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SALISBURY, MD---Long before anyone even conceived of routes 13 and 50 or any of the other major highways of the Eastern Shore, water was the main thoroughfare during colonial times.

Dr. Elizabeth Ragan of Salisbury University’s History Department speaks on how the Lower Shore’s waterways played a part in transatlantic commerce during the talk “Over the Sea to Somerset: 17th Century Trade in a Neglected Corner of the Chesapeake.” Her presentation is 2 p.m. Saturday, April 18, at the Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture in SU’s East Campus Complex at the corner of Wayne and Power streets.

One person who profited handsomely from this trade was David Browne, a Scottish merchant-planter who provided goods for the people of colonial Somerset County (which encompassed the Somerset, Wicomico and Worcester counties of today). Ragan focuses on how artifacts recovered from the site of his home—German stoneware, British tobacco pipes and Spanish olive jars from the Caribbean—help demonstrate the early Lower Shore’s connections to the wider world.

Sponsored by the Nabb Research Center, admission is free and the public is invited. For more information call 410-543-6312 or visit the ³ÉÈ˶¶ÒõWeb site at www.salisbury.edu.