The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1878-08-24
DEAD CITIES IN MARYLAND.
M The baltimore Ecening Bulletin.

| From the baltimore EceninJ Baltettn.
The solitary Arab, wandering in the
burning wastes of the Syrian desert,
come suddenly upon walled town built
complete of pink granite and marble
and prophyry. Temple and tomb are
there as well as house and palace, for
tress and granary, but the roofs and
windows are gone, and the city's gates
havelong ago been unhinged. The city
is deserted /; and has no inhabitants at
all but the foxes that lurk under the fall
en- archways and the owls and bats that
flutter beneath the darkened vaults, and
the Bedonin fees from thespot in dread,
invoking imprecations upon it as the
abode of Sheitan, place accursed. 1t
is indeed city that has been dead per-
haps two thousand years, and the desert
contains many such weird spectrcs of
the populous past.
So the voyager in tropical seas, as he
coasts by islands which the earthquakes
have rent, but which betray no signs of
it in their glowing beauty, may some
times look down through the clear waves
and see there below him, at the bottom
of the diaphanous depths, the roofs and
spires of sunken city, forty fathoms
under the wave. Such is Savannah la
Mar, which, with its ten thousanh peo-
pie all at their occupations and pleasures
and devotions went to the bottom one
quiet summers day, and has rested there
ever since, the sea-ooze mantling its
palaces, and urchins and polyps the
citizens of its voiceless streets.
There are dead cities, however, which
have not only been abandoned, but
themselves have disappeared as complete
ly as Babylon-vanished like the base
less fabric of vision that leaves not a
wreck behind-and Maryland herself
has furnished the site of more than one
of these phantom boroughs, of which
scarcely even a tombstone remains to
mark the spot where their former inhab-
itantS were buried.
For instance, there is the venerable
city of Saint Mary's, the capital of the
Province of Maryland, where all the old
time dignitaries used to gather during
the sessions of court and Assembly and
hold high revels in their velvets and la
ces. Is it not an odd trick of fortune
that both Jamestown and Saint Mary'S,
the original capitals of Virginia and
Maryland, should have vanished so ut
terly from the face of the earth that the
distinctest traces we now have of them
is the mellower tilth and the darker COL
or of the waving grain over the places
that once were populous Saint Mary's S
was city of great expectations. Baron
Caecilius had such hope of it that he
esteemed a town lot within its limits the
best present which he could make to his
friends and favorites. Who would own
town lot in Saint Mary's now? The
Protestant element was too strong for it;
the planting interest preferred the strong
er lands of the Patuxent; the centre of
the population moved rapidly up the
bay, and an irreverent Assembly sud-
denly decided that the capital should
be removed to 'Anne Arundel town up
ON the Severn The poor people of
Saint Mary's sent up a quaint and
pathetic petition to the Assembly not
to destroy them. They offered to make
roads, to establish ferry at Drum Point;
to run a stage line from the Patuxent.
They got down on their knees to the AS
sembly almost, but without avail. The
fiat had gone forth the capital was
transferred, and Saint Mary's with its
State House and all crumbled into un-
distinguishable ruin.
Another city that was expected to be-
come the Eastern Shore rival of Saint
Mary and later of Annapolis, and which
it was thought, could not fail to become
a great commercial emporium, so eligi-
Bile was it situated, was the town on
Tired Avon creek called WilliamStadt,
and now known as Oxford. People are
said to be engaged in specializing in town
lots in Oxford now, just as they were in
1904, but Oxford has never grown to be
a city and probably will not, in our day.
1t had much commerce at one time, many
servants were landed there and sold and
thousands of hogsheads of tobacco were
put on board ship there. But after
awhile the factors who had warehouses
there removed to other ports, some to
Annapolis, some to CheSteftown, some
to Elkridge Landing, some to Joppa,
and Oxford-we will not say died, but
went to sleep, like the beauty of town
that it is.
And Elkridge Landing, too. Do the
young men who go to catch gudgeons
at the Relay ever think that ships used
to sail up that stream from ports, and
that the post town across the way was
once commercial emporium, the rival
of Annapolis and Joppa, and the superior
of Baltimore AT one tins more tobac
CO was shipped from Elkridge than from
| any other port in the State. 1t was the
port of half of Anne Arundel and Balti
more counties, of Howard, Montgomery
and Frederick counties rolling roads
led to it in every direction. 1t had fur
naces and iron mills, stores and
warehouses-but not even pungy
goes up to Elkridge now. The trade
ebbed away from it, the river filled with
silt-Elkridge was city no more.
About 1850, the story goes, Euro
pean capitalist came to Maryland with
money to invest in town lots. He look
ed around him carefully examined the
harhors and inquired into the prospects
of all our towns, Annapolis, Elkridge,
Baltimore, &C., and, after hesitating a
good while between Joppa and Chester
town, put his money to rest in Charles
t0a0n, for that, he was sure, was to be
the coming great city. Can the reader
tell us where Charlestown was p? He will
not find it on the maps yet it was laid
out for very great city in I742, 'at a
place called Long Point, on the west
side of North East river, in Cecil coun-
ty.' And the people who laid it out had