Page "Talbot County, Maryland" Paragraph 10

Miles River is a corruption of Saint Michaels, its original name.

In colonial times all grants of land from the Lords Baltimore were in the shape of leases subject to small and merely nominal ground rents, reserved by the Proprietary, and payable annually at Michaelmas, the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, which in the calendar of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches occurs on September 29 ; hence St. Michael was considered to be the patron saint of colonial Maryland, and as such was honored by the river being named for him.