The Kirkmans were very, very, very early American pioneers when George Kirkman sailed from London in 1649 with a group of settlers recruited by Lord Baltimore to populate his new colony: Maryland.

There’s a patent signed in July 1649 by Charles Calvert, third Lord Baltimore, that grants land to George and settlers named Coates, Cooke, Hide, Horne and Jewell. In all, approximately 80,000 Englishmen fled to America after Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads triumphed in the English Civil War and beheaded King Charles I in January 1649.

George evidently arrived in Dorchester County, MD in the summer or fall of 1649, and records show he was allotted a pinky-shaped neck of land that juts into the Little Choptank River approximately eight miles southwest of modern day Cambridge, MD, and 10 miles from the river’s confluence with Chesapeake Bay. George’s holding was called Prime Hooks and was part of Thomas Walker’s Courtisie Plantation, one of Maryland’s earliest settlements.

Several family members joined George and men named Roger and William Kirkman arrived in 1664 and Malcar Kirkman in 1672.

The first American Kirkmans remained in marshy and sandy Eastern Shore Maryland for approximately 135 years (1649-1785); raising tobacco and corn, fishing in Chesapeake Bay and harvesting the bay’s clams, crabs and oysters. Cutting timber and sawing lumber were big business after 1700.

Colonial court records show the Dorchester Kirkmans had picturesque names for their homesteads. In 1682 William Kirkman owned a holding on the south shore of the Choptank called Kirkman’s Discovery and in 1683 also owned 150-acre Rattlesnake Ridge.