The First Baltimore was not on the Patapsco River

Baltimore on the Patapsco was established in 1729, but an earlier Baltimore existed on the Bush River as early as 1674 The following is from my Wikipedia post on this subject: “The first county seat of Baltimore County is known today as “Old Baltimore”. It was located on the Bush River on land that in 1773 became part of Harford County. In 1674, the General Assembly passed “An Act for erecting [sic] a Court-house and Prison in each County within this Province.” The site of the court house and jail for Baltimore County was evidently “Old Baltimore” near the Bush River. We know this because in 1683, the General Assembly passed “An Act for Advancement of Trade” to “establish towns, ports, and places of trade, within the province.” One of the towns established by the act in Baltimore County was “on Bush River, on Town Land, near the Court-House.” The court house on the Bush River referenced in the 1683 Act was in all likelihood the one created by the 1674 Act. “Old Baltimore” was in existence as early as 1674, but we don’t know with certainty what if anything happened on the site prior to that year. The exact location of Old Baltimore was lost for years. It was certain that the location was somewhere on the site of the present-day Aberdeen Proving Grounds (APG), a U.S. Army testing facility. APG’s Cultural Resource Management Program took up the task of finding Old Baltimore. The firm of R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates (Goodwin) was contracted for the project. After Goodwin first performed historical and archival work, they coordinated their work with existing landscape features to locate the site of Old Baltimore. APG’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal personnel went in with Goodwin to defuse any unexploded ordnance. The field team worked from fall 1997 through winter 1998. The team dug 420 test pits, and they uncovered several artifacts….”

Old Baltimore Historic Marker

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