Introduction

The following essay describes the parceling out of land in
the vicinity of Baltimore between 1632 and 1796. The study
provides a textual, graphic, and pictorial "chain of title" from
first patent to building lot. It details who acquired which
parcels when, over an era beginning with the establishment of the
Maryland  colony and ending with the incorporation of Baltimore
City.

This project came about by accident while I was preparing a
study of leasehold tenure in Baltimore. My analysis was based
upon eighteenth and nineteenth century reports of cases adjudged
in the Court of Appeals of Maryland1, and upon nineteenth century
legal treatises.2

When I sought to determine who owned the land prior to the
Revolution, I looked to the standard works of J. Thomas Scharf.
Col. Scharf put together in the second half of the nineteenth
century a compendium of the "scattered and fragmentary facts"
concerning Baltimore City and County.3 Therein I found a
considerable amount of disjointed and sometimes inconsistent
information concerning land ownership. But I recognized that the
case reports and legal treatises provide an alternative view of
the same events. By combining and comparing the Scharf materials
and the legal material I was able to discern the best evidence of
the chain of title.

Later, while rummaging in the map collection of the Maryland