Baltimore County, Maryland Genealogical Records Information

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MD Court, Land & Wills

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Baltimore County History and Information

Baltimore County Facts

Baltimore County was created in 1659/60 and was formed as an Original County. The County was named after the City, which was detached from it in 1851. The County Seat is Towson.

The legal origin of Baltimore County is not known, but it was in existence by January 12, 1659/60 when a writ was issued to the sheriff of the county. The County name was derived from the name of the Proprietary's Barony in Ireland in the county of Longford. At the time of its formation, it included parts of (or the whole of) todays: Harford Co., Cecil Co., Frederick Co. & Carroll Co. The original County Seat was at Spesutia Island , it was next located in Joppa Town. As a result of a popular referendum in 1768 (there is a large list of residents signing the petitions, which seems to be about the most complete list of men in the County at the time), the county seat was moved to Baltimore Town. When Baltimore was incorporated as a city, the county seat was moved to its present location in Towson.
Since 1851 Baltimore City and Baltimore County have been two completely separate enities, each with their own records. . See also County History for more historical details.

Counties adjacent to Baltimore County are York County, Pennsylvania (north), Carroll County (west), Harford County (east), Anne Arundel County (south), Howard County (southwest), Baltimore City (independent city, surrounded by Baltimore County except to the south).

Baltimore County Communities Include Baldwin, Boring, Brooklandville, Butler, Chase, Fork, Fort Howard, Germantown, Glen Arm, Glencoe, Glyndon, Halethorpe, Hereford, Hunt Valley, Hydes, Jacksonville, Long Green, Maryland Line, Monkton, Oella, Parkton, Phoenix, Ruxton, Sparks, Sparrows Point, Stevenson, Turners Station, Upper Falls, Upperco, White Hall.

Various organizations, such as the United States Census Bureau, the United States Postal Service, and local chambers of commerce, define the communities they wish to recognize differently, and since they are not incorporated, their boundaries have no official status outside the organizations in question. The Census Bureau recognizes the following census-designated places in the county: Arbutus, Bowleys Quarters, Carney, Catonsville, Cockeysville, Dundalk, Edgemere, Essex, Garrison, Hampton, Kingsville, Lansdowne-Baltimore Highlands, Lochearn, Lutherville-Timonium, Mays Chapel, Middle River, Milford Mill, Overlea, Owings Mills, Parkville, Perry Hall, Pikesville, Randallstown, Reisterstown, Rosedale, Rossville, Towson, White Marsh, Woodlawn

The Baltimore County Official Government Website
Baltimore County, Maryland History Books at Amazon.com
Family History Library - The largest collection of free family history, family tree and genealogy records in the world.

There are free downloadable and printable forms to help with your research. These include U.S. Census Extraction Forms, U.K. Census Extraction Forms, Research Calendar, Ancestral Chart, Research Extract, Correspondence Record , Family Group Sheet , Source Summary Form.

Records at the Baltimore County Courthouse

See Also Maryland Land Records, Marriage Records, Court & Probate Records

PLEASE READ!! Please call the clerk's department to confirm hours, mailing address, fees and other specifics before visiting or requesting information because of sometimes changing contact information.

Government records of Baltimore County are available in Original, Microfilm and Digital formats from the Maryland State Archives The Official County website is located at http://www.baltimorecountymd.gov/.See also Courthouse History. NOTE: The record dates below are from the earliest date to present time.

Baltimore County Register of Wills/ Clerk of Orphan's Court has Probate Records from 1666 and is located at Room 500, County Courts Building, 401 Bosley Avenue, Towson, MD 21204
The Register of Wills is responsible for appointing personal representatives to administer decedents estates and for overseeing the proper and timely administration of these proceedings. We also perform the following duties: assist and advise the public in the preparation of all required forms; maintain and preserve the permanent record of all proceedings; serve as the Clerk to the Orphans Court; track estates and refer delinquent matters to the Court; determine and collect inheritance taxes and probate fees/court costs; audit accounts of personal representatives and guardians; and, verify compliance with court orders.

Baltimore County Circuit Court Clerk has Land Records from 1661 and Marriage Records from earliest to 1919 and is located at 401 Bosley Avenue, Towson, MD 21204; (410) 887-2601
The Clerk's responsibilities include supervising Clerk's office personnel in the civil, criminal, courtroom clerks, business license, marriage license, land records, and juvenile units.

There are a few online databases for Court, Land and Probate Records which include: Maryland Calendar of Wills, Maryland Marriages, 1655-1850 and Maryland Marriages, 1667-1899.

Click Here to Search Maryland Court, Land, Wills & Financial Records! - Researchers often overlook the importance of court records, probate records, and land records as a source of family history information.

Below is a list of online resources for Baltimore County Court Records. Email us with websites containing Baltimore County Court Records by clicking the link below:

Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Baltimore County, Maryland Court Books at Amazon.com
Maryland Immigration & Emigration Records - Immigration records help the family historian to understand the movements of their ancestry as they relocated to different parts of the world.

Baltimore County Vital Records

See Also Research In Tax Records

Available at the Maryland State Archives with index is a Maryland tax assessment of 1783, which is “more complete” than the 1776 or 1778 “censuses”. Robert W. Barnes and Bettie Stirling Carothers abstracted the 1783 tax list of Baltimore County, Maryland but while it has some omissions, it serves as an index to photocopies of the originals published as Maryland Tax List 1783 Baltimore County from the collection of the Maryland Historical Society (Philadelphia: Historic Publications, 1970). The counties of Calvert, Cecil, Harford, and Talbot are covered by Bettie Carothers, comp., 1783 Tax List of Maryland (Part I: Cecil, Talbot, Harford, and Calvert Counties) (Lutherville, Md.: Pub. by compiler, 1977). Furthermore, there is a two part index to the 1783 list at the state archives, one by names of property owners, the other by names of the tracts.

The earliest tax records are to be found among the proprietary papers, dating from the 1630s. Some early tax records have been published, such as Raymond B. Clark, Jr., and Sara Seth Clark, comps., Baltimore County, Maryland, tax list, 1699-1706. At the Maryland State Archives is a tax list for St. Anne's Parish, Anne Arundel County, 1764-66. Also here are the surviving 1798 U.S. direct tax records, for Anne Arundel County (indexed), Baltimore County and City, and the counties of Caroline, Charles, Harford, Prince George's, Queen Anne's, Saint Mary's, Somerset, and Talbot. Richard J. Cox edited Name Index to the Baltimore City Tax Records: 1798-1808 Of the Baltimore City Archives, (Baltimore: Baltimore City Archives and Records Management Office, 1981).

Below is a list of online resources for Baltimore County Tax Records. Email us with websites containing Baltimore County Tax Records by clicking the link below:

Baltimore County Genealogical Addresses

See Also Other Maryland Genealogical Addresses

The Repositories in this section are Archives, Libraries, Museums, Genealogical and Historical Societies. Many County Historical and Genealogical Societies publish magazines and/or news letters on a monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual basis. Contacting the local societies should not be over looked. State Archives and Societies are usually much larger and better organized with much larger archived materials than their smaller county cousins but they can be more generalized and over look the smaller details that local societies tend to have. Libraries can also be a good place to look for local information. Some libraries have a genealogy section and may have some resources that are not located at archives or societies. Also, take a special look at any museums in the area. They sometimes have photos and items from years gone by as well as information of a genealogical interest. All these places are vitally important to the family genealogist and must not be passed over.

Below is a list of online resources for Baltimore County Genealogical Addresses. Email us with websites containing Baltimore County Genealogical Addresses by clicking the link below:

Baltimore County Genealogical Society, P.O. Box 10085, Towson, MD 21204; (410) 256-4028
Historical Society of Baltimore County, 9811 Van Buren Lane, Cockeysville, MD 21030 - 5022, (410) 666-1878, e-mail: bchistory@verizon.net, bchistory@msn.com (executive director)
Local Maryland Researchers, Find a local researcher or become a local researcher.
Maryland State Archives, 350 Rowe Boulevard, Annapolis, MD 21401
Maryland Genealogical Society, 201 W. Monument Street, Baltimore, MD 21201-4674.
Publishes the Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin Quarterly.
The Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument Street, Baltimore MD 21201-4674
Has published a quarterly magazine Maryland Historical Magazinefor over 90 years
Maryland Newspapers & Periodicals Records - Newspapers and periodicals are the diaries of local communities. They are excellent sources of family history details - often recorded nowhere else. Look for obituaries, marriages, legal notices, and more found in our Historical Newspaper Archives.
Maryland Genealogical Society Books at Amazon.com

Baltimore County Church & Cemeteries

Click Here to Search Maryland Obituary Records! - This database is a compilation of obituaries published in U.S. newspapers, collected from various online sources. Obituaries can vary in the amount of information they contain, but many of them are genealogical goldmines, including information such as names, dates, places of birth and death, marriage information, and family relationships.

There are many churches and cemeteries in Baltimore County. Some transcriptions are online. A great site is the Baltimore County Tombstone Transcription Project.

A search for church records should begin with Directory of Maryland church records (Westminster, Md.: Family Line Publications, 1987), arranged by county and giving a range of dates of available records for over 2,600 churches with mailing addresses. Also helpful are The First Parishes of the Province of Maryland (Baltimore: The Norman, Remington Co., 1923).

The largest collection of church records is at the Maryland State Archives, with a consolidated index, and many are at the Maryland State Archives, which has various original and microfilmed records, many with indexes. Some church records have been published in the Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin or in individual books, such as those for St. Paul's in Baltimore and for many German churches in the western counties.

Although Catholicism is very important to the history of Maryland, the disenfranchisement of Catholics after the establishment of the Anglican church in 1692 largely contributed to the lack of record keeping prior to the Revolutionary War. One source for St. Marys County in the 1700s, however, is Catholic Families of Southern Maryland: Records of Catholic Residents of St. Mary's County in the Eighteenth Century (1980; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1985). Records of the German churches and the Society of Friends are very good. The latter were early settlers of Maryland, along with Anglicans and Catholics. Quaker records in Maryland, (Annapolis: Hall of Records Commission, 1966) is an excellent guide to the original and microfilmed Friends' records at the Maryland State Archives. Some Quaker records were published in Kenneth Carroll, Quakerism on the Eastern Shore (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1970) and other records are at the Maryland Historical Society, the state archives, and the Friends Historical Library in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

The Maryland State Archives has indexes to cemetery records for various time periods. Some have been published in the Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin and other journals and in individual works covering large parts of Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Dorchester, Frederick, Garrett, St. Marys, Somerset, Wicomico, and Worcester counties. A great number of grave marker inscriptions have been transcribed by members of the Maryland DAR and will be found at the Maryland Historical Society and the DAR Library in Washington, D.C. See also Historic graves of Maryland and the District of Columbia (1908; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1967).

Below is a list of online resources for Baltimore County Cemetery & Church Records. Email us with websites containing Baltimore County Cemetery & Church Records by clicking the link below:

Family Trees & Genealogy Tidbits

Click Here to Search Maryland Family Tree Records! - The use of published genealogies, electronic files containing genealogical lineage, and other compiled sources can be of tremendous value to a researcher.

When view family trees online or not, be sure to only take the info at face value and always follow up with your own sources or verify the ones they provide. Below is a list of online resources for Baltimore County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information. Email us with websites containing Baltimore County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information by clicking the link below:

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Maryland Family & Local History Records - The Family & Local Histories Collection lets you read journals, memoirs, and other first-hand historical narratives right on your computer. Gathered from some of the world's finest libraries, these materials may provide hard-to-find town, county, and state information; tax records and wills; military, church, and court records; as well as photographs, stories, and maps.
Genealogical Document Search and Retrieval Service
Baltimore County, Maryland Family Books at Amazon.com

County History

Baltimore, the 12th largest city in the United States, is named "Charm City" for its residents well-established concern for the quality of life. Long considered a southern town, Baltimore owed much of its early growth and prosperity to its desirable location. It lay farther west than any other major Atlantic port, endearing its harbor to shippers. Baltimore now ranks fifth among United States ports, with major railways and trucking lines carrying cargoes to and from docks at Canton and Curtis Bay, as well as raw materials to the city's many factories.

Baltimore's economy and cultural life, in addition to its geography, influenced its local development. Baltimoreans tend to have roots in clearly identified neighborhoods, and this sense of local identification
has helped counter the alienation associated with modern city life.

Baltimore's history, however, goes back farther than that of its neighborhoods, originating in the economic needs of 18th century Maryland farmers. Nature blessed the future site of Baltimore City with a natural harbor on the Chesapeake Bay and a number of potential mill sites on the streams dropping over the fall line. Farmers bringing cereal crops to the mills for grinding were impatient with requirements that made them carry their goods to previously established ports. They, along with Baltimore County's tobacco growers, were anxious to have a customs house built in a convenient spot. Local landowners, led by the prominent Carroll family, petitioned Maryland's governor for such a house, and on August 8, 1729, a bill establishing Baltimore as a town was signed into law.

Gradually, the new town took on a life of its own. Local entrepreneurs, conscious of northern Maryland's and southern Pennsylvania's grain fields, were quick to take advantage of Baltimore's swift-flowing streams, a rarity in coastal Maryland. Shipwrights and merchants, preparing to carry flour milled on Jones Falls and Gwynns Falls to the distant reaches of the British Empire, settled along the fringes of the harbor. By 1768, the town had grown large enough to become the seat of Baltimore County.

The growing city acutely felt the Anglo-American tensions which led up to the American Revolution. As a seafaring and trading community, it suffered from commerce regulations which the British government attempted to impose. When the revolution erupted, it was evident where Baltimore's sympathies were. Her citizens not only served in the Continental army, but also participated enthusiastically in the government -licensed piracy known as "privateering." British merchants suffered losses they would long remember, and Baltimore's size and wealth burgeoned accordingly. Its population doubled between 1776 and 1790, and by 800 had doubled again.

Baltimore thrived during the Napoleonic Wars. In addition to preventing Europe from feeding itself, the conflict also used the ships which could have gone to foreign markets. Baltimore had both foodstuffs to sell and ships to carry them and continued to find enormous profit in overseas trade.

Both the British and French governments saw this as opportunism, and the British tried everything short of violence to cripple America's efforts to supplant her as ruler of the seas. In response to what was seen as harassment, America declared war in 1812. A British admiral said, "Baltimore is a doomed town".

The British, however, were unable to make this promise good. After burning Washington, DC. in the summer of 1814, they attacked Baltimore by land and sea. Thanks to the guns and heroism at Fort McHenry and North Point, Baltimore held off the British. Francis Scott Key's poetic commemoration of the fort's bombardment was later set to music to become America's national anthem.

The war ended early in 1815, having achieved little beyond ending British attempts to regulate American commerce. For Baltimoreans, however, that was enough. They resumed their vigorous foreign trade, especially in flour. By 1825, there were some 60 flour mills within a few miles of center city, as Baltimore became the second largest municipality in the United States. Her leading citizens, however, could see the clouds on the horizon.

The advancement of the American frontier, and the ongoing economic and social changes of the port's leading trade countries, South America and the Caribbean, threatened Baltimore's prosperity. In addition, other American ports were already making efforts to keep in touch with the West.
New York completed the Erie Canal; in 1825.

Philadelphia was organizing what would become the Pennsylvania Railroad, and even smaller cities like Richmond and Charleston were reaching westward. The state of Maryland concentrated its efforts on completing the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, designed to link the Potomac and Ohio River Valleys, but the city of Baltimore supported an overland link in the form of the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroad.

Baltimore was infrequently touched by military operations, but the end of the Civil War found it suffering nearly as much as many of the cities of the former Confederacy. The collapse of the South's economy naturally affected one of its leading ports of entry, as did the loss of many vessels during the war. The city gradually recovered, however, helped by an influx of displaced Southerners, as well as by the tremendous amount of grain which the B&O trains brought to port from the Middle West.

The canning industry also became important in Baltimore, as the riches of the Chesapeake Bay began, for the first time, to be preserved and shipped to other parts of the country. Older industries, such as shipbuilding and transportation, remained industrially strong, and the city continued as an active port of entry for European immigrants and rural residents from the upper South.

In 1904, however, the city's progress suffered a rude setback when a fire consumed most of its business district, including a number of historic structures. The devastated area was rapidly rebuilt, and Baltimore prospered through the First World War and into the 1920s. The Depression, however, was too great an obstacle for local initiative to overcome. Economic distress and controls imposed during World War II retarded physical development in the city. After the war, Baltimore's economy began to thrive once again, as people spent heavily on consumer goods. As their standard of living improved, city residents were attracted to new housing developments beyond Baltimore's borders, and many people left. The city, which had grown in population every year since the mid-18th century, began to shrink as adjacent counties experienced tremendous growth.

This "suburban flight" also initially depressed the city's economy, particularly the downtown retail district. By the late 1960s, Baltimore's inner city was as financially depressed as it had been during the Depression.

Much to everyone's delight, Baltimore came back strong. A redoubling of effort from the municipal, business and volunteer partnership, as well as a tapping into of ambitious federal programs for urban renewal, gave the city a new look and spirit. While problems remained, the municipality managed to revitalize the downtown area and many neighborhoods by renovating some existing buildings and replacing others.

Special attention was paid to the Inner Harbor area, where hotel, office buildings and entertainment facilities such as Harborplace, National Aquarium in Baltimore and Maryland Science Center replaced dilapidated wharves and warehouses. Other recent additions to Baltimore include the building of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the city's new ballpark, and the establishment of NAACP headquarters in the city.

Today, Baltimoreans take pride in their city, eager to live and work here, and to take advantage of a city rich in culture and history. Influenced by the talent of writers Edgar Allen Poe and H.L. Mencken, musician James Hubert "Eubie" Blake and singer Billie Holiday, Baltimore continues to grow, boasting one of the most remarkable transformations in recent American history.

Courthouse History
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