In 1732 the attention of Charles, Lord Baltimore, had been directed to our valley (Hagerstown) and on the 2nd of March of that year he published the following advertisement offering inducements to setterls: “We being desirous to increase te number of honest people within our province of Maryland and willing to give suitable encouragement to such to come and reside therein, do offer the following terms:

1st. That any person having a family, who shall within three years come and actually settle, with his or her family, on any of the back lands on the northern or western boundaries of our said province, not already taken up, between the rivers Potomack and Susquehanna, where, we are informed, there are several large bodies of fertile lands, fit for tillage, which may be seen without any expense, two hundred acres of said lands, in fee-simple, without paying any part of the forty shillings sterling, for every hundred acres, payable to us by the conditions of plantations, and without paying any quit rents in three years after the first settlement, and then paying four shillings sterling for every hundred acres to us, or our heirs, for every year after the expiration of the said three years.

2nd. To allow to each single person, male or female not above the age of thirty, and not under fifteen, one hundred acres of the said lands, upon the same terms as mentioned in the preceding article.

3rd. That we will concur in any reasonable method that shall be proposed, for the ease of such new-comers, in the payment of their taxes for some years and we doe assure all such that they shall be as well secured in their liberty and property, in Maryland, as any of his Majesty’s subects in any part of the British plantations, in America, without exception; and to the end all persons desirous to come into and reside in Maryland, may be assured that these terms will be justly and punctually performedon our part. We have hereunto set our hand and seal at arms.” etc.

The class of people who were attracted to this valley by this advertisement, and still more by the richness of the soil and the salubrity of the air when they became known, were largely from Germany; but a great many of the largest land grants were to men of English descent from the eastern part of the State who were for many years the ruling people. But gradually their large estates became subdivided among their tenants and there are some instances of these men who spent their splendid estates and died poor. Many of our settlers came from Pennsylvania -- some of them were Scotch-Irish and some German. A writer, in 1756, speaks of Conococheague as an Irish settlement and it is not improbable that the people who first built a block house and established a trading post at the mouth of the Conococheague were of that sturdy race of Scotch-Irish which “won the West” and contributed in no small degree to the triumph of the American arms in the war of Independence. The denial of religious freedom to the Presbyterians of Ulster in 1719 started the exodus from Ireland of the bravest and best subjects of the British crown. A steady stream of emigration to America set in, and continued for twenty-five years. Many of them landed at Philadelphia, and found their way to our valley. Manu of them subsequently left it to take up their residence in the Kentucky wilderness or among the dense and bloomy forests whch covered the great valley of the Ohio. But many remained here, and in 1776 eagerly took up arms against their unnatural mother country which had cast them off. The descendants of many of them are among us now, and preserve the magnificent traits of character which distiguished their fore-fathers.
A considerable number of “Redemptioners” or Indented Servants also became citizens of the valley. Redemptioners were assisted emigrants--persons who wished to find a home in the colonies but not having sufficient money to pay their passage across the ocean sold themselves for a term of years for the necessary amount. The captain of the ship brought them over and then sold them for a sufficient sum to pay the passage. The practice was so extensively engaged in that it was regulated by an Act of Assembly passed in 1715, A servant being under fifteen years of age had to serve until he was twenty-two, if between fifteen and eighteen, seven yers, if between eighteen and twenty-two, six years and five years if above twenty five years of age. Usually their treatment was mild and they bvecame freemen upon the expiration of the term of servitude; many of them as well as of the convicts, became highly respected citizens, and the progenitors of influential families; and a few are mentioned as having become distinguished. One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a Redemptioner.
A much less desirable class of immigrants were the convicts. Thousands of the inmates of British prisons were transported to America and no less than three or four thousand found their way into Maryland each year. We cannot doubt that many of these were brought to our County. The people of the colony indeed protested loudly against this invasion and complained that it would introduce all the dreadful diseases then prevailing in the jails of Encgland amoung our people. But they were powerless to remedy the evil. Pennsylvania did put a poll tax or tariff upon such importations and the Maryland Assembly attempted to do the same, but were met by an act of Parliament which authorized the business, and the Attorney General, afterwards Lord Mansfield, gave an opinion that the Colonial Assembly had no right to levy such a tax. The Colonial Assembly, however, persisted in collecting it, but it did not prevent the evil. Private parties made contracts with the government to ship these convicts to America and sell them for the benefit of the shippers. These transactions were a source of great profit to those engaged in them.
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The first resident of the settlement who acquired a legal or documentary title to his land was Charles Friend , who in 1739 obtained a grant from the proprietor of 260 acres which he called “Sweed’s Delight.”
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The first town regularly laid out into lots in Washington County was Hagerstown. In December 16,1739, Jonathan Hager obtained a patent for two hundred acres of land which he named “Hager’s Choice.” One of the boundary lines of this tract is described as beginning at “a bounded white oak standing on the side of a hill within fifty yards of said Hager’s Dwelling-house.”105