She came to the province in 1638 with her sister Mary (another shrewd and capable woman), her two brothers, and nine other colonists. The sisters at once took up land, built manorhouses, and shortly brought over more colonists; soon the court-baron and court-leet were held at Mary Brent’s home, St. Gabriel’s Manor, on old Kent Island. We at once hear of the sisters as active in business affairs, registering cattle marks, buying and selling property, attending with success to important matters for their brothers; and Margaret soon signed herself “Attorney for my brother, &c., &c.,” and was allowed the right so to act. The Brents were friends and probably kinsfolk of Lord Baltimore, and intimate friends, also, of the governor of Maryland, Leonard Calvert. When the latter died in 1647, he appointed by nuncupation one Thomas Greene as his successor as governor, and Margaret Brent as his sole executrix, with the laconic instruction to “Take all and Pay all,” and to give one Mistress Temperance Pypott a mare colt. His estate was small, and if he had made Greene executor, and Mistress Margaret governor, he would have done a much more sensible thing; for Greene was vacillating and weak, and when an emergency arose, he had to come to Margaret Brent for help. The soldiers, who had assisted the government in recent troubles, were still unpaid, and Governor Calvert had pledged his official word and the property of Lord Baltimore that they should be paid in full. After his death an insurrection in the army seemed rising, when Mistress Brent calmly stepped in, sold cattle belonging to the Proprietary, and paid off the small but angry army. This was not the only time she quelled an incipient mutiny. Her kinsman, Lord Baltimore, was inclined to find bitter fault, and wrote “tartly” when the news of her prompt action and attendant expenditure reached his ears; but the Assembly sent him a letter, gallantly upholding Mistress Brent in her “meddling,” saying with inadvertent humour, that his estate fared better in her hands than “any man elses.” Her astonishing stand for woman’s rights was made on January 21, 1647-48, two centuries and a half ago, and was thus recorded:-- Came Mrs Margaret Brent and requested to have vote in the House for herself and voyce allsoe, for that on the last Court 3rd January it was ordered that the said Mrs Brent was to be looked upon and received as his Ldp’s Attorney. The Governor deny’d that the s’d Mrs Brent should have any vote in the house. And the s’d Mrs Brent protested against all proceedings in this present Assembly unlesse she may be present and have vote as afores’d. With this protest for representation, and demand for her full rights, this remarkable woman does not disappear from our ken. We hear of her in 1651 as an offender, having been accused of killing wild cattle and selling the beef. She asserted with vigor and dignity that the cattle were her own, and demanded a trial by jury.