A Short History of Joppatowne

A Short History of Joppatowne

By J. Reynolds

The history of Joppatowne goes back earlier than the history of HarfordCounty. Prior to 1773, HarfordCounty was part of BaltimoreCounty, and Joppa was the third county seat of BaltimoreCounty. The first county seat had been at Old Baltimore, located on the east bank of the BushRiver, on what is now Aberdeen Proving Ground property about a mile south of the present-day Pennsylvania Railroad bridge. The second county seat of BaltimoreCounty was at the junction of the Great and Little Gunpowder Rivers on a piece of land called Sim’s Point. BaltimoreCounty court proceedings for March of 1695 made provision for the clearing of a road “from the courthouse to the Great Falls, also from the courthouse to the Little Falls.” It seems logical then that the county seat, the site of the courthouse, was located between them. The Little Gunpowder is, of course, the present boundary between Baltimore and HarfordCounties.

Reasons why the county seat was moved approximately one miles east to Joppa are rather complicated and now quite clear. The early founders of Maryland very quickly understood the value of the abundant waterways. The provincial government sought to encourage trade, not only within its borders, but with other colonies and with other countries. To aid in the development of this trade, the Assembly passed in the year 1706, a bill which provided for the establishment of forty-two centers of trade; Three were located in BaltimoreCounty. They were “at Whetstone Neck on the Patapsco Rivers, upon the land called Chilberry in the BushRiver, and a town on Foster’s Neck on the GunpowderRiver.” Chilberry is very close to the site of Old Baltimore.

Foster’s Neck was situated on a neck of land on the northeast side of the Little Gunpowder River to the west of Foster’s Creek. The area is the part of Joppatowne which today lies to the west and southwest of Foster Branch and Foster Knoll Drive.

But the building of the town on Foster’s Point ran into a little difficulty. All acts of the Assembly required royal approval before they became law, and Queen Anne refused to approve the new town on Foster’s Neck. In the following year, 1707, an act passed by the Assembly directed that the site at Foster’s Neck “be deserted and in lieu thereof fifty acres to be erected into a town on the tract of land belonging to Ann Felks and called ‘Taylor’s Choice’ and a courthouse to be built there.” The land which constituted Taylor’s Choice was contiguous with Foster’s Neck and was situated to the northeast of that tract. The original certificate made to John Taylor on July 28, 1661 described the location as a “tract of land consisting of three hundred acres lying on the west side of the Chesapeake Bay on a river beginning at a Spanish oak and running down the river into a creek called Taylor’s Creek.” The grant must have passed from the hands of Taylor during the next half century, for by 1707, Taylor’s Choice was referred to by the Assembly as the property of Ann Felts. Today it contains the portion of Joppatowne lying to the east and southeast of Foster Branch and Garnett Road.

Whether or not Queen Anne, who reigned from 1702-1714, gave her consent to the new location or whether she was not informed, or whether she was unaware of the geographical relationship, or whether her approval was granted with a knowledge of the situation is not known, but the third county seat of Baltimore County was located at Joppa on the east side of the Little Gunpowder and was referred to in Baltimore County Court records of March, 1709, as “Gunpowder Town.”

Colonel James Maxwell, son-in0law of Ann Felks, and a presiding justice of BaltimoreCounty, was authorized in 1709 to build a courthouse at Joppa for a sum of 4500 pounds of tobacco and 600 pounds of tobacco for the lot on which it was to be built. Specifications indicate that the new courthouse was to be 35 x 24 feet, two-storied, and would provide rooms for the grand jury, petit jury, and clerk of the court. The June court of 1709 ordered the building of a prison.

Three years later, in 1712, an act was passed setting the county court at the “house built on Taylor’s Choice in the town of Joppa.” This is the first time the name of Joppa appears. The moving of the court from the forks of the Gunpowder sometime between 1709 and 1712 was not a unanimous choice as noted by the protests of one Jacob Bond concerning the removal of the county seat “from the forks of Gunpowder to Joppa.”

Joppa encountered building difficulties from the very beginning. The courthouse had been only partially built when the news of Queen Anne’s refusal to approve the Assembly Act of 1707 arrived. Not only was the legal authority of the Crown lacking but the death of Ann Felks in 1719 and her subsequent will left the land to a minor who could not convey clear title.

The problem with Queen Anne had been taken care of in England, and the ownership problem was cleared up b a special act of the Assembly in October 1724. This act reduced the area of the townsite from fifty to twenty-one acres and included the following: “The inhabitants of Baltimore County have made to appear this Assembly that a courthouse and prison have been erected at Joppa, in the said county, at their expense, and that the right of the land is in a minor under twenty-on years of age, although his father, Colonel James Maxwell, has received satisfaction for the same, and that the said inhabitants have likewise set forth that the business of the county is greatly delayed and obstructed by the want of some convenient places of entertainment at or near the courthouse, the officers thereof and the suitors thereto being obliged to go a great distance for necessary accommodations, and lying under several inconveniences, that the erection of a town at the same place would probably remove.”

By the Act of 1724, Thomas Tolley, Captain John Taylor, Daniel Scott, Lancelott Todd and John Stokes were appointed town commissioners. The plat of Joppa dated 1725 shows forty-on divisions which contain the properties of the courthouse, St. John’sParishChurch and thirty-nine other divisions. The lots were sold subject to building restrictions which required the owner build a dwelling house covering not less than four hundred square feet and to have a good brick or stone chimney. The town was soon to contain forty or fifty residences, two prisons, a courthouse, St. John’sParishChurch, several large warehouses, wharves, inns, stores and shops. One of the warehouses was built by David M. Culloch, merchant who died on Septermber 17, 1766 at the age of forty eight years. His standing tombstone in the yard of the Church of the Resurrection on RumseyIsland today attests to those facts of a former resident of Joppa.

Joppa, although not large, became a busy port of entry to which ships from Europe and the West Indies brought their cargoes of manufactured goods and received for the return trip tobacco and other products. The town was lively, and sports and horse racing were popular. An announcement of the day read as follows: “On Thursday the 11th of October, 1750, will be run for a Joppa in Baltimore County, a purse of twenty pistols, by any horse, mare, or gelding, and on the 12th and 13th of October, races will be run for purses of the and six pounds, current money respectively.”

Since there were no election districts, all voting took place at the county seat, and the MARYLAND TGAZETTE noted in its issue of March 5, 1752 that a bitter election had taken place at Joppa for the Representatives to the Legislature. Four men who had been elected to the House of Delegates were restrained from taking office by petition and another election, in which over a thousand votes were cast, was held. The election lasted three days and resulted in two persons killed in a number of street fights.

The Act of the General Assembly 1724, which provided for the laying out of the new county seat of BaltimoreCounty, set aside one acre of land in the center of the town for St. John’sChurch. The brick church was completed in 1730 and the cost was met by an assessment of twenty-five thousands pounds of tobacco on the members of the parish. The decline of the town found the church in ruins by 1821, but one Edward Day built a stone church and rectory in Kingsville on his own land from his own funds which he deeded in 1817 to the vestry of St. John’s Parish in Baltimore and HarfordCounties. The church built by Edward Day was replaced in 1896 by the stone church in use today.

Another interesting sidelight in the history of Joppa is that a very early lodge of the Ancient, Fee and Accepted Masons was instituted in what is today HarfordCounty. This was the first lodge in Maryland that available records show to be properly constituted. In the year 1765, application was made to the Grand Lodge in London by the Rev. Samuel Howard for “…a Warrant to hold a Lodge and make Masons in the town of Joppa.” Accordingly a Warrant was granted by Lord Blaney, Grand Master, with the consent of the Grand Officers, bearing the date of 8th August 1765.

The town of Joppa was to decline rather rapidly after 1768 when the county seat of BaltimoreCounty was moved to BaltimoreTown. By 1814, only four houses and the deteriorating remains of the church were left. By 1821, the church lay in complete ruin. In the late 1960’s, all that remained on the surface from old Joppa was the tombstone of David M. Culloch, merchant of Joppa, and the partially ruined Rumsey House thought to have been built by Colonel James Maxwell around 1724.

What brought about the decline of such a thriving as Joppa? Many complex and intertwining factors entered into the script. They deal with events, places and persons about which the residents of Joppa where not even aware. The story should be noted because it is a continuing story and process to which we are all subjected. It is almost impossible for use to predict our own future because of countless events which have occurred, which are occurring and which will occur about which we have no knowledge. That, in a way, is also what happened to Joppa. No fooling.

In 1861, William Penn received the grant to colonize Pennsylvania. Though interested mainly in aiding the Quakers, the practical and realistic Penn knew that their limited numbers was a distinct threat to successful colonization. He sought colonists elsewhere and promoted a campaign in the RhineValley of Europe. There, political and religious unrest were the order of the day, and the people lived in feudalism under the rule of a palatine who in turn was subject to the authority of the king of Bavaria. Penn’s offer not only met with acceptance by the populace, but the drainage of excess dissatisfied population was welcomed by the ruling classes. As Pennsylvania became settled, the Quakers in the Philadelphia area shoved the German immigrants more and more to the western and southeastern parts. Great numbers of German immigrants began to arrive about 1715 and continued for about five years. A population pressure quickly filled the southeastern portion of Pennsylvania, the German farmers began to fill the Valley of the Monacacy. By 1720-1725, there were moving into Maryland very rapidly. FrederickCounty was created in 1748. About 40,000 acres of land were owned by three men, i.e., Daniel the Elder Dulany, Daniel the Younger Dulany and Charles Carroll of Carrollton. The latter, in particular, was a very astute person, and although is name is usually associated with tobacco, Charles Carroll began to se the significance of the decline of tobacco as a marketable crop in England and the beginning of the wheat market. And besides, what could be done to salvage anything from the loss of thousands of acres of land being taken over by the German farmers who had never heard of Charles Carroll? These German farmers pouring in from Pennsylvania were wheat farmers, where perhaps the most knowledgeable farmers in the world, and were going to revolutionize farming in Maryland. Flour was made from wheat, and mills began to dot the landscape from Harford to FrederickCounty. The “fall line” running through HarfordCounty provided a perfect source of water power and at one time there were fifty-seven mills in HarfordCounty alone. Flour has to be transported in containers, usually barrels. To aid in its transportation, the first long road in Maryland was constructed from Frederick to Baltimore. The birth of Baltimore was a direct result of the developing wheat and flour trade. Two Quakers from Pennsylvania by the name of Ellicott settled in the PatapscoValley about 1760 at what is now Ellicott City. They were interested in building a mill, but they need financing. Charles Carroll saw his chance to recover from the loss of land and switched from tobacco to wheat and went into business with the Ellicotts. The real wheat granary of North America, if not the world, in the mid 18th Century was southeastern Pennsylvania and middle Maryland. By the time of the Revolution, wheat was being raised in tidewater Maryland. Baltimore as a port community, born about 1728 and developing into a city of 6000 by 1775, should be though of as an outlet of wheat for the upland German farmer. The demise of Joppa paralleled the ascent of Baltimore. Increasing business affairs in Baltimore demanded increasing legal attention. This, in turn, resulted in the transfer of the county seat to BaltimoreTown in 1768. But if the ascension of Baltimore hastened the decline of Joppa, it also brought about the division of BaltimoreCounty and the petition of the General Assembly resulted in the formation of HarfordCounty in 1773.

Of course, the history of Joppa did not end with its apparent demise around1820. Plans for a community on the Little Gunpowder were once again brought forth and put into action in the early 1960’s, and today the community of Joppatowne contains approximately 10,000 people. What the future has in store is not known, but Joppatowne could truly apply to itself a famous quite from the late Mark Twain when he noted in one speaking engagement that the previous reports of his death had been highly exaggerated.