In the beginning, back when Baltimore was a town of just 60 acres, there were pigs. There were people, of course — 43 of them by 1729 — but apparently a lot of pigs, too: free-roaming swine that some 18th-century Baltimoreans liked and others despised.

Some of the town’s first inhabitants considered pigs to be public servants. Others saw them as a public nuisance.

The pig schism transcended generations. Pigs were at the center of a long public debate — by long, I mean like a century — and they were the reason our municipal forebears undertook what might have been Baltimore’s first attempt at an infrastructure project.

And had their first big fail.

Thanks to the assiduous work of Matt Crenson, professor emeritus of political science at the Johns Hopkins University and one of our wisest owls, we have an understanding of the role pigs played in Baltimore’s early development.

Crenson has been laboring for years on a political history of the city, and it will finally be published, at more than 500 pages, next month by the Johns Hopkins University Press. "Baltimore: A Political History" is a delightful read, richly informative and amusing in parts, and no part more amusing than Crenson’s survey of the swine issue.

In the early to mid-18th century, when Maryland was still a colony, Baltimore was a small town with no clout. All political power was in Annapolis with the colonial assembly. In 1729, the assembly established Baltimore Town and appointed seven commissioners to oversee the sale of lots. Eighteen years later, the assembly allowed the commissioners to develop new streets, hold a couple of fairs and deal with "nuisances."

That’s when the commissioners first decided to take up the “nuisance” of roaming pigs. Their idea was to build a fence — a big, beautiful fence (sorry, couldn’t resist) — around Baltimore Town to keep pigs off the town’s muddy, unpaved streets. They planned to finance the project with “debts and arrearages” due to the town.

They hired William Fell to do the job, but immediately encountered what might have been Baltimore’s first construction delay: Fell died before he could set a single fence post.

Determined to get the barrier built, the commissioners hired two other contractors to complete the job in 1750. But Crenson reports the project failed due to lack of public support. Winter came, and Baltimoreans stole posts from the unfinished fence for firewood.

“Baltimore would attempt repeatedly to regulate the wanderings of wayward swine,” Crenson writes, “but for a century after the failure of the fence, porcine pedestrians would continue to walk the streets along with Baltimore’s human beings.”

Baltimore grew slowly — in large measure, says Crenson, because it lacked autonomy from Annapolis. The streets remained unpaved, and by the end of 1776, when the Continental Congress moved from Philadelphia to Baltimore, John Adams declared it “the dirtiest place in the World.”

Adams understood that Baltimore had no political power, no authority to raise funds for public projects, such as street paving. Annapolis passed laws making it illegal for pigs and geese to roam Baltimore’s swampy streets, but nothing changed for years.

And so the pigs remained. It seems from Crenson’s history that many Baltimoreans, especially the poorest ones, came to appreciate them. Pigs ate the garbage that humans created in spring and summer. Once butchered, pigs provided food for a family in fall and winter.

Baltimore’s incorporation as a city came in 1797. That’s when the population of 20,000 got its first mayor and City Council. Over the next 50 years, writes Crenson, Baltimore achieved functional autonomy and enjoyed greater representation in the General Assembly.

But well into the 19th century, an old concern remained. “The town’s enduring preoccupation with ‘swine going at large’ continued,” Crenson writes. The City Council tried to prohibit pigs from wandering the streets, but opponents argued that pigs made a contribution to public sanitation: Pigs ate garbage.

The Baltimore Sun treated that argument with contempt: Encouraging pigs to eat garbage just encouraged Baltimoreans to leave garbage in the streets. When the council voted to make it illegal to bring hogs into the city except for sale or slaughter, there was more backlash.

Crenson tracks argument and impasse, action and stalemate over more than a century. Wandering swine were not among the big problems that hindered Baltimore in its early development. But this bit of history reflects the stubborn parochialism and official dithering that might have gotten into the city’s DNA. Crenson’s rendering of the pig issue is not meant to be quaint. It’s there because it’s telling — about yesterday, and today.

drodricks@baltsun.com