Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/131

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AUGUSTINE HERRMAN

County for many years in the General Assembly. He took an active part in the social life of the county and probably raised the prestige of the Manor to a point higher than did his grandfather himself. He is said to have been a man of good breeding and wide culture and encouraged the arts, sciences and literature. On the manor stands a house where Dr. R. M. Bird wrote a tragedy called the “Gladiator” in which Edwin Forrest acted.[1] Colonel Herrman married first: Isabelle Trent of Pennsylvania, by whom he had two daughters, Catherine and Mary. His second wife was Araminta . . . . . . . . . by whom he had one son who became the fifth lord of Bohemia Manor. But he lived only four years after his father’s death, dying without male issue, and thus passed away forever the last male bearing the name and title, “Augustine Herrman, lord of Bohemia Manor”.[2] The daughter of the fifth lord, Mary, married John Lawson whose descendants married into the Bassett family. Another daughter, Catherine, married Peter Bouchelle by whom she had a daughter, Mary, who married Captain Joseph Ensor of Baltimore County. Mary Ensor’s first son was named Augustine Herrman Ensor, born in 1761 and acknowledged as lord of the Manor. On his twenty-first birthday he was thrown from his horse and killed.[3] His brother, Joseph Ensor, inherited the title and estate, but he was regarded as feebleminded. It is related that this seventh lord would be accustomed to draw a circle around himself and defy anyone from entering his “manor”.[4]

In 1787 the legal existence of Bohemia Manor came to an end after a period of one hundred twenty-seven years, the

  1. Mallery, C. P. Ancient Families of Bohemia Manor, p. 22.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Ibid.
  4. Ibid. See also Landrum’s Rise of Methodism in America.