Did You Know? #7 The Guilford Industrial Historic District was settled by 1702?

The GIHD is mostly covered by 4 land patents – Wincopin Neck, Jones Fancy, Harry’s Lot – Ridgely, and White’s Contrivance – the earliest was Wincopin Neck which was surveyed in 1702. 

Wincopin Neck

Wincopin Neck was originally patented in July 1702 by Benjamin Warfield for 883 acres.  Due to some error discovered, it was resurveyed in 1732 and re-patented in 1735 as Wincopin Neck for 864 acres. Wincopin Neck is generally the land between the Middle Patuxent River and the Little Patuxent Rivers bounded roughly on the northwest by the BGE transmission lines, but the boundary in the mill area crossed the river to the north to cover the land to approximately Guilford Road but it did not include the quarries across the river.  Including this land indicated that there was either an existing mill or one planned to be built that required a dam that would create a pond needing access from both sides of the river.  On the quarry side to the north of Wincopin Neck was Jones Fancy.

Jones Fancy

Jones Fancy was surveyed in 1731 by Henry Ridgely and patented in Jun 1734 by John Jones for 131 acres "near to a place called Elkridge".  This was the tract of land that was farmed and quarried for almost 200 years since it was patented.  It was owned by Henry A. Penny, Sr. and Henry A. Penny, Jr (County Commissioner), among others, and was the site for the home of Reverend Willis Carter and first church.  But the current home of the First Baptist Church of Guilford is to the east of Jones Fancy in Harry’s Lot which was part of Ridgely’s Addition – Harry’s Lot.  

Harry’s Lot - Ridgely

Ridgely's Addition (Harry's Lot - Ridgely) was originally surveyed and patented in 1717 by Henry Ridgely for 110 acres and then when two other land tracts were resurveyed in 1732 and parts of them combined, it was re-patented in 1734 as Harrys Lot – Ridgely for 702 acres.  This land basically borders Guilford Road on one side and the Little Patuxent River on the other between Alberta Gary Church and Vollmerhausen Road and covers much of the town center of Guilford.

White’s Contrivance

South of Harry’s Lot is White's Contrivance which contains Savage plus some other adjacent areas. It was surveyed in 1759 for Joseph White and patented in Jan 1797 by Griffith White for 801 acres.  Vera Ruth Filby’s 1965 “Savage, Maryland” gives a very nice summary of the land patents for Savage and I encourage everyone to read this excellent booklet about this history of Savage.

Owning land in Maryland’s early days required 1) a warrant issued by a government official to the County surveyor documenting the acres of land through a Certificate of Survey, 2) having a detailed survey of the land with a scale drawing of the tracts of land of interest and adjacent properties, and 3) patenting the land that was not already patented.   The land patents and surveys established the metes and bounds of property that passed from one generation, or owner, to another.  Many of the property records through the 1800s still identified the land patents which provided a fairly easy way of knowing the location of a specific tract of land.  It seems it wasn’t until the middle part of the 1900s that the buildings and homes were listed as the primary real estate transaction instead of the land.  This can make it difficult to determine when a building was constructed so we continue to look through other records to try to locate that information.

Sources:

http://guide.msa.maryland.gov/pages/viewer.aspx?page=landrecords#mdlandrec

http://jsfecmd.info/FREAK/HowardCountyLandPatents.html

Much thanks to Jody Frey for her incredible hard work in proving the details on Howard County’s land patents including a Google Earth kml file that I used for the creating the map.

http://jsfecmd.info/FREAK/index.html