Black & Jenkins Award,1877,
msa_sc_5330_8_12
, Image No.: 37
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Black & Jenkins Award,1877,
msa_sc_5330_8_12
, Image No.: 37
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37 commission, pages 46 and 47, give such a description of the character of the coast on each side of Cedar straits as show that the point now determined to be Watkins Point by my colleagues was not believed by them to be the Wat- kins-Point of the charter. If it was not so originally, no changes in the character of the coast since can make it so now. John Smith named it long before any charter was thought of. The commissioners say °1 The mouth of the Wicheocomoco or Pocomoke was then as it is now south of what is known as Watts Island, thence going north you pass Tangier Island, thence (in- cluding Fishbone and Herne- Islands) extending as far north as Fox Island is now. From the mouth of the Po- comoke to Point Ployer, at that time, (1608,) the coast was low broken isles of marsh, and from Cedar straits to Jane's Island such is now the character of the coast. There may then have been, (in 1608,) and fur thirty years there- after, all unbroken neck of land, as we have supposed, flanked on the east and west by low, broken islands of marsh, which have long since been washed- away, and some of them have been submerged within the memory of living witnesses. * * * The isles they called Limbo were evidently those now known as Smith's Islands and Holland Islands. And the only point of high land upon the main from Russels (Tangier) isles to Nanticoke river was that since known as Jane's Island, which must have been the Point Ployer of Smith's History." The point at Cedar straits never was called °° Watkins Point" in any patent or conveyance; it remained vacant land till 1702, when it was granted by Lord Baltimore by the name of 11 Planes harbor " to Isaac and Nathan Horsey. The grant contained 407 acres; its bounds calls for- Cedar straits," but nowhere suggests that 1° Watkins Point" is in the grant. In 1748 Isaac Horsey conveyed it, and again gives its bounds with " Cedar straits" among the calls; no mention being made of 11 Watkins Point." No line ever was run from Cedar straits east to the ocean. The majority of the board do not now propose to run a line from their " Watkins Point" east according to the