Fells Point
Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland
Marker Inscription
Fells Point A colonial maritime community established 1726 by William Fell, shipbuilder, of Lancashire, England. In this area were built more than six hundred ships from the colonial era through the civil war. Birth place of the U.S. Frigate "Constellation" and home port of the famous Baltimore clippers. Maryland State Society Daughters of the American Colonists
Erected by Maryland State Society Daughters of the American Colonists
The Story
Fells Point was founded in 1726 by Lancashire shipbuilder William Fell, and its deepwater shoreline quickly made it one of early America's great shipbuilding centers. From colonial times through the Civil War, more than six hundred vessels slid down its ways, including the frigate USS Constellation and the swift, raking-masted Baltimore clippers that made the port famous. The neighborhood grew into a bustling maritime community at the heart of Baltimore's rise.
Why it matters
Fells Point helped build the young republic's navy and merchant fleet, its clippers and warships carrying American commerce—and firepower—onto the world's oceans.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William Fell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Fell Family Cemetery
Baltimore, MD
In the maritime heart of Baltimore lies the small burial ground of the Fell family, the English settlers who gave their name to Fell's Point. Arriving in the eighteenth century, the Fells laid out a shipbuilding and shipping community along the deep water of the Patapsco River, and their surname still marks one of the city's oldest and most storied neighborhoods. This family plot is a quiet reminder that a bustling seafaring district began with a single household's land and ambitions.
Great Railroad Strike of 1877
Baltimore, MD
In the depths of the long depression that followed the Panic of 1873, railroad companies slashed already-thin wages one time too many, and in July 1877 the anger boiled over. What began among Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and here in Baltimore quickly leapt from city to city along the rail lines, becoming the first genuinely nationwide strike in American history. For roughly six weeks, freight sat idle, factories fell silent, and clashes between strikers, militia, and federal troops left dozens dead before the movement was suppressed.
Sparrows Point
Dundalk, MD
Rising on the tidewater east of Baltimore, the Sparrows Point works grew from an 1880s Pennsylvania Steel venture into the sprawling core of Bethlehem Steel's empire — for a time the largest steel mill on Earth. Its furnaces and shipways turned out the steel and vessels that armed and supplied the nation through both World Wars, and a whole company town grew up around the jobs it created.
Ma & Pa Railroad Overpass
Towson, MD · est. 1999
These stone abutments once carried a plate-girder bridge over York Road for the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad—the beloved 'Ma and Pa.' Rebuilt in 1900 from an earlier narrow-gauge line, the railroad wound a circuitous 77-mile course between Baltimore and York, Pennsylvania, before being abandoned in 1958 as traffic dwindled and its bridges decayed. The overpass came down in 1959, leaving only these abutments.