|
4
and with most planters already having easy access to shipping, there was
little demand for better communication until there was a major change in
the Chesapeake economy. 3
In the mid 1700s two factors combined to cause the rise of urban
areas in the Chesapeake region and to trigger demands for better inland
transport. First, between 1734 and 1735 the fifth Lord Baltimore
sought settlers for western Maryland to strengthen his colonial border
against encroachment by the French. He invited Germans from the Rhine
Palatinate to settle in what became Frederick and Washington counties,
offering an exemption from proprietary quit-rents for three years. These
settlers were used to small-tract farming and were not inclined to grow
tobacco. Similarly, immigrants were attracted to the Cumberland valley
in Virginia by offers of easy mortgage terms from Daniel Dulany, Sr.
Thus, grain became the principal crop of western Maryland and Virginia.
Simultaneousl;,, in the tidewater areas the depletion of tobacco soils
prompted many planters to shift gradually to grain farming. This change
was nearly completed in many parts of the Chesapeake by the 1760s, and
grain milling centers evolved into towns. The change was not soon enough
to create many urban areas of any appreciable size prior to the initial
plans for the earliest mid-Atlantic water route to the west--the Potomac
River. In substantial parts of the upper Potomac, even with the switch
to grain, farmers looked to the few existing urban areas on the bay (such
3Blaine A. Brownell and David R. Goldfield, eds., The City in
Southern History: The Growth of Urban Civilization in the South. Port
Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1977), pp. 29-32, 45-51.
|
