Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/56

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of Baltimore was a settlement somewhat farther to the east, known as Fell's Point. In 1730, Mr. William Fell, a Lancastrian Quaker, purchased a tract of land known as Copus's Harbor and erected thereon a mansion. A little to the south, a point jutting out into the Patapsco offered wharfage facilities to vessels of large draft that were denied entrance to the shallow basin of Baltimore town. This fact was soon appreciated, and at a later time Edward Fell, who was the son of William, and an officer in the Provincial army, laid out Fell's Point into lots, thereby reaping a fortune magnificent for those times.

During the first half of the eighteenth century little of note happened in Baltimore. Within a few years, however, some of the most important influences in its later development began to make themselves felt. In Northern Maryland, particularly near the Pennsylvania border, settlement was going on rapidly, and denser settlement meant the extension of commercial intercourse. In 1736, communication was established between the settlement on the Conewago—Hanover, in Pennsylvania—and the Patapsco. Seven years later, the people of York, also, "have