Today is the anniversary of the passage, in 1729, by the Maryland General Assembly of an act establishing the Town of Baltimore. The city is named after Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, an English politician and lawyer who was a founding proprietor of the Province of Maryland. The Calverts took the title Barons Baltimore from Baltimore Manor, an estate they were granted by the Crown in County Longford as part of the plantations of Ireland. Baltimore is an anglicization of Baile an Tí Mhóir, meaning “town of the big house” in Irish.
Baltimore grew swiftly in the 18th century, its plantations producing grain and tobacco for sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean. The profit from sugar encouraged the cultivation of cane in the Caribbean and the importation of food by planters there. Baltimore established its public market system in 1763. Lexington Market, founded in 1782, is one of the oldest continuously operating public markets in the United States today.
In 1774, Baltimore established the first post office system in what became the United States, and the first water company chartered in the newly independent nation, Baltimore Water Company, 1792. The British bombardment of Baltimore in 1814 inspired the U.S. national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”, and the construction of the Battle Monument, which became the city’s official emblem.
Baltimore pioneered the use of gas lighting in 1816. The construction of the federally funded National Road, which later became part of U.S. Route 40, and the private Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B. & O.) made Baltimore a major shipping and manufacturing center by linking the city with major markets in the Midwest. the city created the world’s first dental college, the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, in 1840, and shared in the world’s first telegraph line, between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., in 1844.
Between the Civil War and the start of World War I—approximately 1.2 million Eastern European immigrants streamed into the South Baltimore peninsula, making Baltimore the second or third busiest U.S. port of entry (depending on the year) for new arrivals and the busiest south of New York. The Locust Point immigration pier was privately funded and built by B & O Railroad, the first common-carrier railroad company in the U.S, and by the 1890s, an estimated 90 percent of immigrants arriving at Locust Point traveled directly to a destination further west. The rest, often the poorest of the immigrant groups, remained in Baltimore, heading into the city’s burgeoning canning, steel, garment, shipbuilding, railroad, and manufacturing industries.
A panoramic view of Baltimore in September 2016, including the Inner and Outer Harbors at dusk
Helping with the housework…
Beautiful Pole…
Today is the birthday, in 1944, of Jamaican ska and reggae musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer Jimmy Cliff who had the 1969 UK No.6 & US No.25 single ‘Wonderful World Beautiful People’, and the 1970 UK No.8 hit with his version of Cat Stevens’ ‘Wild World’. He starred in the film The Harder They Come, which helped popularize reggae across the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrHxhQPOO2c
Comments