17th Century

ST. MARY'S CITY -- In a sort of dress rehearsal for the excavation later this year of three lead coffins believed to hold the remains of Maryland's founding Calvert family, scientists have entered another 17th century churchyard crypt to study the coffins of Maryland's first royal governor and his wife.Experts on April 30 entered the massive brick burial vault of Sir Lionel Copley and his wife, Anne, in the Trinity Episcopal churchyard. The Copleys died in St. Mary's City in 1694. At a news conference here yesterday, scientists said the daylong entry into the Copley vault, done with permission of church officials, provided them with important data on the construction of lead coffins in the 17th century.

Archaeologists in Anne Arundel County believe they have found the remains of the lost hamlet of Providence, which vanished nearly 300 years ago.A Puritan enclave in a Catholic colony, the town flourished in 1649. It was known to have stood near the mouth of the Severn River, where its inhabitants briefly wrested power from the ruling Catholics in the 1655 Battle of the Severn.After the Protestants finally triumphed and moved Maryland's capital from St. Mary's City to Annapolis in 1695, Providence rotted away in the new capital's shadow.

THIS CENTURY'S first potential large-scale political experiment takes its next baby-step today. The 5,400-some folks in the Free State Project will find out which of 10 low-population U.S. states their majority picked to conquer by persuasion. If the Free Staters can swell their ranks to more than 20,000 by 2006, all have pledged to move in (but not live together) across the favored state by 2011. The goal for this small-government-loving cadre is classically American: to get their voices heard by tipping the political scales in their favor.

Two early 19th-century portrait miniatures at the Walters Art Gallery contain secrets shared between the person pictured and the person to whom the miniature belonged. A portrait of Princess Louisa Carlotta, daughter of King Francis I of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, shows the princess in half length on the front. Turn it over and on the back -- the part that only the owner would have seen -- is portrayed the back of the princess.Another, tiny early 19th-century English miniature shows only the eye of the subject.

The international art world will cast a glance at Baltimore County next week as the remaining fine and decorative-art antiques from the vast Cloisters Collection go on the auction block at the State Fairgrounds in Timonium.The March 25 sale of items from the eclectic collection of the late Sumner A. and G. Dudrea Parker will be the fourth held locally this year.The couple amassed the Continental and American antiques, which date from the 17th to the 19th centuries, during their annual European trips.

"A World of Foreign Lands," a new exhibit at the Walters Art Gallery, celebrates 1492 by capturing the spirit of what we now call the age of discovery. In it, curator Elizabeth Burin brings together 30 examples of illustrated books, maps and charts to show how, from the late middle ages through the 17th century, geography changed from what she calls a "philosophical discipline" into an "experimental science."At the same time, she shows that conjectures persisted about the nature of unknown lands and peoples.

"The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love and Death in Plymouth Colony," by James Deetz and Patricia Scott Deetz, W.H. Freeman and Company. 366 pages. $24.95. And so, turkey-sated reader, what is your vision of the first Thanksgiving? Severe, teetotaling, black-clad Pilgrims assuming pious poses and offering thanks to God before feasting on turkey while a handful of noble savages observe? How about life in general in 17th century Plymouth Colony? More of the same, with Puritanical laws enforcing straight-laced behavior while men toiled selflessly and women stood meekly by?

SINCE the dawn of the Advertising Age, Maryland has bee selling itself by slogan. From Old Line State and Maryland Free State onward, the verbal parade strums and struts. America in Miniature. The Land of Pleasant Living. Keep Maryland Green. Make a Maryland Memory.Now, the state's ads have still another new refrain: Live for the Weekend. Presumably the visitors are close enough to start with that, flying, driving or riding, they can finish work and get here by Friday evening or Saturday morning.

Antwerp, a prosperous Belgian city a half-hour north of Brussels, is best known as a center for diamonds: There are 10,000 stonecutters and polishers in Antwerp's wholesale district. To connoisseurs of another kind, the city is known as the setting of the children's classic "A Dog of Flanders." (Written by a visiting British woman whose nom de plume was Ouida, the book somehow became immensely popular in Japan but was virtually unknown in Belgium until a Japanese tourist brought it to the attention of Antwerpians.

Maryland Days Weekend, Saturday and next Sunday, celebrates the state's 357th birthday in historic St. Mary's City, Maryland's living history museum and the site of its original settlement and capital. This is the only event of the year at St. Mary's City that is open to the public free of charge.Pageantry, crafts, music, seafood and family activities are planned both days from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. An official ceremony will take place Sunday at 1:30 p.m., featuring a Ceremony of Flags with participation by schoolchildren from Maryland's 23 counties and Baltimore City and a performance by the Navy Band's Sea Chanters.