Meanwhile, in the course of this general “towning,” the Patapsco had not been neglected. In the town acts were included provisions for towns upon Humphreys Creek, and upon Whetstone Point in that river. Of the actual existence of any corporate life at these points there is, however, no record; and it is probable that King George’s accession found the Patapsco watering the same broad plantations as of yore. But a new era in the town history of Maryland was dawning. Governmental stimulation was being supplanted by private enterprise. Certain progressive individuals conceived the idea of erecting a town upon a point of land which runs out into the main stream of the Patapsco and to-day is included within the limits of Baltimore city. At that time, this land was the property of a Mr. John Moale, and was known as Moale’s Point; but if it is Baltimore now, Mr. Moale was resolved that it should not be Baltimore then, and taking his seat in the Assembly, to which he was a delegate, he prevented the location of the town upon his property. Tradition has censured this worthy for preferring the excavation of iron ore to the development of a municipality, but colonial experience in town lots had doubtless been such as to yield him ample justification for his determination. “The rejected of Mr. John Moale” was not, however, to wander far, for slightly to the north lay property belonging to Charles and Daniel Carroll, sons of the former agent of the Lord Proprietary. Here the Patapsco formed a basin, a safe harbor for vessels of light draft; and near by a stream, known to this day as Jones’s Falls, after the name of an early settler, running from the hills near by, through lowland and marsh, poured a muddy torrent into the river. In 1709, was passed an act “for erecting a town on the north side of Patapsco in Baltimore County and for laying out into lots sixty acres of land in and about the place where one John Fleming now lives.”[3] 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.