Queen Anne's County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 49,874. Its county seat and most populous municipality is Centreville. The census-designated place of Stevensville is the county's most populous place with a population of 7,442 as of 2020. The county is named for Queen Anne of Great Britain, who reigned when the county was established in 1706 during the colonial period. The county is part of the Mid-Eastern Shore region of the state.
Queen Anne's County is included in the Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA Combined Statistical Area, and is the easternmost in both.
Chesapeake Bay Bridge connects Kent Island in Queen Anne's County across Chesapeake Bay to Anne Arundel County. The American Discovery Trail runs through the county.
History
Queen Anne's County has 265 miles of waterfront, much of that being the shores of Kent Island, which stands out from the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. From the waters of this county, watermen have harvested oysters, crabs, and terrapin. Migrating waterfowl overwinter here, and hunting for geese and ducks has been an important part of the county's history. The first Anglo-European settlement in Maryland was on Kent Island on August 21, 1631, and included twenty-five settlers in a manor house, a fort, and other buildings. The settlement was referred to as Winston's Island. The first houses were built similar to log cabins. The county has a number of properties on the National Register of Historic Places, but nothing remains of this original settlement. Stevensville, earlier known as Broad Creek, is one of the oldest towns still existing.
Queen Anne's County was organized under a sheriff in 1706, bounded by Talbot, Kent, and Dorchester counties. In 1713, Queen Anne's County became an English postal district; the sheriff was also appointed as the postmaster and would travel to Annapolis, Maryland by boat across the Chesapeake Bay to obtain mail. In 1773 a part of Queen Anne's County, together with a portion of Dorchester County, was taken to form Caroline County. The county now is enclosed by Talbot, Caroline, and Kent counties, as well as the Chesapeake Bay.
By the time of Independence, the county had several churches, a government, school, and a postal system. It was developed for agriculture, and enslaved African Americans worked the fields of plantations. Tobacco was an early commodity crop but it exhausted the soil. By the Revolution, some planters were converting to mixed agriculture, which was less labor-intensive. They sold excess slaves in the domestic trade to the developing cotton plantations of the Deep South.
In 1876, Queen Anne's County had the first printed independent paper called the Maryland Citizen. A bank was located in Centreville; the Centreville National Bank is still operating. A railway was constructed here in 1868; it operated from Baltimore, passing around the top of the Chesapeake Bay down to Queenstown, and connected with other railroads that continued east into Delaware as far as Rehoboth, and southward to the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
In the 20th century, Queen Anne's County was the home of Jimmie Foxx, who was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. A statue and small park commemorate him in Sudlersville, where Foxx grew up.
Politics and government
Queen Anne's was historically the most strongly secessionist county in Maryland, dominated by the Democratic Party of the planters. Following the American Civil War, the predominately conservative white voters voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election from 1868 to 1948, though Herbert Hoover came within a point of defeating Al Smith in 1928 amidst great Southern resentment to Smith's Catholicism and opposition to Prohibition. Former general Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first Republican to carry the county in 1952.
Since the late 20th century, Queen Anne's white voters have largely shifted to the Republican Party, in a realignment that has taken place among conservative whites across the South following the tumultuous 1960s and passage of national civil rights legislation. No Democratic presidential candidate has carried Queen Anne's County since Texan Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide. Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980 remains the last Democrat to obtain even forty percent of the county's vote, and he in 1976 was the last to come within ten points of winning the county.
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! colspan = 2 | Total
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Queen Anne's County was granted home rule in 1990 under a state code.
The county has a commission form of government. The commission consists of five commissioners: one at-large and four of whom must reside in the district they represent. All of the commissioners are elected by the general population. The at-large commissioner serves as president the first year following election. County code allows for rotation of the president position thereafter.
The current Board of Commissioners was elected in the 2022 election, and serves a four-year term. The current County Commissioners are J. Patrick McLaughlin (District 2), Christopher M. Corchiarino (District 4), Philip L. Dumenil (District 3), James J. Moran (at-large), and Jack N. Wilson Jr. (District 1). The current form of five commissioners elected at large started in 2002. Prior to the 2002 election, Queen Anne's County was run by three commissioners.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (27%) is water.
Adjacent counties
- Kent County (north)
- Kent County, Delaware (east)
- Talbot County (south)
- Caroline County (southeast)
- Anne Arundel County (west)
thumb|left|US 50 and US 301 in Queen Anne's County