(from Peter Cooper's dictated autobiography) "Some fifty years ago I became interested in a very large speculation in lands in Baltimore with two men who said they had large means, and these men had obtained a conditional contract for three thousand acres of land within the city limits of Baltimore, extending from the main shipping dock, taking the whole shore for three miles, and containing the best shipping water of the harbor. They desired me to take one-third of it with them, and I went on to see the property and found it equaled their representation, and I named the proposition to my particular friend, Gideon Lee, who said he knew all about that property, that he had walked over it and examined it. He then said in his opinion the whole property was worth within five hundred thousand dollars, and we had got the contract to purchase it for one hundred and five thousand dollars. His knowledge and opinion of the property being so valuable induced me to go into the speculation with those men, and I paid my part of the purchase money. After some time I found that my money was all that which had been paid on the property, and I found I was then paying their board there, so that I was compelled to tell them that they must either buy me out or sell out or pay up their proportion. They were unprepared to do either. After some chaffing with them I got a proposition from one of them that he would go out for ten thousand dollars. I gave him the ten thousand dollars at once, for I found I was caught, and I bought it from them as quick as I could, and I gave the other one of them about eight thousand dollars, so that I had an "elephant" on hand. Both of those men were New Yorkers. I then cast about to see what I could do with the property to enable me to pay taxes and make the best of it, and finding that there was good iron ore on what was then known as the Lazaretto Point I had forty-five hundred tons of it dug; and then I concluded to burn the wood off from the property and make charcoal and melt this ore up into iron."