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MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Map 15. Baltimore Waterfront, 1787.

between the land ends of the wharves. Tree trunks were used, and when the tide
fell it exposed a slime that gave off foul-smelling vapors. A causeway took Water
Street across the Falls, and the waterfront moved a block south to the newly
extended Pratt Street, which ran an east-west route124 (see Map 15)

When Thomas Harrison died in 1782 he left the land bordering the mouth of
the Falls, still undeveloped and still a nuisance. But economic conditions had
changed; the marsh was now ripe for reclamation. All that was needed was a clear
title.1"15

The assembly in 1782 confounded the problem of clearing titles with an act
providing that the land office should no longer issue fresh patents for lands
"reserved for the use of the late Lord Proprietor." In 1768 the Lord Proprietor had
reserved all land within five miles of the town of Baltimore. Hence it seemed that
private development of the mouth of the Falls was foreclosed.126

There were, however, some pre-existing private claims. John Bond had obtained
a patent to the island delta itself in 1766; he called it Bond's Marsh. And Thomas
Yates, as the successor in title to William Rogers (who had obtained an escheat
patent to Bold Venture in 1759) had a plausible claim to the mouth's lower lip
cal ed Philpot's Point. Yates had plans to wharf out into the basin, and to extend
Wilks Street so that it connected his tract to the causeway leading to Baltimore

Parceling Out Land

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Town.127 The configuration of Bond's Marsh and Philpot's Point is shown on Map
15.

Developmental pressure on the port prompted a legislative initiative. In 1783
the General Assembly appointed ten wardens for the port of Baltimore and charged
them with the task of preserving the "navigation of the basin and harbour." Samuel
Smith, Daniel Bowley, John Sterett, and Samuel Purviance were among the first
appointees; the establishment of a "line . . . beyond which improvements shall not
extend" was among their first actions. The port wardens retained the power to
grant or deny permission for wharves or other beneficial improvements within or
without the line.

Samuel Purviance, who was named president of the port wardens, immediately
seized the opportunity to capture a monopoly on the mouth of the Falls. His trading
partner, Nathaniel Smith, had already obtained a warrant of resurvey (1783) to
Bond's Marsh. Not satisfied with the four-acre island contained within the ancient
metes and bounds, they added to it seventeen and one-half acres of vacant land
contiguous thereto and within the Port Warden's line, so that the 1783 patent to
Bond's Marsh Resurveyed embraced twenty-one acres, covered and uncovered by
the confluence of the Jones Falls and Northwest Branch.129

Since the patent was a resurvey, it was arguably exempt from the legislative
prohibition against new grants within five miles of Town. Since the patentees did
not disclose that the seventeen and one-half acre contiguous vacancy was beneath
navigable water, the land office had no qualms about issuance of the patent. It
appeared as if Purviance and his partners had finagled exclusive rights on the
entrance to the Jones Falls (Map 15).

It was not to be. In 1783 Thomas Yates applied to the Port Wardens for
permission to wharf out from Philpot's Point into the basin. Over president
Purviance's objections, Yates was granted a license. Purviance claimed title to the
land beneath Yates' wharves and fought Yates' plans every step of the way. The
issue was finally resolved in Yates' favor when the Court of Chancery found the
patent to Bond's Marsh Resurveyed had been obtained through misrepresentation,
fraud, and deceit; it was annulled as contrary to the rules of the land office.

In 1784 the General Assembly made yet another effort to promote the improve-
ment of Harrison's Marsh on the lip of the Falls. In that year it passed an act
providing for the establishment of a new city market "opposite Harrison Street,
beginning in Baltimore Street, and running thence south, parallel with Gay Street,
of the width of one hundred and fifty feet to Water Street, with the privilege of
extending the same to the channel." The market houses were constructed
forthwith, but they remained unconnected with the basin and the marsh fringing
the mouth of the Jones Falls remained a nuisance.

In 1794 Thomas McElderry and Cumberland Dugan proposed to make a canal
and to extend the market space to the basin at their own expense. The Baltimore
town commissioners accepted on "[ejxpress condition that the said Canal, wharves
and streets on Each side of the said Canal be a Common high way and free for the
Public use."132