five enslaved people on the plantation. Calvert became a prominent figure in regional and national agricultural circles, serving as president of the Prince George’s County Agricultural Society and the Maryland State Agricultural Society, and as vice president of the United States Pomological Society. A strong advocate for institutional support of agriculture, he was one of the early public proponents of establishing a federal Department of Agriculture.

Calvert’s interest in technological innovation extended beyond farming. He was an early and influential supporter of Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail, the inventors of the electric telegraph. On April 9, 1844, Morse and Vail successfully tested their device by transmitting a message from Washington, D.C., to the Calvert home at Riversdale, a landmark experiment that took place forty-five days before Morse sent the more famous “What hath God wrought?” message from Washington to Baltimore. The telegraph line for that later demonstration ran above the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad near Riversdale, underscoring the Calvert estate’s role in the early history of American telegraphy. Calvert’s advocacy for new technologies complemented his broader efforts to modernize agriculture and public infrastructure.

Calvert also pursued a career in public office at the state and national levels. He served as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1839, 1843, and 1844, representing Prince George’s County and aligning his legislative interests with agricultural improvement and internal development. His most enduring institutional legacy came in higher education: in 1856 he founded the Maryland Agricultural College at College Park, chartered that year as the first agricultural research college in the United States. Conceived as a school that would combine classical instruction with practical training in scientific farming, the college later evolved into the Maryland Agricultural College at College Park and ultimately into the University of Maryland, College Park, the flagship campus of the modern University of Maryland system.

The outbreak of the American Civil War provided Calvert with an opportunity to enter national politics as an opponent of secession. In 1861 he was elected as a Unionist to the Thirty-seventh Congress, representing Maryland’s sixth congressional district. As a member of the Unionist Party from Maryland, he participated in the legislative process during a critical period in American history, taking part in the debates and decisions that shaped the Union war effort while representing the interests of his constituents in a deeply divided border state. The issuance of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 exacerbated divisions among Maryland’s unionists. In his campaign for reelection that year, Calvert identified himself with the more conservative element of the Union Party and sharply criticized the radical Union League candidates. In the ensuing three-way race he was defeated by Democrat Benjamin G. Harris, who prevailed over both Calvert and John C. Holland, the Unconditional Unionist candidate, bringing Calvert’s congressional service to a close in March 1863.

In his personal life, Calvert married Charlotte Augusta Norris (March 11, 1816 – December 7, 1876) in Baltimore on June 6, 1839. The couple had six children: Ella Calvert (born March 20, 1840, in Baltimore; died February 17, 1902, in Washington, D.C.), who married Duncan George Campbell on September 3, 1861, and had issue; George Henry Calvert II (born November 29, 1841, at Riversdale; died 1919 in Washington, D.C.), who married Frances Seybolt on December 26, 1872, and had issue; Charles Baltimore Calvert (born February 5, 1843, at Riversdale; died August 31, 1906, at McAlpine, College Park), who married Eleanor Mackubin on June 14, 1866, and had issue; William Norris Calvert (October 12, 1845 – September 7, 1889), who married Laura Mathilda Hunt on March 12, 1888, and had female issue; Eugene Stier Calvert (December 19, 1846 – November 30, 1894), who remained unmarried and left no descendants; and Jules van Havre Calvert (October 30, 1848 – August 4, 1849), who died in infancy. Through one of his sons and a paternal grandson, there descended—though through an illegitimate ancestor—the last patrilineal Calverts in both Great Britain and Ireland and the United States.

After his defeat for reelection to Congress, Calvert returned to Riversdale and resumed his agricultural pursuits, continuing his involvement in farming, stock breeding, and agricultural advocacy until his death. He died at Riversdale on May 12, 1864, in the midst of the Civil War, and was interred in the Calvert Cemetery. His life and career linked Maryland’s proprietary past with the modernizing forces of the nineteenth century, particularly in the realms of agriculture, technology, and public education.