03/22/06
By Michele McFarland

William Conklin, former governor of the Society of the Ark and the Dove, show his collection of toy soldiers at his home in Ruxton.

Two tall ships, sails aloft, spraying water across the Atlantic Ocean, often captured the childhood imagination of Frank Locke.

He'd stare at the watercolor print of those 17th-century English passenger vessels, the Ark and Dove, that hung in his parents' home. He knew they meant something to his family, but he didn't know what.

Seven years ago, he decided it was time to find out.

"I knew we came from somewhere," said the 41-year-old Roland Park resident, a real estate agent. "I just didn't know who we were."

What Locke learned was a boyhood dream fulfilled. He learned that he was descended from adventurer Nicholas Harvey, who braved untamed waters and an uncertain future to help colonize Maryland.

Locke's pioneering relative was one of at least 140 colonists (some accounts put the number close to 200), with names like Calvert, Talbot and Fenwick, who crowded onto the two small wooden ships and sailed to the New World from the Isle of Wight in England.

They landed at St. Cl

Courtney McKeldin, current governor of the Society of the Ark and the Dove is the first woman to govern the 96-year-old group.

ement's Island on March 25, 1634, 372 years ago this week, and Maryland was born.

"To get on a small, rickety ship is a real risk," said Locke, who is awed by their heroic journey.

Locke's own genealogical journey led him to The Society of the Ark and the Dove. Its 241 members are direct descendants of those original shipmates. Now, Locke is registrar of the 96-year-old organization, helping others trace their family lineage to the first Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, whose son, Cecilius, sent the colonists to sea.

The society gathers twice a year in the spring and the fall to celebrate its ancestry and to build fellowship. It will host a Maryland Day anniversary luncheon March 25 at the Maryland Inn in Annapolis, with state Senate president Thomas V. Mike Miller as guest lecturer.

His topic will be "George Washington's Maryland."

Taking the helm

The membership of the society isn't as abundant or celebrated as the Mayflower progeny, although members have included Richard Nixon and former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

It's also an aging membership, which is cause for concern.

But with a new Web site (www.thearkandthedove.com), online genealogy research capabilities, and a new book called "The Ark and the Dove Adventurers" ($28.50, published by the Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore), the tide may be turning as the society steers toward its centennial celebration in 2010.

Usually, the society gets four to five new members a year. So far this year, six people have joined.

Locke, the only child of an only child, represents a younger generation he says is eager to take the helm of the society and "perpetuate the memory of the first families of Maryland."

Society Webmaster Caroline Wayner, 39, agrees.

"I've always loved Maryland history and feeling connected to the land here, and the (society) just solidifies that connection," said Wayner, of Roland Park, who has lived in Tokyo, San Francisco and New York City.

"Those other places were all quite lovely, but I had no roots there. Being part of the (society) makes history much more personal."

Wayner's family has held membership in the society for generations. Her mother, Courtney McKeldin of Roland Park, is the group's leader and takes the traditional title of governor. McKeldin, 65, is a commissioner of the Baltimore Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals and daughter-in-law of the late Theodore McKeldin, governor of Maryland from 1951 to 1959. She quipped that she is the second governor McKeldin.

Educating children

The society is a "rewarding, proactive group that continues to grow in meaningful ways beneficial to the public," said past governor and active member William Conklin III, 78, of Ruxton, who retired from a marketing and sales career in the tire manufacturing and distribution business.

Under Conklin's direction, the group became a nonprofit organization, allowing for significant donations from its members for the preservation and restoration of historic properties. As of November 2005, 71 members donated $34,283.33. The group is midway through a five-year, $50,000 commitment to rebuild a brick chapel in St. Mary's City, on the site where Jesuits who came here on the Ark and Dove built the first Catholic chapel in "English America."

With a typical annual budget of several hundred thousand dollars, the society also contributes to the Maryland Historical Society Trunk Show and the Maryland Humanities Council. The council funds presentations about Maryland's history at area schools, and the trunk show displays period costumes at inner-city public schools.

McKeldin hosts an annual free lecture through an adult education program at her alma mater, Roland Park Country School.

Sail tale

England had Maryland in its sights as far back as 1608, when Capt. John Smith explored the Chesapeake Bay.

King Charles I promised nearly 9 million acres of southern Maryland to George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, in gratitude for his years of service, but Calvert died in 1632, before he could establish the English colony of Maryland.

The charter passed to his son, Cecilius, who took up his father's cause and chose people with a variety of skills from farmers to shipbuilders to soldiers. He offered them free land, religious freedom, separation of church and state and a year's worth of supplies, according to genealogists George Ely Russell and Donna Valley Russell, editors of "The Ark and The Dove Adventurers."

The ships set sail Nov. 22, 1633. The Dove was feared lost in rough seas, but returned to England for repairs and reunited with the Ark in the Antilles. They rounded the West Indies, made their way north around Cape Hatteras and sailed into the Potomac River and then into the Chesapeake Bay.

"Never had I beheld a larger, more beautiful river," wrote Father Andrew White, a Jesuit on the Ark. "The Thames seems a mere rivulet in comparison with it."

Constant reminder

Now, it's Locke's turn to marvel at his family history. He still has the print from his boyhood home. Only now, he knows its significance and is grateful to the society for helping him untangle his family roots.

Also potential members are his two children, Mary Kate, 2, and Clare, 4. The Lockes are expecting their third child later this year.

That means Locke, the society's younger generation, can pass on the society's rich history to his kin.

"It's great to have the ability to tell the whole story," he said.