The Assembly also authorized the town commissioners to annex
so much of Gist's Inspection and Howard's Timberneck as "well
calculated for the purposes of commerce and navigation".  Part of
Timberneck was left outside the town limits but all of Gist's
Inspection was appended to Lunn's Lott and included.102

The influx of the Acadian French from Nova Scotia and
Scotch-Irish from central Pennsylvania increased the population,
from over six thousand in 1776 to more than thirteen thousand by
1790. These newcomers demanded affordible houses.103

John Eager Howard and William Fell the younger were the
primary suppliers of land, selling and leasing hundreds of acres
of land within the Town limits. They utilized Thomas Harrison's
ninety-nine year lease plan to dispense most of the lots,
retaining a ground rent. Typically, the lots were leased to
speculative builders, who further subdivided the lots and built
houses in block rows for sublease to artisans and mechanics and
skilled workers.104

Indeed the demand for housing close to the town center was
great enough that in the 1780's developers began to fill the mud
flats and fringing marsh to make building lots. They were
encouraged in this practice by the 1745 act incorporating
Baltimore. It provided: "[t]hat all improvements of what kind
soever, Either Wharf, Houses, or other Buildings, that have, or
shall be made out of the Water, or where it flows, as an
Encouragement to such improvers, be forever deemed the Right,
Title, and Inheritance of such Improver or Improvers, their Heirs

41	.