Elizabeth Calvert

Who was Elizabeth Calvert?

Elizabeth Calvert was the daughter of Maryland Governor Captain Charles Calvert and Rebecca Gerard, and a wealthy heiress in colonial Maryland. Her parents died when she was young, leaving her their substantial fortune. In 1748, aged 17, she married her cousin Benedict Swingate Calvert, a Loyalist politician and planter and the illegitimate son of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore. Benedict's connections to the ruling Calvert family allowed him to benefit from considerable proprietarial patronage, until the American Revolution saw the overthrow of British rule and the end of Calvert power in Maryland. Benedict and Elizabeth had to pay triple taxes after the war's end but, unlike many loyalists, their lands and fortune remained unconfiscated.

Elizabeth was the grandmother of Charles Benedict Calvert, a U.S. Congressman who founded what is now the University of Maryland, College Park, chartered in 1856. Elizabeth's portrait, painted by John Wollaston, still hangs on display, along with those of many of her Calvert relatives, in the Baltimore Museum of Art.