Introduction. xxxi

Richard Dallam, Amos Garret and three gentlemen named Hall, Aquila, John
of Cranbury and Benedict Edward. Baltimore County delegates in the Lower
House continued to sit, representing the county in which they lived, and others
were elected to fill the vacancies.

The location of the county seat of Harford continued to plague the inhabi-
tants for ten years. In the statute, the commissioners were directed in the
usual way to buy four acres of land in or near Bush Town for the court house
and prison, and the justices of Harford County were directed to contract for
a place in Bush Town to hold court and keep county records, and one to serve
as a jail (p. 199) until the proper court house and prison were built. Because
the taxables of what was now Harford County had contributed toward build-
ing the new Baltimore County court house, Baltimore County was directed to
pay 154,666 pounds of tobacco toward the cost of the Harford County build-
ings, and the Harford Countians were taxed 200,000 pounds for them. After
the court house and prison were built, the name of Bush Town was to be
Harford Town. That was the normal procedure in opening a new county.
But in this case, something happened. The original act was passed on Decem-
ber 9, 1773 : On April 13, 1774 a petition from sundry inhabitants of Harford
County for the location of the court house near the centre of the county was
read and referred till next session of assembly (but there never was a next
session). Immediately thereafter leave was given to introduce a bill "for sus-
pending the Power of the Commissioners for building a Court House" in the
county and three of the Harford County delegates were a majority of the
committee to draft it (p. 339). One of the three, Richard Dallam, was also
one of the commissioners whose power was thus to be suspended. The bill was
passed without incident, and it cancelled not only the power of the Commis-
sioners to erect the court house and prison, but also any contracts to that end
which they had already made. For the remainder of the stay of the county
seat at Bush Town, the court met and the prisoners were kept in rented
buildings.

In January 1782 an act of the state legislature provided that an election be
held to determine where the county buildings should be put. The places to be
voted for were named in the act: Harford Town or Bush, Otter Point, other-
wise Gravelly Hill, Churchville and Aquila Scott's Old Field now called Bel Air
(Session laws, Nov. 1781, e. 10). Bel Air won, and April 27, 1782 Aquila
Scott conveyed to the county two and five-eighths acres of land for the court
house and prison. The lot thus bought was that on which the present court
house and jail now stand, but they were not erected at once. Feeling was
running high, and the sheriffs and the commissioners named in the act of 1773
refused to pay over the money they had collected, until an act of the legislature
empowered the justices of Harford to use the resources of law to collect it
from them (Session laws, 1784, e. 10). Opposition to Bel Air remained alive
and led to still another act of the legislature (Session laws, 1786, e. 24). This
time the vote was by law limited to Bel Air and Havre de Grace, and when
Bel Air won, the prison and court house were in due course erected there.