Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 16 September 1999 — Page 9

The Muncie Times, September 16, 1999, page 9

THEY HAD A DREAM

Mathias Sousa among original settlers of Maryland

By Reasons and Patrick Mathias Sousa was one of the original settlers of what is now the state of Maryland. Sousa landed in the New World in 1634, with some 300 other “laborers and gentlemen” who established the colony on land granted to George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore. Coming to Maryland as an indentured servant, Sousa soon satisfied his obligations and became a free man, a member of the Maryland Assembly, a ship captain and an Indian trader. Sousa’s passage was arranged by Father Phillip Fisher, a Thomas Copley, under a formula w r orded out by Lord Baltimore, to

encourage settlement of the colony. Every “adventurer” who transported five men between the ages of 16 and 60 to the colony would be granted in his name 2,000 acres of land. Those transporting fewer than five w'ere granted 100 acres for each man and 50 acres for a child. Sousa apparently was indentured until he had paid off the cost of his passage to Maryland. He was one of two Negroes in the initial party which sailed from Gravesend in England and arrived in Chesapeake Bay in March, 1634. The other was a man named John Price. Very little is known about Sousa. In fact , if it had not been for land claims filed by

Father Fisher for transporting Sousa to Maryland, his presence might have gone unnoticed. Even Sousa’s name is a subject of historical confusion. He has variously been referred to in a number of colonial documents as Sousa, de Sousa, Touse, Tousa and Zause. Sousa was a free man in 1641 because in that year he sat on the Maryland Assembly. Only free men were extended that privilege. In the fall of 1642, Sousa was licensed to trade with the Indians during a period when the Indians were attacking and killing both settlers and traders. A ship owner named Alexander Pulton placed

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Sousa in command of a pinnace and authorized him to hire a crew for a trading mission. One of the men hired by Sousa was John Prettiman, a planter who more than earned his pay of 200 pounds of tobacco monthly. Sousa inferred that the mission had been filled with danger and declared in a sworn statement that because of “Prettiman’s means and presence, I verily believeth the pinnace and men were saved at that time from disaster by Susquehannonks. ” Sousa later was granted 50 acres and became a planter in the struggling new colony.

Mathias Sousa

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