Maryland ( MERR-il-ənd) is a declare in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders next Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. With a total land Place of 12,407 square miles (32,130 km²), Maryland is the 8th smallest give access by land area, but later a population of beyond 6,177,200, it ranks as the 18th most populous confess and the 5th most densely populated. Baltimore is the largest city in the state, and the capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are Old Line State, the Free State, and the Chesapeake Bay State. It is named after Henrietta Maria, the French-born queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, who was known next in England as Mary.

Before its coastline was explored by Europeans in the 16th century, Maryland was inhabited by several groups of Native Americans – mostly by Algonquian peoples and, to a lesser degree, Iroquoian and Siouan. As one of the original Thirteen Colonies of England, Maryland was founded by George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, a Catholic convert who sought to have enough money a religious haven for Catholics wounded in England. In 1632, Charles I of England arranged Lord Baltimore a colonial charter, naming the colony after his wife, Henrietta Maria. Unlike the Pilgrims and Puritans, who rejected Catholicism in their settlements, Lord Baltimore envisioned a colony where people of exchange religious sects would coexist below the principle of toleration. Accordingly, in 1649 the Maryland General Assembly passed an Act Concerning Religion, which enshrined this principle by penalizing anyone who “reproached” a fellow Marylander based upon religious affiliation. Nevertheless, religious strife was common in the further on years, and Catholics remained a minority, albeit in greater numbers than in any supplementary English colony.

Maryland’s into the future settlements and population centers clustered around rivers and new waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay. Its economy was heavily plantation-based and centered mostly upon the cultivation of tobacco. Demand for cheap labor from Maryland colonists led to the importation of numerous indentured servants and enslaved Africans. In 1760, Maryland’s current boundaries took form with the concurrence of a long-running attach dispute taking into consideration Pennsylvania. Maryland was an active participant in the deeds leading in the works to the American Revolution, and by 1776, its delegates signed the Declaration of Independence. Many of its citizens considering played key embassy and military roles in the war. In 1790, the acknowledge ceded house for the start of the U.S. capital of Washington, D.C.

Although next a slave state, Maryland remained in the Union during the American Civil War, its strategic location giving it a significant role in the conflict. After the Civil War, Maryland took part in the Industrial Revolution, driven by its seaports, railroad networks, and accrual immigration from Europe. Since the 1940s, the state’s population has grown rapidly, to nearly six million residents, and it is in the midst of the most densely populated U.S. states. As of 2015, Maryland had the highest median household income of any state, owing in large part to its proximity to Washington, D.C., and a severely diversified economy spanning manufacturing, retail services, public administration, real estate, higher education, information technology, defense contracting, health care, and biotechnology. The state’s central role in U.S. history is reflected by its hosting of some of the highest numbers of historic landmarks per capita.