228
ESSAYS IN COLONIAL HISTORY
THE RISE OF BALTIMORE
229
left but to penetrate further into the continent. During
the first quarter of the eighteenth century settlers had
pushed back from Philadelphia across the Susquehanna
to the mountains, and were soon moving southward
through Maryland into Virginia. The Scotch-Irish seem
to have been the first people in this region. But in Mary-
land as in Pennsylvania they fled before the oncoming
tide of Germans, and retired to the mountains of the
west and south.2 These Germans who pushed their way
across Pennsylvania and turned south at the headwaters
of the Monocacy formed the permanently important set-
tlements in southern Pennsylvania and western Mary-
land.
As early as 1710 a few Germans were already in Mary-
land,' but it was not until about 1730 that their invasion
began in earnest. Special land rates were offered them by
the proprietor in 1732,* and advertisements for settlers
were scattered abroad.' The prolific race of land specu-
lators, including almost every man of wealth in the
colony, eagerly sought German purchasers and tenants."
By 1745 Dulany could write, "The back parts of the
Province are settled and Improved beyond what cou'd
be expected chiefly by the Germans."7 In 1748 Frederick
County was erected; and the census of 1755 gave it a
population of 13,969, the third county in Maryland. The
Braddock expedition of 1755 found the country sparsely
2 William Douglass, Summary, Historical and Political, of the First
Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settle-
ments in North America (London, 1760), II, 363.
* Archives of Maryland, XXVII, 524.
* JUd., XXVIII, 25.
o Calvert Papers (Maryland Historical Society), no. 295%, p. 54; Car-
roll vs. H. W. and C., p. 27, in Scharf Papers (Md. Hist. Soc.), box 38.
«Dulauy Papers (Md. Hist. Soc.); Dr. Charles Carroll's Letter Books;
Land Office Records.
^ Dulany to Proprietor, Apr. 8, 1745, Dulany Papers (Md. Hist. Soc.),
no. 33.
settled all the way up to Frederick, and a scattered popu-
lation was found as far as Cresap's settlement within
sixteen miles of Cumberland.8 Frederick Town, which
was founded in 1745, was described by one of Braddock's
officers as follows:'' This town has not been settled above
7 years, and there are about 200 houses and 2 churches,
one English, one Dutch; the inhabitants, chiefly Dutch,
are industrious but imposing people; here we got plenty
of provisions and forage."9 Eddis in 1771 said the place
exceeded Annapolis in size.10 Hagerstown was founded
in 1762, and was said by Eddis to have over a hundred
houses.11
But the Germans were not the only ones who pushed
into the back country. English people about the same
time crept up the Potomac and met the Germans coming
down the Monocacy. Georgetown was laid out in 1751."
There were sufficient people in the forks of the Patuxent
River by 1736 to justify a firm of merchants in building
« Sargent, History of an Expedition against Fort DuQuesne in 1755,
p. 373.
«Ibid., p. 368.
10 William Eddis, Letters from America, Historical and Descriptive; com-
prising Occurrences from 1769, to 1777, inclusive, p. 103.
11 Ibid., p. 134. Accounts of the German immigration are to be found in
A. B. Faust, The German Element in the United States, chs. v-vii; D. W.
Nead, The Pennsylvania-Germans in the Settlement of Maryland; B. Sellers,
"Jonathan Hagar, the Founder of Hagerstown," Second Annual Report
of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland; E. T. Schultz,
First Settlements of Germans in Maryland. Many books repeat a traditional
statement that 2,800 Palatines entered the port of Annapolis between 1748
and 1754. On the grounds that he can find entry records of the baggage of
some of these Palatines but no trace of the people themselves, Nead con-
cludes that the people all came by way of Philadelphia. Newspaper notices,
however, leave no doubt of the arrival of large numbers of the people them-
selves in Maryland ports. See Philadelphia Mercury, Sept. 26, 1723; Mary-
land Gazette, Sept. 28, Oct. 5, 1752, Sept. 20, Oct. 18, Nov. 8, 1753; Mary-
land Journal, Oct. 30, 1773; etc.
12 Bacon, Laws of Maryland, 1751, ch. utv.
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