immigration. Calvert promoted settlement through headright
allotments of the sort previously employed in Virginia. He first
offered one thousand acres of land to those gentlemen who would
transport five yeoman of working age to the new colony but by
1652 had reduced the allotment to fifty acres for every such
person imported. A secondary market developed in which headright
allotments were bought and sold and pooled, thereby entitling the
holders to patents of two hundred, three hundred, and four
hundred acres.6

At first no cash payment was required for the acquisition of
land. The proprietor took his profits through quit-rents and
alienation fines. The rents were due in perpetuity at a rate of
four shillings per hundred acres, per annum; the fines,
equivalent to one year's rent, were payable every time the land
changed hands.7

III. Patents in the Baltimore Vicinity

The establishment of Baltimore County in 1659 created a
flurry of interest in the unsettled land surrounding the
northwest branch of the Patapsco River.8 The first settler may
have been David Jones, who in 1661 staked a claim to three
hundred eighty acres called Jones his Range (hereinafter Jones'
Range), on the east side of the freshet which flowed into the
basin from the north (Figure 1). He built a residence on the bank
and gave his name to the Jones Falls. Just to the east, Alexander