CONTENTS:

RECOMMENDATIONS AS EXTRACTED FROM THE BALTIMORE NEWSPAPER PRESS.

PREFACE.


CHRONICLES OF BALTIMORE:

Part 1. THE SIXT VOYAGE 1606. 1659-1734. ... Pages 1-33

Part 2. 1735-1772. ... Pages 33-71

Part 3. 1773. ... Pages 71-125

Part 4. 1774-1776. ... Pages 125-155

Part 5. 1777-1779. ... Pages 155-188

Part 6. 1780-1783. ... Pages 188-235

Part 7. 1784-1792. ... Pages 235-266

Part 8. 1793-1806. ... Pages 266-300

Part 9. 1807-1812. ... Pages 300-340

Part 10. 1813-1814. ... Pages 340-368

Part 11. 1815-1821. ... Pages 369-400

Part 12. 1822-1828. ... Pages 400-430

Part 13. 1829-1831. ... Pages 430-459

Part 14. 1832-1836. ... Pages 459-491

Part 15. 1837-1847. ... Pages 491-525

Part 16. 1848-1856. ... Pages 525-552

Part 17. 1857-1860. ... Pages 552-584

Part 18. 1861. ... Pages 584-620

Part 19. 1862-1865. ... Pages 620-664

Part 20. 1866-1872. ... Pages 664-691

Part 21. 1873. APPENDIX. ... Pages 691-722

Part 22. INDEX. ... Pages 723-756


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by THOMAS G. SCHARF
         In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.






RECOMMENDATIONS AS EXTRACTED FROM THE BALTIMORE NEWSPAPER PRESS.

Baltimore Sun--"In its comprehensiveness, minuteness of detail and 
thoroughness of execution, to eclipse all that have preceded it."

Baltimore Gazette--"The first complete and exhaustive history of the city 
of Baltimore ever written."

Baltimore American--"His exhaustive researches leave but little for the 
writers who come after him to do, except to copy that which he has gleaned 
from ancient manuscripts."

German Correspondent--"A diligent and trustworthy compilation of facts 
laid down in chronological order."

Baltimorean--"It will be, by large odds, the most perfect, thorough and 
complete history of the city ever published. No Baltimorean, or son or 
daughter of a Baltimorean, will content themselves without a book which 
promises to be so valuable."

Saturday Night--"The MSS. convinces us that it will be a most valuable 
contribution to our local literature, and covering as it does the whole 
ground, it will be indispensable as a text-book and for reference."

Sunday Telegram--"The work will be elaborate and truthful in every 
particular."

Baltimore Bulletin--"A more complete and thorough work than any at present 
in the possession of the public."

Evening News--"It contains an immense amount of information to be had in 
no other work, nor in any dozen of books relating to Baltimore. Indeed 
nothing of value has been overlooked, down to the most minute details, 
which are such as to render the labors of any succeeding historian of 
little avail for half a century to come."


PREFACE.

It has been the chief aim of the author and compiler of this volume to 
furnish such a contribution in connection with the history of the city of 
Baltimore, by grouping the written and unwritten, the scattered and 
fragmentary facts bearing upon the city's rise and progress, as would 
afford, as a whole, a more complete book upon this subject than any in 
possession of the public. While we have histories, annals, sketches, and 
writings upon Baltimore of recognized excellence and general accuracy, it 
is nevertheless true that very much of interest and importance has been 
left unrecorded; and these gaps we have sought to fill up.

The only plan in the work that has been followed has been to chronicle 
events through the years in their order; beginning with the earliest in 
which any knowledge on the subject is embraced, and running on down to the 
present. We have been most particular with dates, facts, and figures, and 
at great pains to be strictly correct, never setting down a doubtful item.

The amount of information and its variety massed between the covers of the 
book might entitle it to be regarded as a very encycloædia of its kind. 
Little or nothing that relates to Baltimore has been overlooked, and 
neither time, money, nor labor has been spared in the preparation of the 
work. Every possible and available source has been sought and used in the 
collection of material; and the house of history, if we may so speak, has 
been literally ransacked in the unremitting search for all, and whatever, 
to the minutest matter, would throw light upon the subject. An idea may be 
formed of the extent and character of the researches made

Page vi

when we mention some of the books, authorities, and other matter gone 
over. For example, all the newspapers, from the first editions ever 
published in Baltimore to the last; all pamphlets published relating to 
Baltimore; all the laws of Maryland and the Colonial Government; Niles' 
Register; Metropolitan Magazine; Griffith's Annals; Lossing's Field-Book 
of the Revolution, War of 1812, and Civil War and Historical Record; 
Sparks's Washington; Baltimore, Historical and Biographical; Kennedy's 
Life of Wirt; Tuckerman's Life of Kennedy; Coggeshall's American 
Privateers; Bosman's, McMahon's, and McSherry's Histories of Maryland; 
Memoirs of Commodore Barney; Dunlap's History of American Theatres; 
Kilty's Landholder's Assistant; Holmes' and Chalmers' Annals of America; 
Memoir of R. B. Taney; Smith's Virginia; Botta's American Revolution; 
Marshall's Washington; Annals of Annapolis; Rebellion Record; Custis's 
Life of Washington; American Biography; American Archives; State Archives; 
different histories of religious denominations in Baltimore; Green's 
Maryland Gazette; Conventions of Maryland; Journals of the Senate and 
House of Delegates of Maryland; directories published in Baltimore since 
1796; old and rare books out of print; old maps; early surveys; many 
valuable private letters and manuscripts obtained from friends; Land 
Office records; Congressional Library, etc., etc., etc.

We will here make our acknowledgments to Messrs. R. A. Reed and J. P. Des 
Forges, antiquarian booksellers, for the loan of valuable unpublished 
letters, rare books, etc., that must otherwise have escaped us. We have 
also been assisted materially by Messrs. Osmond Tiffany and William 
Jefferson Buchanan. Extracts from authorities used have been liberally 
made, and much original and interesting matter quoted.

Many old and valuable letters of eminent men, never before published, have 
been preserved in the book. Brief biographical notices, also, of prominent 
citizens of the past have a place, as well as many pleasing reminiscences 
and incidents in connection with the customs and habits of the people of 
Baltimore in the olden time. The ancient style of dress is fully 
described, with the

Page vii

fashion of our ancestral dames flaunting its absurdities no less glaring 
than of to-day. The churches and their histories have a place. The time of 
formation of societies of different kinds and for various purposes is 
noted and their histories given. The rise of canals and railroads, with 
the account of their rude commencement and their subsequent wonderful 
expansion and the changes they have wrought since the days of post-roads 
and Conestoga wagons, is given; also notices of the public schools from 
their first establishment; records of riots, fires, meetings, and 
processions. The four revolutions or wars, and the part Baltimore bore in 
them--1776, 1812, 1846, and 1861.

A history of the newspapers of Baltimore, portraying the rise and 
development of the mighty agency of the press in our midst, has its 
appropriate space allotted it, together with such other matters, 
statistical, commercial, industrial, mechanical, professional, political, 
religious, private, and public, as makes the entire collection a book 
indeed of large instruction, of great use for ready reference as a 
repository of valuable knowledge not otherwhere to be obtained, and partly 
of almost romantic interest.

Whatever of profit and pleasure shall be drawn from its pages by the 
reader, it cannot exceed that profit and pleasure experienced by the 
author in his researches, amid the labors and difficulties of his 
undertaking. For with him his work has been a labor of love, of pride, of 
sympathy, of ambition, and one which he hopes will be received as a 
laudable, and he trusts not altogether unsuccessful effort, by such in 
particular as, like himself, are "native here and to the manor born." The 
preparation of such a book was felt by him to have become a public 
necessity and a benefaction, nothing of a similar character having been 
placed before the public since 1829, when Griffith's "Annals of Baltimore" 
was published,--a work regarded as authentic as far as it goes, but which 
does not embrace in an entirely the subject of which it treats.

The "Chronicles of Baltimore" embraces, in substance, all, and very much 
more that has been omitted in the "Annals," going back to the earliest 
beginnings, taking up the story where Griffith stops, and continuing it to 
the present day. In the volume are

Page viii

collected and preserved historical materials, obtained from widely 
separated sources, from private libraries and individuals, from musty 
records on the brink of decay, from odd places and unexplored corners, 
which by the accident of fire or flood or time's hard touches, might 
otherwise have been forever lost to us.

The book, the author feels, will commend itself to the people of Baltimore 
chiefly on account of the immense, unusual, and various information to be 
found within its pages, and because of the pleasing minor matters with 
which it abounds as well. The map upon the wall, the directory upon the 
desk, the bible upon the table, the tools upon the bench, express, in 
their places, that appropriateness and utility which we would bespeak for 
the "Chronicles of Baltimore" in the place which may be given it as a 
household need and addition, in the libraries, the business offices, and 
homes of the city.

J. Thomas Scharf.

Baltimore, April, 1874.