The Governor Calvert house was on State Circle at least by 1720 and it’s still there. The Calverts had lost the royal grant of Maryland to the king by this time, but they were still rich and powerful and were to get Maryland back soon as their own colony. Meanwhile, they lived in this house while they protected their interests with the legislature just across the street. The artifacts found at this site show that they were very wealthy. The central fact of the Calvert attempt at founding Maryland is religious toleration for all Christians, which we have come to call freedom of religion. The Calverts welcomed Puritans, Baptists, Anglicans, and members of dissenting communities from England. This was permitted under the Act of Toleration. This was a utopian vision, which we continue to celebrate today. This was a form of “Seeking Liberty.” Throughout Maryland, there are many traditions, which can be discovered using archaeology. Archaeology is itself a liberating field because it shows how people of quite different traditions lived together, when popular knowledge often denies this, or refuses even to understand the possibility. Living in the Calvert House, probably as slaves, were people who were Muslim, or who used Muslim traditions. Thus, we do not have a Catholic family only, but families of two traditions who probably understood their differences and agreed to live with them. When the Calverts lived in the house, it was small. There were just two front rooms and maybe an upstairs. But in back, there was something like a greenhouse that was heated with a furnace and duct system, which we called a hypocaust, which dates from the 1720s. It’s still there; you can go see it now. It’s under a glass floor and is well lighted.   When this greenhouse was destroyed for an addition that the Calverts built in the 1740s, the furnace system was filled with trash. Because the deposit was very dry, it held fabulous material, jewelry, paper, eggshells, and all sorts of material that is usually never found. There were children’s wooden toys, a chess piece, even pieces of wool.     Images courtesy of Anne E. Yentsch "A Chesapeake Family and their Slaves: A Study in Historical Archaeology," 1994. There was a big front yard to the house. The yard had a well, which you can still see to the left of the front door. After the Revolution, the well was abandoned and filled with trash including pieces of leather shoes, part of a pistol, a bayonet, and many other things. Artifacts from the Governor Calvert House Seal from a wine bottle marked “O.R. 1734.” This seal was most likely associated with the younger son of a Venetian nobleman, Onorio Razolini. He arrived in Maryland about the same time as Lord Baltimore visited the province. Razolini represented the Calvert family’s Maryland interests until he returned to Asolo, Italy in 1748. He lived at the Calvert House during the 1730s and 1740s. (Paraphrased from Yentsch, A Chesapeake Family and their Slaves A Study in Historical Archaeology, 1994.)