USA > Maryland > Cecil County > History of Cecil County, Maryland, and the early settlements around the head of Chesapeake Bay and on the Delaware River, with sketches of some of the old families of Cecil County > Part 22
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day, but there is no record made of it. The following were the names of the jurors: Nathan Hynson, John Coppen, John Veasey, John Price, Philip Barret, Isaac Caulk, John Pennington, George Childs, Daniel Benson, John Roberts and John Bateman, who were said in the warrant " to be of the most substantial frecholders of the county." This jury assessed the value of the twenty acres of land at £47 10s. current money of Maryland, which was £2 78. 6d. per acre.
The commissioners met again on the 16th and 17th days of September and they and William Rumsey, the deputy- surveyor of the county, completed the laying out of the town. Then follows the surveyor's certificate, which shows that the streets were sixty feet wide and that the principal one of them was called Baltimore street.
Following the surveyor's certificate in the ancient book is a record of the numbers of the lots and by whom they were taken up, from which it appears that seventeen of the twenty lots were taken up before the 26th day of September, which was only a week after the date of the certificate of survey; which shows that an enthusiasm then prevaded the projectors of the town that does not seem to have lasted long.
The record shows that two of these lots were retaken in 1731, five in 1732, and four in 1733. Those who had taken them at first had failed to comply with some of the provis- ions of the act of Assembly and had forfeited their right to them.
The name of John Ryland, Jr., stands at the head of the list of names of lotholders, which indicates that he was the owner of the land. The names of William and Edward Rumsey, Benjamin and Sarah l'earce, John and William Knight, Walter Scott, and Rev. Hugh Jones, who at that time was rector of St. Stephen's Parish, appear upon the list of lotholders.
In 1733, Edward Rumsey, carpenter, who had taken up lot No. 20 on the 19th day of September, 1730, sold it to
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Robert Pennington, inn-holder, for £36, current money of Maryland, which was a reasonably good speculation, con- sidering that it cost him, three years before, only £2 78. 6d. and the clerk's fees for recording his title to the lot, what- ever they may have been.
It is very likely that a desire to speculate in town lots had much to do with this effort to erect Ceciltown. However that may have been, the effort was as fruitless as the one to establish it at Town Point. The enterprise was probably a total failure, and it is not likely that a half-dozen houses were erected on the site of the town. Provision is made in an act passed in 1763 for the inspection of tobacco at Bo- hemia Ferry, and it is not probable that the ferry would have been named as the place at which the inspection was to be made if the town was at that time in existence.
On the 11th of December, 1736, Fredericktown, on the Sassafras River, was laid out. Previous to this time the place was called Pennington's Point, or Happy Harbor. Though this town still exists, the records relating to it are lost; all the information obtained concerning it is derived from a plat taken from a copy of the original one made by William Rumsey, the surveyor who laid it out many years ago, by Edward W. Lockwood. This plat shows that it contained about thirty acres, which was divided into sixty lots of about three-fifths of an acre each by six streets, which with a few small alleys contained six and a half acres. The river at Fredericktown runs in a southwest direction, and the streets run east and west, and north and south, crossing each other at right angles, which causes the town to be very irregular and ill-shaped. Ogle street, as did Frederick and Orange streets, which were next below it, ex- tended north from the river. Baltimore, Prince William, and George streets extended west from the river.
Georgetown, which is opposite Fredericktown, on the other side of the Sassafras River, was laid out the same year. These towns were of very slow growth. In the early years
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of their existence they seem to have derived some little ad- vantage from travelers who were passing between the northern and southern parts of the country.
In 1759 the Rev. Andrew Barnaby, while traveling from Annapolis to Philadelphia, passed through Fredericktown, and in a journal which he soon afterwards published, speaks of them as follows : " Fredericktown is a small village on the western side of the Sassafras River, built for the ac- commodation of strangers and travellers; on the eastern side, exactly opposite to it, is another small village (Georgetown), erected for the same purpose."
Fredericktown was the residence of part of the Acadians or French Neutrals who were exiled from Acadia in 1755. Inasmuch as some thirty or forty of these unfortunate people resided in this county for several years, it is proper that some reference should be made to their history. In the ever changing fortunes of the several nations that contended with each other for the possession of different portions of the eastern seaboard of North America, Nova Scotia, originally settled by the French, had been transferred or ceded to Eng- land by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and the inhabitants took the oath of allegiance to the British government, with immunity of not bearing arms against their countrymen. They were a frugal, industrious and persevering people and, consequently, were prosperous and happy. But the French and Indian war broke out in 1754, and the Acadians were accused of furnishing arms and provisions to the French cruisers, in violation of their oaths of allegiance to Great Britain. Just previous to the departure of the unfortunate General Braddock upon his ill fated expedition to Fort Du Quesne, he and the colonial governors held a consultation at Alexandria, Va. The result of the conference was that a warlike expedition was sent against the Acadians, and, as is always the case when individuals or nations resolve to per- petrate an outrage, the commanders of this expedition readily found an excuse with which to palliate the infamous deeds
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they had resolved to accomplish. It is worthy of remark that the disastrous and overwhelming defeat that Braddock shortly afterwards sustained seems like an act of retributive justice inflicted by Infinite Wisdom, in punishment of the cruelly unjust treatment of the innocent Acadians. The British fleet left Boston on the 20th of May, 1755, and on the 3d of the next month the British army landed upon the shores of Nova Scotia. Their advent was as startling to the Acadians as a clap of thunder from a clear sky.
The Acadians made comparatively no resistance at all, for the great mass of them were quite as loyal to the British government as the army that was sent against them. A few of them had been guilty of giving aid and comfort to the French cruisers, who, much against the wishes of the Acadians, occasionally visited them, and for this offence the whole of them were made to suffer. After their surrender their captors offered to condone their offence if they would take the oath of allegiance; but they were Catholics, and the oath was so framed that they, as consistent Catholics, could not take it. Indeed, the New Englanders, many of whom were probably the immediate descendants of the Puritans of Cromwell's army, and who composed in great part the army of the invaders, very probably were glad of the opportunity to do this, in order that they might have a pretext for the infliction of wrongs that they would not have dared to inflict without it. Yankee shrewdness was pretty much the same one hundred and ten years ago as now. After the Acadians were conquered, or rather after they were disarmed, for they never made any resistance that amounted to anything, their conquerors were for a little while perplexed to know what to do with them. However, English vindictivenesss and Yankee ingenuity were equal to the emergency and it was resolved that they should be carried into exile, and this barbarous and infernal resolution was immediately carried into effect.
It is upon an incident connected with the banishment of the Acadians-the burning of the village of Grand Pre, a
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peaceful hamlet on the shore of Acadia, the home of Gabriel and his bretrothed-that Longfellow has founded the beau- tiful and touching story of "Evangeline." Before recount- ing the story of Evangeline's wanderings he speaks of the total destruction of the settlement and banishment of the Acadians as an
" Exile without an end, and without an example in story. Far asunder, on separate coasts the Acadians landed ;
Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind from the northwest
Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken the banks of Newfound- land.
Friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city,
From the cold lakes of the North to sultry Southern savannas, -
From the bleak shores of the sea to the lands where the Father of Waters
Seizes the hills in his hands and drags them down to the ocean."
Three thousand of these inoffensive farmers and artisans were scattered throughout the then thirteen colonies of Great Britain. To some extent, probably to a very great extent, this despotic exercise of power, this transcendent consummation of vindictiveness and cruelty, brought its own punishment with it. The unfortunate Acadians were reduced at once from a state of affluence to a state of beg- gary. Families were separated and friends forever parted. The climate of their place of exile was different from that of their native country, and being beggared, dispirited, and many of them heart-broken, they became a burden upon the people among whom they were forced to reside. Many of these poor people were brought to Maryland, and so miserable was their condition as to excite the pity of the legislature, which in 1756 passed an act authorizing the justices' courts in the counties where they were quartered "to take care and provide for such of them as should be real objects of charity, and to bind out such of their chil- dren as they were unable to support; provided, the king
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did not order their removal to some other colony." The constables of the hundreds where they resided were enjoined to return to the court an exact list of all of them annually, and they were not allowed to travel more than ten miles from their residences without a pass from a magistrate.
The following petition found among some old papers in possession of the county commissioners, in connection with several other papers, throw some light upon the history of those of them who lived in Cecil and Kent counties: "To the Worshipful, the Justices of the Peace for Cecil county : The humble Petition of the French Neutrals in Frederick- town sheweth that, Whereas, your Petitioners have now an opportunity of removing to the French Settlements on the River Mississippi, at their own expense & charge, which they, on account of their large number of small children and long captivity here, find themselves entirely unable to pay. They, therefore, Humbly request your worships to grant such timely assistance and Relief as may enable them to execute their purpose of removing. And your petitioners shall ever pray.
"Issabel Brassey, S in family; Eneas Auber, alias Huber, 6 in do .; Eneas Granger, 9 orphans, Joseph Auber.
"24th of March, 1767."
Other papers show that there were other families of the French Neutrals then living in Kent County; that one of these families consisted of the husband (Joseph Barban), his wife and eight children, and that they had originally been residents of Cecil County. The Barban family wished to migrate to Quebec, in Canada, and like the others, they wanted the wherewithal to defray their expenses.
The petition of the orphan children of John Baptist Gran- ger, which was one of the papers before referred to, contained a touching narrative of their misfortunes and sufferings. This petition showed that other French Neutrals, living at Newtown, Kent County (Newtown was the name then ap- plied to Chestertown), had received aid from the court of that
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county, and expected to start for Canada in about a month ; and that they (the Grangers) had been in captivity for twelve years, and were desirous to remove to Canada; and that sev- eral of them had had the small-pox. They also speak in terms of admiration of the government of his Gracious Majesty, George III., King of Great Britain, France and Ire- land. There is great room to doubt the sincerity of their professions of loyalty; but they, no doubt, thought this was the readiest way to obtain the relief they needed, and prob- ably they were not to blame for the falsity of their profes- sions, if false they were. They conclude their petition by asserting that they are the most necessitous of the French people in the county, and beseech the worshipful council for the love of God Almighty to hear their petition and promise ever to pray for the conservation of the worshipful council.
But little more is known of these unfortunate people, ex- cept that they received the relief they sought and were sent to their friends in Lousiana and Canada at the public expense.
The first settlers in the northeast part of the county, as well as those in Nottingham, were in the habit of disposing of their surplus produce at Christiana Bridge and New Castle, both of which were then places of commercial im- portance. Ceciltown, on the Bohemia, had been a failure, for the land upon the Manor and in Sassafras Neck, though naturally the best in the county, had been impoverished by the continual cultivation of tobacco, which at the time it was laid out was beginning to decline, and there was not commerce enough to give the new town vitality. The cultiva- tion of tobacco, was now confined to that part of the county south of the Elk River and Back Creek, and Bohemia Ferry and Fredericktown were the only places provided for its in- spection at this time. The Quakers at Nottingham no doubt were as industrious and thrifty then as they are now, and the Hollingsworths and others were largely inter- ested in the milling business on the Elks, and shipped their flour to Philadelphia via Christiana Bridge.
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At this time Annapolis was the centre of refinement and fashion, the Paris of America. Baltimore had only been founded thirteen years, and was in its infancy ; and beside this, the Principio Company's forges and furnaces at Prin- cipio and North East were in the full tide of successful opera- tion, and the company was shipping the iron it manufac- tured to England. No doubt the enterprising citizens of the county felt the want of a town, and thought they might as well have one of their own. So they obtained the necessary legislation in 1742 and founded Charlestown. The enterprise was rather more plausible than the erection of Ceciltown, but the hopes of those who inaugurated it were never realized. But it was owing to no fault of its founders that it failed, for they used every exertion to make it a suc- cess, and only succumbed to the force of circumstances when convinced that it was impossible to divert the trade of the northern part of the county from the towns along the Delaware.
The act of incorporation of Charlestown was passed in the fall of 1742, and Thomas Colvill, Nicholas Hyland, Benjamin Pearce, William Alexander, Henry Baker, Zebulon Hollingsworth and John Reed were appointed commissioners to carry out its provisions. The town was to be laid out at a place called Long Point, on the west side of North East River. Twenty-five years before, the county seat had been moved from the Sassafras River to "Long Point," on the Elk River, and the people of the county had made some effort to have a town built there, but the enterprise did not succeed. No doubt those who obtained the passage of the act for the erection of Charlestown hoped and expected to derive much benefit from the town. The reasons for build- ing the town are set forth in the preamble to the act as follows:
"WHEREAS, The Encouragement of trade & navigation is the surest means of promoting the happiness & increasing
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the riches of every country, and that such trade is with the greatest ease and advantage carried on, when the same is drawn into & fixed in one or more convenient places; here- by it appears that erecting towns, & granting Immunities & Privileges for the encouragement of people to inhabit there- in, most greatly contributes to so desirable an end, & there being as yet no such place settled at or near the Head of Chesapeake Bay, although from the great extent of the country round, & the want of navigable water above it, the same seems altogether necessary."
These were certainly good and sufficient reasons for build- ing a town, and the aforesaid commissioners met on the site of Charlestown on the 10th of February, 1742, accompanied by John Vesey, who was county surveyor, and William Knight, who was at that time county clerk. At this meet- ing, Mr. Colvill produced a letter from Benjamin Tasker, the agent of the lord proprietary, in which he expressed the opinion that the five hundred acres which they were autho- rized to include in the said town were very well worth £250, in which opinion the commissioners acquiesced. The com- missioners, after a few meetings for consultation, left the matter in charge of the surveyor, and adjourned to meet on the 13th of April, 1743, at which time the surveyor had completed a plat of the town. This plat has long since dis- appeared, but the proceedings of the commissioners, a part of which are recorded in the county clerk's office, show that they laid out two hundred of the five hundred acres which they had condemned for the purpose, into two hundred lots, and that the town contained seven streets that ran at right angles with the river and were crossed at right angles by five other streets. Tasker's lane, which was the name given to the most westerly street, was no doubt so called in honor of the lord proprietary's agent, Benjamin Tasker, while his lordship was trebly honored by the name of Cecil, Calvert, and Baltimore being applied to three of the princi- pal streets. The fact that one of the streets was called Cones-
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toga is indicative of a desire to cultivate the best of feeling with the people of Lancaster County, some of whom after- ward became the owners of lots in the new town. The re- maining three hundred acres were reserved, agreeably to the provisions of the act, for the common use of the citizens of the town, for the purpose of furnishing them with fire- wood and pasture for their cattle. Some part of this com- mon is yet held by the town, but it is doubtful if its posses- sion was ever of any material advantage to the citizens. Certain parts of the town were reserved for the purpose of erecting a public wharf and warehouse "for the more commo- dious carrying on of trade," and for the erection of a market house, court-house, and other public buildings.
The 10th of May, 1743, was the day designated for ballot- ing for the town lots, no record of which is now extant, con- sequently the names of the original proprietors are unknown. But the deeds for lots which were sold a few years after- wards show that some persons from Lancaster, Chester, Anne Arundel, Kent, and Baltimore counties, and Phila- adelphia city, were among the original proprietors. The Rev. William Wye, who was rector of North Elk Parish at that time, was one of the original proprietors of lots; and it is. worthy of remark, as showing the power of the clergy at that time, that he waived his right to collect the forty pounds per poll of tobacco (which was assessed upon each taxable in the parish) from the citizens of Charlestown. His object in doing this was to encourage the enterprise by les- sening taxation, and to induce immigration. Rev. Hugh Jones, who was then rector of North Sassafras Parish, is be- lieved to have been one of the original lotholders. He cer- tainly owned one of the town lots at the time of his death and devised it in his will.
The new town throve well at first and the lots were all taken up during the first year of its existence, and such was the popularity of the enterprise and the desire to acquire building lots in it, that many of the original lots were
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divided and subdivided in order to supply the demand. The lots commanded a good price. In 1745 one of them, 22 by 45 feet, sold for £22. At the session of the General Assembly in 1744 the original act of incorporation, which was as long as Lord Baltimore's charter for the province, was supplemented the first time by an additional one, which empowered the commissioners to take charge of and dis- burse £200, which the lotholders had raised by voluntary contributions for the purpose of building a wharf and ware- house.
The principal articles of exportation from the new town in the first years of its existence seem to have been grain of all kinds and flour and flaxseed. Tobacco is not men- tioned in the act nor in the records of the town, a few of which are yet extant. The commissioners were also author- ized to appoint a wharfinger and warehouse-keeper and an inspector of flour; and the act specified that after the appointment of an inspector no flour was to be shipped from North East River from any other place than Charles- town. Flour that was not merchantable was branded with a broad arrow, and its shipment was forbidden under a penalty of 5s. per barrel. The aet contained many provi- sions in reference to the exportation of bread, which was no doubt similar to what is now used on ship-board, and is known as " hard-tack." The commissioners were also em- powered to purchase or have condemned two acres of land at Seneca Point, which is a short distance further down the river, for a ship-yard, and to lay out a cart-road from the town to that place.
The supplementary act shows that the inhabitants of the town " had already, of their own accord, published a fair, which was held at the said town on the 10th of May, 1744, whereat great numbers of people did meet ;" therefore the General Assembly authorized them to hold two fairs there- after, to begin on the 23d day of April and the 18th day of October annually, provided these days were not Sundays;
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if so, the fairs were to commence the next day and to con- tinue not more than three days. These fairs soon became very popular, and were attended by people from the large cities as far east, it is said, as Boston. They continued to be held till a time within the memory of persons now living, and probably added much to the prosperity of the town ; they certainly added much to its notoriety. Tea and coffee are said to have been first introduced into this county by means of the facilities afforded by these fairs. The mer- chants from the cities brought those commodities there and disposed of them to the country people, at the same time furnishing them with printed directions showing how to manufacture the new beverages. It is said that tea was not generally liked, and many of the first purchasers gave it to their negroes. The Rev. John McCrery, who was pastor of Head of Christiana Church, it is said carried a supply of tea with him when he was away from home engaged in missionary labor, and upon one occasion gave some of it to the lady of the house where he was stopping and requested her to prepare it for his supper. She boiled it and served him the boiled leaves on a plate, when he quietly remarked that he would much rather have had the broth.
Besides the merchants and milliners from Baltimore, Philadelphia and other large cities, who came to Charles- town in vessels and bought large cargoes of goods, the fairs were attended by many who came from distant parts of Chester and Lancaster counties on horseback to see the sights and have a frolic, and sometimes to settle the feuds and quarrels that had existed in the neighborhood where they lived. Many of the citizens of the town, as well as many of those who attended the fair, were natives of the Emerald Isle, who thought it incumbent upon them to sustain the reputation of an institution that for centuries had been, and yet is, exceedingly popular in their native country. The state of society and the morals of the people were not as good then as they are now, and the archives of the county show
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that, during one of the fairs, the body of a murdered man was found near where the road crosses a creek east of the town. He was a peddler and had been at the fair, and his body was found by some persons who stopped to water their horses at the creek. While they were drinking, the water became crimsoned by the blood of the murdered man. They at once instituted a search for the cause, and found the mur- derer, who had taken refuge in a tree near which his victim lay, in the stream. The records of the trial cannot be found, but the stream is yet known by the name of Peddler's Run. Many of those who attended the fair indulged in fiddling and dancing, as well as in frolicking and fighting, and rude and temporary buildings were put up, which were rented for the former purpose, and in which the sturdy Irishman and his sweetheart, upon the payment of a small fee, could enjoy the pleasure that they had walked barefooted many weary miles to obtain. For it was customary for the females who traveled to the fair on foot to carry their shoes and stockings in their hands, and when they arrived at the outskirts of the town to wash their feet in a convenient stream, after which they put on their shoes and stockings and entered the town.
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