A Short History of Joppatowne
By J. Reynolds
The history of Joppatowne goes back earlier than the history of Harford County.
Prior to 1773, Harford County was part of Baltimore County, and Joppa was the third
county seat of Baltimore County. The first county seat had been at Old Baltimore,
located on the east bank of the Bush River, on what is now Aberdeen Proving Ground
property about a mile south of the present-day Pennsylvania Railroad bridge. The second
county seat of Baltimore County was at the junction of the Great and Little Gunpowder
Rivers on a piece of land called Sim’s Point. Baltimore County 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 Harford Counties.
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 Baltimore County. They were “at Whetstone Neck on the Patapsco Rivers,
upon the land called Chilberry in the Bush River, and a town on Foster’s Neck on the
Gunpowder River.” 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
Baltimore County, 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’s
Parish Church 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’s Parish Church,
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
Rumsey Island 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 Baltimore County, set aside one acre of land in the center of the town
for St. John’s Church. 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 Harford Counties. 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 Harford County.
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 Baltimore County was moved to Baltimore Town. 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 Rhine Valley 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.
Frederick County 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 Frederick County. The “fall line” running through Harford
County provided a perfect source of water power and at one time there were fifty-seven
mills in Harford County 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 Patapsco Valley 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
Baltimore Town in 1768. But if the ascension of Baltimore hastened the decline of
Joppa, it also brought about the division of Baltimore County and the petition of the
General Assembly resulted in the formation of Harford County 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.