of the property would pass from Richard to Richard's children,
and then to their children and their children's children, in
perpetuity.  Richard was denied the right to alienate his
inheritance.93

In 1782 the republican Assembly passed a law which permitted
the living beneficiary to "dock the entail". In 1783 Richard did
so, conveying David's Fancy to a "strawman" who immediately
reconveyed it to him, free and clear. Richard died in 1786
leaving the estate outright to his brother John the younger, who
was by then a town commissioner. In 1758, John the younger had
married Helen North (who was the first female child born in
Baltimore, having been delivered at her father's house on the
northwest corner of Baltimore and Calvert streets) and they had
six sons. John the younger died in 1797, dividing the estate
among them. In the course of just one generation David's Fancy
was split into six shares.94

XX.Post-Revolutionary Growth

In many ways 1782 was a pivotal year in Baltimore's history.
In that year the onetime pre-eminent owner of Baltimore lands,
Charles Carroll of Annapolis, died at the advanced age of eighty.
Management of the Carroll estate passed on to his son Charles
Carroll of Carrollton, who at the age of forty-five was already a
mature man of affairs and a risk-taker, who had put the family
estate on the line by signing the Declaration of Independence.95

Most of the approximately forty-thousand acres of land which

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