When Howard County was in Baltimore County

Were Guilford and Savage ever Part of Baltimore County?

This possibility was mentioned in the excellent 1965 booklet on Savage, Maryland by Vera Ruth Filby when she wrote that the land patents of Wincopin Neck and Harry’s Lott “were part of what was then Baltimore County, and had been since 1659. In 1726 they became part of Anne Arundel County.”  As we all know, Howard County officially came from the northwest portion of Anne Arundel County in 1851. I thought this was an interesting piece of history and decided to try to confirm it since there were no citations provided for this in Filby’s publication. This has been much harder to research than I ever would have imagined.  The facts are that the area known now as Howard County was actually Baltimore County from 1698-1727.  This has implications for research including the fact that much of Howard County was called "Elk Ridge" in the late 1600s through the 1700s.

The Newberry Library created an Atlas of Historical County Boundaries which tried to recreate the these boundaries within Maryland and many other states (https://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/). Unfortunately I could not find any documentation or sources used to develop their historical boundaries of Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties during the timeframe of which Filby wrote. I contacted the Newberry Library but never received a reply.

The Anne Arundel Genealogical Society posted a nice timeline of Anne Arundel County Historical Boundaries based on the work of the Newberry Library (https://aagensoc.org/cpage.php?pt=27). Based on the timeline provided by Newberry it was evident that the pertinent time period to search was from April 3, 1698 to May 30, 1727. While I had a generic map in which Newberry “guesstimated” the origins of these boundaries I still could not verify whether Guilford and Savage were ever in Baltimore County.

Edward B. Mathews published “The Counties of Maryland: Their Origins, Boundaries, and Election Districts” through the Maryland Geological Survey in 1907 (see below). This is the only authoritative source on county boundaries in Maryland that I could find, but it still lacks a definitive answer on just exactly where the boundary was between Anne Arundel and Baltimore Counties in 1698-1727. But it provides a very clear narrative and justification for including Guilford and Savage within Baltimore County.

Mathews reported that in 1696 Maryland commissioners had the task of establishing the boundary between Baltimore and Anne Arundel Counties and two years later Chapter 13 of the Acts of 1698 were enacted into Maryland law. Mathews quoted the pertinent section of the Acts in his book but noted that few of the mapping points in the narrative were still able to be located, but...

“the intention was to place the boundary along the divide between the Magothy and the Patapsco rivers as far as Elk Ridge, and thence westerly to the Patuxent in such a way as to include all of the settlements then made. This would make the line indefinite and would extend at that time just north of the present location of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Grants had just been given to large tracts in the vicinity of Savage and Guilford, and along Warfield's Ridge.” (Matthews 1907)

Mathews seems to answer the question in the affirmative as to whether Guilford and Savage were actually at one time in Baltimore County. But there was one more question - where in Elk Ridge was the dividing point? Simon Martenet seems to have provided that answer. The 1860 maps “drawn entirely from actual surveys” by Martenet were the most detailed and accurate maps of Maryland and I have presented them in several of this sites posts. But there was a unique map that Martenet did in 1865 just after the civil war that displayed Maryland, the District of Columbia, and portions of Virginia and Delaware. But one very special aspect of this map was the drawing of the “Old Baltimore County Line”.

Martenet showed the Baltimore County line beginning just south of the mouth of the Patapsco River going west southwest to just south of Annapolis Junction to an area called “Three Marked Pines”. From this point to the west where an imaginary line would meet the Patuxent River would basically include the borders of Howard County.

In fact the 1960 publication entitled “The County Courthouses and Records of Maryland -- Part 1: The Courthouses” by Marris L. Radoff states on page 101 that “the area composing the present Howard County was separated from Anne Arundel” when referencing the 1698 Acts implying all of Howard County was indeed part of Baltimore County at that time. (https://aomol.msa.maryland.gov/.../000545/pdf/am545--101.pdf) In 1727 the Legislature reversed the boundary back to the Patapsco River as the southern border of Baltimore County which is the current boundary today.

This information is useful when researching records of the 1698-1727 era for which there were not that many land and other records until this summer when the Maryland State Archives posted to the public many more of their digitized records. It seems that our astute historian Vera Ruth Filby was correct with the exception of the exact years but we now know that Guilford, Savage and pretty much all of Howard County was actually part of Baltimore County for almost 30 years.

http://homepages.rootsweb.com/.../marylandformationmaps.html

https://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/map/map.html#MD