250 ESSAYS IN COLONIAL HISTORY
the falls almost separating the two sections. Two years
later this strip was added to the town/1 Baltimore now
comprised eighty-eight acres. Such was the real estate
boom of the place that in 1750 twenty-five acres more
were added on the north and east," and in 1753 a further
addition of thirty-two acres was made on the west, rais-
ing the total acreage to a hundred and forty-five.7' Within
ten years it was possible for real estate men to develop
land to the northeast, laying out streets and selling lots.
In another ten years this land, also, was legally added to
the corporation.74
Underlying this territorial growth was, of course, the
growth of trade. This is shown by the construction of
wharves. We do not know what docking facilities the
town had before 1747; but in that year free title was of-
fered to lots on which were erected wharves or other
structures out in the water. Three pre-emptions were
granted for the building of wharves under this provi-
sion.78 Six years later a lottery was drawn to raise money
to construct a public wharf.79 In 1759 two wharves about
a thousand feet in length were built out to the channel,
and in 1764 another thousand-foot wharf was built out to
an island where a bakery was erected.77 The expanding
trade that demanded such an increase of dockage de-
manded also a rapid growth of population. A well known
picture sketched in 1752 by a resident named Moale
shows Baltimore to be a straggling village of about
twenty-five houses. By 1788, according to Brissot, it con-
sisted of 2,000 houses, and 14,000 people.78
Thus had been created the mushroom city of the colo-
nial era. Previous to about 1740 Maryland was without a
THE EISE OF BALTIMORE
251
Ibid., 1750, ch. xi.
i« Scharf, Chronicles, pp. 54, 72.
71 Bacon, Laws, 1747, ch. xxi
7s Ibid., 1753, ch. xx
™ Records of Baltimore Town, p. 21.
76 Griffith, Annals, p. 34; Md. Gaz., Nov. 1, 1753.
77 Griffith, Annals, pp. 37, 38, 42. 78 Nouveaux Voyages, II, 259.
commercial center of any prominence, and trade condi-
tions were such that no center could develop. The grow-
ing demand for sugar, however, had made it unprofitable
for the West Indians to waste valuable industry on the
production of their own foods, and a new market for
grain was created. To meet this demand grain in some
areas replaced tobacco as a crop, and new grain lands
were settled in Pennsylvania and the whole piedmont re-
gion. This brought about a new commercial situation
around the head of the Patapsco—the most convenient
point on tide-water for the piedmont settlements. With
the clearing of roads to the Monocacy about 1744 the de-
velopment of a city began. But even after the new city
had grown to be a place of considerable importance, it
still failed to attract the trade of the tide-water region.
On the back-country trade alone was based its almost un-
precedented growth. A poet of 1790 says of Maryland:
In years elaps'd, her heroes of renown
From British Anna named her favorite town
But lost her commerce, tho' she guards their laws,
Proud BALTIMORE that envi 'd commerce draws;
Few are the years since there, at random plac'd
Some wretched huts her happy port disgrac 'd;
Safe from all winds, and cover'd from the bay
There, at his ease the lazy native lay,—
Now rich and great, no more a slave to sloth
She claims importance from her hasty growth,
High in renown, her streets and domes arrang 'd
A group of cabins to a city chang 'd.™
'» Newport Mercury, June 28, 1790, reprinted in Md. Hist. Mag., XIX,
196.
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