B. Jones Taylor

In the record (6)

1. 1880 · 1880-04-10

   The 1880 charter draws the town as a strip between two Stephen Taber deeds, anchored on the Ocean City Bridge Company's bridge.

   Section 2 of Chapter 209 fixes the corporate limits: "Beginning at a point in Synepuxent Bay at or near the easternmost end of the Ocean City Bridge Company's bridge," south along the bay to the south line of the land Stephen Taber conveyed to Granville Stokes by deed of August 28, 1879, east across Atlantic Avenue to the ocean, north along the surf to the north line of the land Taber conveyed to Hillary E. Pitts, Benjamin Jones Taylor and George W. Purnell, trustees, by deed of July 28, 1876, then north 76 1/8 degrees west across the beach to the bay and back down to the bridge. The commissioners were ordered to have "a survey made by a competent surveyor of all the streets and avenues of said town" and to set a stone at the north and south sides of every east-west street at its intersection with Atlantic Avenue. The original town of Ocean City is, legally, the ground between two parcels Stephen Taber sold — the same New York congressman who patented the 280-acre beach tract in 1869.

   Ocean City Bridge CompanyThe Commissioners of Ocean CityStephen TaberDr. Hilary R. PittsGranville StokesGeorge W. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

2. 1882 · 1882-08-03

   The Atlantic Hotel Company reports its first mortgage paid off and property worth twice what the stockholders put in.

   At the stockholders' meeting at Ocean City on Thursday, August 3, 1882, the Board of Directors reported: "The first mortgage of $3,000 is paid in full, leaving the second mortgage of $6,500 to be paid out of the rents. This is expected to be extinguished in the next two or three years. The company now has property worth from $25,000 to $30,000 that cost the stockholders $15,000." The directors elected were Dr. H. R. Pitts, B. Jones Taylor, R. J. Henry, Col. Lemuel Showell, Dr. Geo. R. Dennis, Dr. S. P. Dennis and E. Stanley Toadvine — six of the seven from the circle of Berlin, Snow Hill and Somerset men who conceived the resort on the beach in July 1873 and bought the land in 1875.

   Seven years after the founding syndicate spent $15,000 on a sandbar, the sandbar was appraised at twice the money and the first mortgage was gone. The resort had stopped being a gamble.

   Atlantic HotelAtlantic Hotel CompanyDr. Hilary R. PittsCol. Lemuel ShowellGeorge R. Dennis

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

3. 1886 · 1886-04-07

   Maryland empowers the Commissioners of Ocean City to extend the town half a mile north and half a mile south.

   Chapter 474 of the Acts of 1886, approved April 7, empowered "the Commissioners of the town of Ocean City, Worcester county" to extend the town's bounds in two pieces. The northern extension began at the Atlantic Ocean end of the line of the land Stephen Taber conveyed to Hilary R. Pitts, Benjamin Jones Taylor and George W. Purnell, trustees, by deed of July 28, 1876 — "and now the northern limit of said town" — and ran a half mile north along the ocean, west to Synepuxent Bay, and back. The southern extension ran a half mile south from the original south boundary, bay to ocean. Section 2 required the commissioners to have the additional territory "carefully surveyed and marked." The act is permissive: it grants power to extend, and no source found in this pass shows the survey being made or the extension taking effect.

   Six years after Ocean City was incorporated inside a rectangle of somebody else's farmland, the state handed the town a mile of new beach — and this is the first act of the Maryland General Assembly ever addressed to Ocean City's own municipal government rather than to the men who owned it.

   The Commissioners of Ocean CityStephen TaberDr. Hilary R. PittsGeorge W. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

4. 1887 · 1887-08-01

   Seven men are elected directors of the Atlantic Hotel for the year from August 1, 1887 — the fullest named leadership Ocean City has yet produced.

   Baltimore's German daily Der Deutsche Correspondent reported on August 3 that the following had been chosen directors of the hotel at Ocean City, Md. for one year from August 1: president H. H. Dashiell; secretary B. Jones Taylor; E. S. Toadvine; Judge J. Upshur Dennis; N. J. Henry; Col. Sam Showell; and Dr. S. P. Dennis. About two hundred guests were lodging in the house at the time, "so that an excellent season is in prospect." B. Jones Taylor was one of the four men named in the Atlantic Hotel Company's 1868 charter; J. Upshur Dennis drew first choice of lots at the town's founding sale in 1875. Nineteen years on, the same names still run the house.

   No mayor, no commissioners, no bailiff — but a full slate of hotel directors, printed in German, in Baltimore. In 1887 that was the closest thing Ocean City had to a government of record.

   Atlantic HotelAtlantic Hotel CompanyHon. James U. Dennis

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

5. 1893

   The town sells lots at auction for six years of unpaid corporation taxes, and the notices name Ocean City's tax collector and its Board of Commissioners.

   Through the first half of 1893 the Democratic Messenger carried, week after week, collector's sale notices signed "BALDWIN F. WILLIAMS, Collector of Corporation Taxes for Ocean City." The first ran from March 4 against Lot No. 129, seized for taxes owed "to the Board of Commissioners of said Ocean City" for the years 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891 and 1892 — six consecutive years unpaid. The lot is described as being "on the North Corner of Caroline Street and Philadelphia Avenue, and is described as Lot No. 129 on the plat of said Ocean City filed among the land records of said Worcester County with the deed from Stephen Taber and wife to Hilary B. Pitts, B. Jones Taylor and George W. Purnell as Trustees" — the founders' 1876 purchase, still the town's root of title. A Circuit Court order nisi of August 17, 1893 ratifying the sale records the lot as assessed to Edward W. LeCompte "(and alleged to be the property of the heirs of James A. Stewart, deceased)" at Liber I.T.M. No. 4, folio 538. A second round of notices ran from April 29 against Lots 81 and 194 for 1890–1892 taxes, sold on the premises May 27, and a third against Lot 183, assessed to Manners, Fisher & Co., sold July 22.

   The Commissioners of Ocean CityBaldwin F. WilliamsGeorge W. PurnellDr. Hilary R. PittsStephen Taber

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

6. 1895

   Lots inside the original fifty acres — the ground Stephen Taber deeded to the founders' trustees on July 28, 1876 — go to auction in the Atlantic Hotel, and a bayfront-to-oceanfront block is cut into seven lots.

   A trustees' advertisement ran in the Democratic Messenger through July and August 1895: a sale "at the Atlantic Hotel at Ocean City in said Worcester County, on SATURDAY, August 17th, 1895, sale commencing at 3 o'clock p. m., all those lots of land situated at said Ocean City within the original fifty acres as laid off by Stephen Taber by deed to Hillary R. Pitts, Benjamin Jones Taylor and Geo. W. Purnell, Trustees, dated the twenty eighth day of July in the year eighteen hundred and seventy six, recorded among the land records of said Worcester County in liber I. T. M. No. 4 folios 536, 537 and 538, and are described on the plat filed in the office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court for Worcester County." That deed is the founding conveyance of Ocean City, and its date and recording reference are recovered here from an auction notice nineteen years later. The market above it was busier: the paper of August 31 advertised a block at the corner of a numbered street and Baltimore Avenue "divided into seven desirable building lots, the usual size 50x100 feet each, and sold at reasonable prices. Ocean City is booming and there are very few desirable locations purchasable. These lots, especially the ocean front lots, are the best located on the beach."

   Atlantic HotelStephen TaberDr. Hilary R. PittsGeorge W. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-06