Next in the Lovettsville Historical Society’s Lecture Series:
Repudiation Day: Frederick County’s 1765 Protest against the Stamp Act
Presented by Chris Haugh, Frederick County Historian
Sunday, November 13, at 2:00 p.m.
In-person at St. James United Church of Christ
10 E. Broad Way, Lovettsville
and online via Zoom
In 1765, eight years before the Boston Tea Party, twelvejudges in Frederick County, Maryland repudiated the British Stamp Act. Their action, taken on November 23, 1765, was the first Stamp Act protest in the American colonies, but it is little-known outside of western Maryland.
Chris Haugh, Frederick County historian and Historic Preservation Manager of Mount Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, will recount the exciting story of Repudiation Day for the final lecture in the Lovettville Historical Society’s 2022 Lecture Series.
The Frederick County judges who took this bold action have become known as “the Twelve Immortals.” They were the first to repudiate the British Stamp Act, which was intended to finance the costs of keeping British troops in North America. The Frederick County judges decided they were not going to charge the tax, and they refused to stamp the documents. The judges stated that the stamps had not even arrived from Britain, nor had the colonists been properly notified.
A week after the judges took their action, a crowd in Frederick Town held a mock funeral, where they buried a copy of the Stamp Act with an effigy of a royal tax collector on the grounds of the County Courthouse, now the location of Frederick’s City Hall. In the months that followed, protests against the Stamp Act took place in communities throughout the colonies, spreading and expanding over the next ten years until the outbreak of the American Revolution.
The November 13 lecture will held be in-person at the St. James United Church of Christ in Lovettsville, and will also be streamed online via Zoom. The Zoom link will be sent out before the lecture. To request the Zoom link, please RSVP to events@LovettsvilleHistoricalSociety.org
For more information, visit www.LovettsvilleHistoricalSociety.org or email events@lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org.