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is more elusive.
Boteler took up lot number 10 at Charles
Town sometime before 1713. Lot Number 10 had been improved with a “house” by the time Boteler sold the property to Charles Reid for £15 sterling in 1713. Reid rented the place to Josiah Wilson that same year and Wilson owned the lot and house at the time of his death in 1717. Though Boteler improved his lot, his primary dwelling was located on a parcel called Harry’s Lot located to the southwest of Charles Town.
Wealthy grandees controlled the political and economic capital that supported towns, and their role in European resettlement of the Ches- apeake should be understood within this context. A small group of gentry, underwritten through kinship ties and powerful merchant houses in London, created and sustained both the expan- sive system of plantation slavery, and courthouse locations in the Chesapeake. This small group of gentry is disproportionately represented in the historical record, but they represent a fraction of the individuals who made Charles Town a func- tioning public place.
Transient Ordinary Keepers
and Impermanent Places
Ordinary keeping was the staple business of towns in the Chesapeake region during seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries, and counting the number of ordinaries is an effective method for gaging the success of a town during the peri- od.12 Ordinaries in the Chesapeake functioned as public houses where people ate, drank, and slept for fixed retail prices and extended from a long institutional trajectory within English society.13 Yet, the business was as ephemeral as many of the early courthouse town sites themselves. Most ordinary keepers were engaged in the business for one or two years at one site before either moving to another locale or departing the trade entirely. Also, most individuals who secured an ordinary license did not own the building where the busi- ness was kept. These factors complicate the task of definitively linking individual keepers with particular buildings in Charles Town.
Ordinary keepers were required by law to secure a license and were often cited in the court record for breach of this statute. Ordinaries could operate at ferry crossings, private landings and elsewhere, but most licenses issued by the Prince George’s County court were for establishments
located in towns. At least 74 people spent some time keeping an ordinary in Prince George’s County between 1696 and 1721. Most of these individuals are identified by the fact that they were granted an operating license by the court. Three quarters of these keepers operated in one of the seven towns established along the Potomac and Patuxent rivers during the period. A mini- mum of 19 individuals were engaged at Charles Town from 1696 to 1720.14
There are many ways to group those keep- ers who operated at Charles Town and elsewhere in Prince George’s County. First, only 13 of the 74 keepers operating in the county owned land beyond their town lot. The percentage is a bit higher in Charles Town as 26% of keepers also owned land beyond the town. Second, although men held three quarters of the ordinary licens- es, most ordinaries were operated by women. Roughly a third of licenses were issued to women but, like other ordinaries throughout the county, this is misleading in that women ran the daily operations in most establishments. In some cas- es wives ran the daily operations of the ordinary under the husband’s name. In others, women worked in ordinaries as indentured servants or were otherwise employed to run the operation.15 A few of these women include Mary Heigh (Samuel Heigh), Salome d’Hinoyossa (Alexander d’Hinoyossa and James Robinson), and Grace Onion (Nicholas Sporne). These women, and countless unidentified others, were the driving force behind the primary service industry in the colonial Chesapeake.16 These women were also the prime regulators of the countless social inter- actions that took place at Charles Town and oth- er public places throughout the region. Ordinary businesses can also be grouped by time period.
Rather than well-defined periods with abrupt beginnings and ends, the development of Charles Town is illustrated as a gradual expansion of the number of businesses operating out of the town to a peak of between 5 and 6 from 1701 to 1708 followed by a period between 1709 and 1720 when 1 to 3 businesses were operating.17 Another trend is that keepers starting after 1707 tended to retain their licenses for a shorter peri- od. This rapid turnover of licenses coincides with the legislative establishment of a group of towns within the county in 1706 and 1707 including Marlborough, Nottingham, Queen Anne, Mill Town, Piscataway, and Aire. These new towns provided additional opportunities to have a go at