Every Group That Built Baltimore, In Order

In 1850 Baltimore held 25,442 free Black residents and 2,946 enslaved. In a slave state, fourteen years before Maryland abolished slavery. No other American city looked like that. Baltimore had the largest free Black population in the country decades before emancipation — and it also passed the first racial zoning law in United States history. This is how both of those things happened in the same place. This is the complete settlement history of Baltimore, in the order it happened: every group that built the city, which neighborhoods were theirs, what work they did, where their descendants went, and how to trace a Baltimore family through the records. In this video: The Piscataway, Nanticoke and Susquehannock of the Chesapeake. Why Maryland was founded as a Catholic refuge, and the Toleration Act of 1649. Why flour built Baltimore and tobacco did not. The Haitian refugees who landed at Fells Point in 1793, and the Black Catholic community they founded. How Baltimore ended up with the largest free Black population in America — manumission, term slavery, and self-purchase. Frederick Douglass in the Fells Point shipyards, and the escape from President Street Station. The Black-owned shipyard that opened in 1866 after a thousand caulkers were forced out. Why a quarter of white Baltimore was German-born by 1868. Locust Point, the B&O and North German Lloyd deal, and the 1.2 million immigrants who came through the port everyone forgot. Corned Beef Row on Lombard Street. St. Stanislaus Kostka and Polish Fells Point. Little Italy and Greektown. The Hillbilly Highway into Hampden and the Jones Falls mills. Pennsylvania Avenue and the Royal Theatre. The 1911 racial zoning ordinance, Buchanan v. Warley, the 1937 redlining map, blockbusting, and the Highway to Nowhere. Sparrows Point and its segregated company town. And the German church in Highlandtown that is a Latino parish today. Chapters 0:00 Two numbers that do not belong together 3:00 The Chesapeake before the city 5:30 A Catholic colony in a Protestant empire 8:00 Why flour built Baltimore 11:00 The Haitian refugees 14:00 The largest free Black population in America 19:00 Frederick Douglass in Fells Point 22:00 The Black-owned shipyard 25:00 German Baltimore 29:00 The Irish and the B&O 31:00 Locust Point, the forgotten port 36:00 Lombard Street and Corned Beef Row 39:00 Poles, Lithuanians, Italians and Greeks 42:00 The 1904 fire, and what it did not destroy 44:00 The Hillbilly Highway 47:00 Pennsylvania Avenue 50:00 The first racial zoning law in America 55:00 Covenants, redlining and the Highway to Nowhere 59:00 Sparrows Point 62:00 The buildings that changed hands 65:00 Finding your Baltimore family Tell me in the comments: which layer were you? Locust Point. Canton. Fells Point. Highlandtown. Hampden. Sandtown. Little Italy. Lombard Street. Turner Station. Put the neighborhood and the years — somebody reading has almost certainly lived on the same street. #Baltimore #BaltimoreHistory #Genealogy #AmericanHistory #FamilyHistory