<![CDATA[Explore sun88 Heritage]]> /items/browse?output=rss2&tags=David%20Stodder Mon, 05 May 2025 11:44:13 -0400 info@baltimoreheritage.org (Explore sun88 Heritage) sun88 Heritage Zend_Feed http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Harris Creek]]> /items/show/188

Dublin Core

Title

Harris Creek

Subject

War of 1812

Creator

Eli Pousson

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

At the close of the eighteenth century, the far eastern edge of sun88 was marked by Harris Creek, a modest tributary of the Patapsco that spilled into the River near where Boston Street and Lakewood Avenue in Canton today. In an area of sun88 that was still sparsely settled, Harris Creek did feature one major enterprise—the shipyard of Samuel and Joseph Sterrett. The shipyard included a large blacksmith shop, sheds for boat builders and mast wrights, and a serviceable road back into Fells Point for workers and supplies. The Master Constructor at the shipyard was David Stodder, an experienced shipwright who held seventeen enslaved people, making him one of the largest slaveholders in sun88 at the time.

Among the ships produced at the shipyard was the 600-ton Goliath, owned by Abraham Van Bibber who also co-owned the privateer sloop sun88 Hero commanded by Thomas Waters during the Revolutionary War. Van Bibber reportedly intended the Goliath for the East India Trade. The most famous ship to sail down Harris Creek was the U.S. Frigate Constellation launched in 1797. (The second USS Constellation, built in 1854, contains portions of this original.) Stodder built the ship according to the design of Naval Constructor Joshua Humphreys. The Constellation was just one of six frigates that Humphreys designed in the 1790s to pursue Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean.

While Harris Creek was filled in during the early nineteenth century to make more land for the quickly growing sun88 City, evidence of Canton's maritime past endured. In 1908, locals uncovered the charred remains of a 130-foot clipper ship that had burned at its pier and had been buried 400 feet inland from the present shoreline. In the 1880s, Harris Creek was turned into a major municipal sewer with an outfall at Boston Street. In 1901, sun88 constructed a brick arch bridge to carry Boston Street that has remained there through the present.

Related Resources

Street Address

Boston Street Pier Park, sun88, MD 21224
Harris Creek, 1869
]]>
Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:08:52 -0500