Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/54

 The owners of the land, the Carrolls, were more complaisant than Mr. John Moale: they readily parted with sixty acres of land at the rate of forty shillings per acre, payable in tobacco at one penny per pound. The town was then surveyed and laid out into lots, after the most approved "boomer" fashion of to-day. To secure an estate in fee simple, "takers-up" of lots were required to erect thereon, within eighteen months, a building covering at least four hundred square feet: failure to comply with this condition laid the lots open for other takers-up.

Baltimore's boom seems to have started well, for after Mr. Carroll, as former owner, had selected the first lot, no less than fifteen other persons invested the same year. This success was so much appreciated that two years later another town was established, consisting of two acres laid out into twenty lots, just east of the Falls, "where Edward Fell keeps store." Communication between the new town, known as Jones or Jonastown, and Baltimore was soon improved by a bridge across the Falls, and a few years later the two towns were by Act of Assembly formally made into one.

A third distinct element in the early growth