Maryland State Facts & Information

Maryland, one of the eastern states of the United States. Maryland is bordered by Pennsylvania on the north, Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Virginia on the south, and West Virginia on the southwest and west. Washington, D.C., the national capital, is an enclave along the Virginia border. The Potomac River forms most of Maryland’s western boundary and Chesapeake Bay deeply indents the eastern part of the state. Annapolis is the state capital and Baltimore is the largest city.

The Maryland colony was founded in 1634 and was named for the wife of English King Charles I, Queen Henrietta Maria. Colonial Maryland attracted many settlers and, as its economy prospered, so did its social, political, and cultural life. Maryland entered the Union on April 28, 1788, as the 7th of the original 13 states.

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Maryland and its residents were involved in many of the events relating to the attainment of independence by the United States and to the early struggles of the young republic. During the Civil War (1861-1865), Maryland, a border state, became part of the great battleground between North and South, but the state itself stayed within the Union. During the first half of the 20th century the economic development of Maryland was marked by a shift in emphasis from farming to manufacturing. The state is now primarily an industrial state. Despite this shift, agriculture is still carried on throughout most of the state.

Maryland has no official nickname. However, the most commonly accepted name, and also one of the oldest, is the Old Line State. This nickname honors the memory of Maryland’s regiments of the line, which fought with distinction in the American Revolution (1775-1783). The Official State Website is http://www.maryland.gov/.

In 1632 Maryland was granted to George Calvert, formerly secretary of state under King James I of England, but he could not hold public office after he espoused Catholicism in 1625. The Maryland Charter was issued to George's son Cecilius alias Cecil, Second Baron Baltimore, in 1632, but it was Cecil's younger brother Leonard who brought the first colonists aboard the Ark and the Dove, landing in March 1634 at St. Clements Island near the future capital at St. Mary's. Named for Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I, the colony was called Maria's Land or Mariland. Agriculture and trading were quickly established with the help of laborers who worked off their passage to the new land, friendly Native Americans, and slaves from Africa. The Europeans had good relations with the original inhabitants, although by the end of the century many had perished from disease, war, or liquor, and others were forced north or in some cases integrated with other groups.

A significant point in Maryland's history was the passage of the Act of Toleration in 1649, which encouraged settlement by many non-conformists, not only Catholics (in Calvert, Charles, and St. Marys counties) but also dissenters from Virginia (in Anne Arundel County) and Friends (Quakers). The Protestant Revolution in England, however, spread unrest to Maryland, and the proprietary government was overthrown by the Crown in 1689. The Anglican church was established as the state church of Maryland, and the capital moved to a more central location at Annapolis. With the conversion of the young Lord Baltimore to Protestantism, the proprietorship was restored in 1715. In 1781 Catholics were disfranchised and barred from public office, but Jesuit Fathers continued to quietly serve a growing Catholic populace despite laws forbidding them to celebrate the Mass or perform the sacraments. A number of early Maryland gentry unions occurred through Catholic-Protestant marriages.

The earliest settlements congregated in southern Maryland, on the Western Shore, in Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles, and St. Marys counties. By 1695, this included Prince Georges County, which until 1748 stretched from Pennsylvania to Virginia. Virginia fur traders had settled at Kent Island prior to Calvert's immigrants' arrival in 1634. On Maryland's Eastern Shore, Somerset County bordered Virginia, from which colony came the first settlers, soon joined by emigrants from St. Marys and new arrivals from Britain. By the 1680s Baltimore County, along the waterways of the Patapsco and Gunpowder rivers, was seated. Because of an uncertain border, evidence of many settlers in western Kent and southern and western Sussex counties in Delaware are found in Maryland records until the time of the Revolutionary War.

In the eighteenth century settlers left the Chesapeake region and began building homes among the hills and valleys of western Maryland. Beginning in the 1730s, Germans from bordering Pennsylvania counties poured into what were then Baltimore and Frederick counties; some Quaker groups came about this time from New Jersey. In the mid-1700s many settlers came from Pennsylvania, and servants, felons, and Jacobite rebels numbered heavily among the eighteenth-century emigrants from Britain, with the Jacobites sold as laborers. Migrations out of Maryland in the eighteenth century included Catholics from St. Marys into Kentucky, and Moravians, most of whom went to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in the 1760s to obtain free land. Other Germans, Ulster-Scots, and Quakers went south to Virginia and the Carolinas. With the completion of the National Road in 1818, migration westward through and out of Maryland was greatly increased. The building of the country's first railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio, as well as a canal system along the Potomac River, also increased mobility within and out of the state.

Although British warships visited the Chesapeake in 1777, and there was a sizable number of Loyalists among the populace, no major battles were fought in Maryland during the American Revolution. The state was, however, the site for much action during the War of 1812. Although loyal to the Union during the Civil War, there was much sympathy for the South in southern Western Shore counties and among the upper classes, and many fought for the Confederacy. After the war, many black Southerners fled to Maryland from their devastated homes. About this same time began a large influx of Germans and eastern Europeans through Baltimore, one of the major eastern ports. See Also More Maryland History.....

Maryland has twenty-three counties and the city of Baltimore, which is not under county jurisdiction. At the courthouses are recorded transfers of land, estates, and other records. In the county pages linked below is the name of the county with the mailing address of the county circuit court clerk, where deeds, mortgages, vital records, divorces, naturalizations, and other matters are recorded. The date the county was created and the name or names of the parent county or counties.

he date the earliest land deed was recordeds.The date when orphans' court records begin, followed by the mailing address of that court's clerk, the register of wills, if different from the circuit court clerk. While some records are available in the counties, most original and/or microfilm copies of land, estate, vital, and court records have been transferred to the Maryland State Archives. As new county records are created they will continue to be filmed and sent to the state archives. Other county offices not included below may have different mailing addresses. Choose from the counties below to view the county information.

Maryland Discontinued Counties

 

This section provides an list of Maryland counties that no longer exist. They were established by the state, provincial, or territorial government. Most of these counties were created and disbanded in the 19th century; county boundaries have changed little since 1900 in the vast majority of states.

• Charles County: Formed in 1650 from part of Saint Mary's County. Abolished in 1654. Referred to as Old Charles County
• Durham County: formed in 1669 from part of Somerset County and nonorganized territory. Abolished in 1672 and incorporated in Worcester County
• Worcester County: formed in 1672 from part of Durham County and nonorganized territory. Lost in 1685 when Delaware Colony was established.

Maryland Burned Courthouses

 

The destruction of courthouses greatly affects genealogists in every way. No only are these historic structures torn from our lives, so are the records they housed: marriage, wills, probate, land records, and others. Once destroyed they are lost forever. Even if they have been placed on mircofilm, computers and film burn too. The most heartbreaking side of this is the fact that many of our courthouses are destroyed at the hands of arsonist. However, not all records were lost.

Below is a list of Maryland Counties and the years the Courthouses were subjected to a disaster. This does NOT mean that ALL RECORDS were lost. Often, folks took their documents again in for recording after a disaster and later deeds will contain long chains of title, etc.

• Allegany County - A courthouse fire in 1893 destroyed marriage records for 1791-1847 and naturalizations for 1892-1893.
• Anne Arundel County - The courthouse was destroyed by fire in 1704, with the loss of all but three court record volumes. Deeds before 1699 were lost, but there are five volumes of re-recorded deeds.
• Calvert County - Most records were destroyed when the courthouse burned in 1882, but some deeds dating back to 1840 were re-recorded. Abstracts of deeds sent to Annapolis beginning in 1784 and provincial court deeds/land office records also make up for some of the destroyed records.
• Carroll County - Most early papers of the county court have been lost.
• Cecil County - Many early court records have disappeared.
• Dorchester County - There are gaps in the court records. Some were probably lost in a fire in 1852.
• Frederick County - There were two major fires, but no major loss of records.
• Harford County - Some records were destroyed in a fire in 1858.
• Howard County - The county was formed in 1838 as Howard District of Anne Arundel Co., but did not gain full county status until 1850.
• Kent County - A courthouse fire in 1720 destroyed some records.
• Montgomery County - A southern section of the county was set off in 1788 to form the District of Columbia.
• Saint Marys County - The courthouse was destroyed by fire in 1831. Some deeds were re-recorded back to 1781, and abstracts of deeds sent to Annapolis beginning in 1784 also make up for some of the records that were destroyed.
• Somerset County - The courthouse burned in 1831, but the records were saved.
• Talbot County - Many court records have been lost.
• Washington County - Some records were lost in a courthouse fire in 1871.