
Figure 1. “A Maryland Tourney: Riding at the Quintain.” This silhouette shows the riders jousting at a mannequin knight, seen at the far right of the rendering (Private collection, copy at the Maryland Historical Society).
After last week’s essay on Babe Ruth, a colleague informed me that all of my future blogs should be about sports. While I won’t always be able to oblige Ed, I was inspired to post another sports topic this week. After opening Calvert County’s tourism e-newsletter, I was astonished to learn that 2013 marks the 147th anniversary of the jousting tournament held each summer at Christ Church in Port Republic.
Now, I knew that jousting was the official state sport of Maryland, but I was under the mistaken impression that its origins in Maryland were much more recent. Chivalry made a come-back in the mid-nineteenth century among young Maryland gentlemen, who would don medieval attire and compete on horseback to spear, not each other like knights of old, but sets of rings. The sport is believed to have been established in Maryland after William Gilmor attended a Scottish jousting tournament in 1839 (NJA 2013a). Gilmor, who lived on the family estate outside of Baltimore known as The Vineyard, hosted a tournament there the following year (Hiss 1898:342). This event is believed to have been depicted in a silhouette that shows riders jousting to the delight of male and female onlookers (Figure 1). Continue reading