The sight of Sharp’s Island Lighthouse (Light, for short) is a common sight for me as it can be seen from my backyard and when I had a boat, I would frequently pass by on my way to the fishing grounds. I took this photo on one of those occasions.
This caisson lighthouse is known as the leaning lighthouse due to the tilt resulting from moving ice in 1977.
I have seen the island referred to as Sharpe’s Island before, though today it is more commonly referred to as Sharps Island without the “e”. The proper punctuation is often forgone. I decided to get down to the bottom of the historic truth behind the name of the island.
I found the answer in A Sketch of the Life of Dr. James McHenry A Paper Read Before the Maryland Historical Society, November 13th, 1876 By Frederick J. Brown:
This Peter Sharpe is the same person from whom the island in the mouth of Great Choptank river takes the name it now very improperly bears. This island has been known by several names according as it has belonged to this or that person, but the name of the Quaker physician of Calvert has clung to it, and will be ever used to designate a little patch of earth (originally 700 acres), diminishing year by year and destined, at no very remote geological period, to disappear beneath the waves of the Chesapeake, unless, indeed, there shall be another of those secular upheavals which first lifted it and the whole Eastern Shore out of the sea But if priority of designation should be allowed to govern, the proper name of this island is Claibome. In the deed of Will Sharpe, son and heir of Peter, to John Eason, (Sept 10 1675), it is expressly stated that this island “was formerly known by the name of Claiborn’s Island and now or lately bv the name of Sharpe’s Island”. This is repeated in other and subsequent conveyances. There is little doubt that Col. William Claiborne, the original settler, if he may not claim the honor of founder, of Maryland, visited, took possession of, and gave his name to this island. All the world knows that before the “Maryland Pilgrims”, so called, came in he had established a trading post on Kent Point under the Virginia charter, and it is believed his friend and follower, Richard Thompson, held, under him, Poplar Island also. Poplar Island has a distinction in the local annals of Talbot as having been long the residence of Alexander De Hinniossa, the last Dutch Governor of Delaware, after the seizure of that settlement by the English in the year 1664. It is really due to Claiborne, whom Lord Baltimore’s colonists treated so badly, and who has fared so poorly at the hands of the historians, that his name should be permanently attached to some spot of earth in a State the seed of whose civilization he was the first to plant. Historic justice and the laws of geographical nomenclature demand that this island, while any of it remains, shall be called Claiborne’s Island.
So there you have it. Not only should it be called Sharpe’s Island with an “e” and apostrophe, but it was originally named “Claiborne’s Island”.
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