Establishing a Colonial Town

Early Chesapeake Bay colonists usually lived on large waterfront plots rather than in concentrated villages, using abundant land and water access to transport tobacco but creating dispersed settlements that made trade oversight and tax collection difficult for English governors. To control trade, the Maryland colonial government passed Town Acts establishing official ports of entry, and the 1683 Town Act created London Town with 100 one-acre lots and nearly a dozen streets on land provided by William Burgess. Historical documents and archaeology have helped reconstruct aspects of the town, which grew into a bustling port with houses, ferries, storehouses, taverns, warehouses, and workshops. Important sites included a tavern on Scott Street operated by Edward and Elinor Rumney from the 1690s to 1720s and later by Stephen West; ferries run by David Macklefish from the 1680s and by Edward Rumney beginning in 1715; an Anne Arundel County courthouse with punishment devices standing nearby from 1684 to 1695; a lot occupied by African slaves in the 1730s that later became William Brown's carpenter shop; a storehouse run by Samuel Peele from 1715 to 1733; a brick warehouse owned by James Dick in the 1760s; and a ropewalk opened by Stephen West, Jr. and James Dick in 1747. Merchants, sea captains, planters, indentured servants, and slaves made London Town one of the primary ports of entry and departure for trade vessels in the middle Chesapeake, and by the 1740s nearly 50 lots were occupied. Each fall, tobacco fleets swelled the population as they awaited crops from outlying plantations. The town declined after 1747, when the Maryland legislature did not choose it as an official tobacco inspection station under the Tobacco Inspection Acts, causing the tobacco trade to shift elsewhere. Travelers continued using the ferry crossing, but the once-vital urban center gradually faded, with only a few houses left standing in the 20th century.

Edgewater, Maryland · United States