XVIII. The Fell Family Lands

The Fell brothers, Quaker immigrants from Lancashire, had
long been active as Baltimore land speculators. Brother Edward,
who had set up store at the mouth of the Falls in 1726, failed in
his effort to divest Charles Carroll of Annapolis of Cole's
Harbour; brother William, a ship builder, had obtained a
questionable escheat patent to Mountney's Neck in 1737, which his
heirs eventually quitclaimed to Thomas Sligh in 1758. On the
other hand, the brothers purchased good title to a number of lots
in Jones Town, and William's claims to Island Point and Copus
Harbour were apparently senior to all others (recall Figure 5).

In 1738 Edward Fell died, leaving all his property to his
nephew and namesake; in 1746 William Fell died, leaving all of
his property to his son. Death consolidated the Fell family
properties in Edward Fell the younger. He devoted the rest of his
days to perfecting the family claim to the lands to the east of
Baltimore Town.81

In 1761 Edward Fell the younger obtained a patent to Fells
Prospect, which constituted a resurvey of four parcels already
claimed by the Fell family: Island Point, Copus Harbour, Carter's
Delight, and Trinkett's Field. The surveyor reduced the whole
into one entire tract of three hundred forty-three acres of land,
more or less. The parcel took on a grotesque shape as the
surveyor added to the ancient patents a seventy-acre strip of
vacant land which wrapped tentacle-like along the Patapsco and

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