Oxford as a Port of Entry:
On September 21, 1694, came the development which Oxford residents have been celebrating ever since: Oxford, and a new Western Shore town called Ann Arundell, were named the two sole ports of entry for the entire Maryland province.
One of the first actions taken in 1692, when Sir Lionel Copley took over as royal governor of Maryland, was repeal by the General Assembly of virtually all legislation enacted under the Calvert regime which he replaced. This specifically included the 1683 Act for the Advancement of Trade, on which Oxford’s laying-out of 1684 had been based. Among other things, this left the town’s lot-holders in legal limbo; they didn’t know whether or not their property claims, made under a repealed act, had any standing in court. And it left Oxford and the thirty-two other port towns erected in an equally equivocal position. They were ports without portfolio, so to speak.
To fill the void, the Assembly in September, 1694, passed new legislation which for the first time systematically divided Maryland into western and eastern spheres of trade, and set out to establish a single chief trading center for each. In place of the thirty-three widely scattered ports of 1693, there were to be just two major ones – the town of Ann Arundell (soon afterward named Annapolis) for the Western Shore, and Oxford (soon renamed Williamstadt in honor of the Dutch King William, though with less permanent results) for the Eastern Shore. Each was to have a collector of revenue and a naval officer who were required to reside within the town limits and who were to act as royal agents for the clearing of all vessels in Maryland.
This legislation, entitled “An Act for Erecting Ann Arundell and Oxford Town into Ports and Towns,” marked the beginning of twenty years of persistent efforts by the legislature to built Oxford up into a sort of capital city for the Eastern Shore.
One section of the act, made necessary for legal purposes, called for laying out the two towns all over again, and going through much of the same rigamarole as before of conducting a survey, staking out streets, squares, and lots, and selling them to buyers. However, the legal rights of persons who had claimed and properly paid for lots under terms of the 1963 Act, and had built houses on them as required, were guaranteed under the new law, so that a large proportion of the choicer Oxford properties were held off the market at this time.
The seal was lost but rediscovered in a private collection in Pennsylvania in 1949.
Source: Preston, Dickson J. Oxford: The First Three Centuries. (Easton, MD: The Historical Society of Talbot County, 1984), 22-23.