The area where the Jones Falls meets the northwest branch of the Patapsco River, known today as the Piers 5 and 6 in the Inner Harbor, became an essential part of Baltimore’s maritime landscape in the 19th century. An English merchant named…

In the colonial era, English settlers in tidewater Maryland—like their neighbors in Virginia—grew tobacco knowing that Europe had boundless demand for their crop. Growing and harvesting tobacco, however, demanded an enormous amount of…