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5
as Baltimore) for both milling and export of their grain. 4 Not until
after the revolution had western towns arowm sufficiently to provide
an inland terminus and the type of economic support for improvement pro-
jects that English efforts already enjoyed. And even then, there was
little settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains to provide additional
support. 5
With little need for overland communication in the Chesapeake
area prior to the shift to grain farming,road conditions were appalling.
Virginia did not pass a statute requiring road maintenance until 1705,
and it was virtually ineffective as subsequent statutes in 1748 and
1762 demonstrated. 6 With the advent of grain farming and a greater need
for roads, Virginians bickered over exactly where the roads should be
built, and each road proposal became a sectional political battle. 7
In Maryland the situation was similar. Following English
precedents -,or local responsibility, Maryland considered road building
4Many small mills appeared in western Maryland to process grain
which could not easily be transported to Baltimore before it spoiled.
Frontier areas also produced large quantities of liquor which was easily
transported and did not spoil. Richard Walsh and William Lloyd Fox, eds.,
Maryland: A Histor 1632-1974 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society,
1974 , pp. 173-175.
5Mathew Page Andrews, History of Maryland: Province and State
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Co., Inc., 1929 , pp. 144-145,
272; Walsh and Fox, eds., Maryland: A History, pp. 80-93; George Terry
Sharrer, "Flour Milling and the Growth of Baltimore, 1783-1830" (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Maryland, 1975), p. 22; Kenneth P. Bailey,
Thomas Cresa : Maryland Frontiersman (Boston: The Christopher Publishing
House, 1944 , p. 58.
6Philip G. Terrie, "Alexandria Merchants and the Beginning of
the Turnpike Movement in Northern Virginia" (unpublished and undated
typewritten report, Lloyd House, Alexandria, Virginia), pp. 1-6.
7Thomas F. Duffy, "The Decline of the Port of Alexandria, Vir-
ginia, 1800-1861" (Master's thesis, Georgetown University, 1965), pp.
43-44, 50. See chapter five for details about sectionalism in Virginia.
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