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Matchett's Baltimore Director For 1853-54
Volume 564, Page 6   View pdf image
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6 A SKETCH OF BALTIMORE.

stream subsequently known as Jones's Falls. Other patentees followed Gorsuch, Mounte-
nay and Cole, and considerable tracts were taken up, from which additions were subse-
quently made to the original limits of the city.

The first settlement was made in 1632 by David Jones, who became the owner of
Cole's Harbor, and gave his name to the stream or water that divided it. His residence
was on the north side of the stream, near its junction with tide-water. In 1711, Mr.
Jonas Hanson erected a mill near the corner of Holliday and Bath streets, and in 1726,
Mr. Edward Fell settled on the east side of the Falls. By a return of the surveyor of
Cole's Harbor, this year, it appears the improvements upon the present site of the city
were the mill mentioned above, two dwellings, with tobacco houses, out houses, &c.

In 1706, Whetstone Point was made a town, probably in consequence of its prox-
imity to North Point, where the trading vessels generally anchored, so as to be accessible
from the different rivers and from the other side of the bay. As the trade increased on
the. Patapsco, the head of tide seemed to be preferable as a site for a town, and it was
proposed to establish a new town at Moale's Point, (Spring Gardens,) between the middle
and south branches of the Patapsco. Application for the necessary power was made to
the legislature, but Mr. Moale, the proprietor of the ground on which it was comtemplated
to erect the town, and a member himself of the legislature, preferring to work the iron
mines upon his property, defeated the measure.

Excluded thus from the level land, which would have proved an inconvenient loca-
tion, the site of the new town was sought under the hills and around the marshes of the
north-western branch of the Patapsco, and accordingly in the session of 1729, the Assem-
bly passed an act entitled "An Act for erecting a Town on the north side of the Patapsco,
in Baltimore County, and for laying out into lots, sixty acres of land in and about the
place where one John Flemming now lives."

The homestead of this gentleman was on the east side of south Charles street, one
hundred and twenty-five paces from the corner of Market street, near where James R.
Williams's dyeing establishment stands. On the 12th of January, 1730, commissioners and
the county surveyor laid off the town, which was called Baltimore, in compliment to the
proprietary, who had received the name from a seaport in the county of Cork, in Ireland.

About the same time Mr William Fell, a ship carpenter, and a brother of Edward
Fell, bought a tract east of the Falls, called Copus' Harbor, including the present Point,
and having built a house on Lancaster street, called the place Fell's Point, from his own
name.

In 1732, a new town of ten acres, in twenty lots was laid out on the east of the Falls,
on the part settled by Edward Fell, and was called Jonestown, in honor of David Jones,
the first settler. As a settlement had been made here prior to the laying out of Baltimore,
it was called Old Town. Baltimore and Jonestown were united in 1745, under the name
of the former, and, in 1747, the legulature enlarged the limits of the town by extending
Baltimore proper eastwardly as far as the Falls. In the act by which the addition was
made it was expressly provided, that nothing in the act should be construed into a right


 

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Matchett's Baltimore Director For 1853-54
Volume 564, Page 6   View pdf image
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