Frederick County, Maryland Genealogical Records Information

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Frederick County History and Information

Frederick County Facts

Frederick County was created in 1748 (Chapter 15, Acts of 1748) and was formed from Baltimore and Prince George's Counties. The County was named for Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore was the last Lord Baltimore, who was the Proprietor of Maryland from 1751 until his death in 1771 at Naples, Italy. The County Seat is Frederick. See also County History for more historical details.

Counties adjacent to Frederick County are Adams County, Pennsylvania (north), Carroll County (east), Howard County (southeast), Franklin County, Pennsylvania (north), Montgomery County (south), Washington County (west), Loudoun County, Virginia (southwest).

Frederick County Cities Include Brunswick, Frederick. Towns Include Burkittsville, Emmitsburg, Middletown, Mount Airy, Myersville, New Market, Thurmont, Walkersville, Woodsboro.Villages Include Rosemont. Communities Include Adamstown, Graceham, Ijamsville, Jefferson, Knoxville, Ladiesburg, Lewistown, Libertytown, Lake Linganore, Monrovia, New Midway, Point of Rocks, Rocky Ridge, Sabillasville, Sunny Side, Tuscarora, Urbana, Wolfsville. (Unincorporated areas are also considered as towns by many people and listed in many collections of towns, but they lack local government.)

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: Ballenger Creek, Braddock Heights, Clover Hill, Discovery-Spring Garden, Green Valley, Linganore-Bartonsville

The Frederick County Official Government Website
Frederick 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 Frederick 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. There were two major fires, but no major loss of records.

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

Frederick County Register of Wills/ Clerk of Orphan's Court has Probate Records from ? and is located at 100 W. Patrick St. , Frederick, MD 21701; (301) 663-3722
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.

Frederick County Circuit Court Clerk has Land Records from ? and Marriage Records from earliest to 1919 and is located at 100 W. Patrick St. , Frederick, MD 21701; 301-694-1976, 301-694-1980 (marriage), 301-694-1961 (land)
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 Frederick County Court Records. Email us with websites containing Frederick County Court Records by clicking the link below:

Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Frederick 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.

Frederick 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 Frederick County Tax Records. Email us with websites containing Frederick County Tax Records by clicking the link below:

Frederick 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 Frederick County Genealogical Addresses. Email us with websites containing Frederick County Genealogical Addresses by clicking the link below:

Historical Society of Frederick County, Inc., 24 East Church St., Frederick, MD 21701, (301) 663-1188, e-mail: mhudson@hsfcinfo.org
Frederick County Genealogical Society , P.O. Box 234, Monrovia, MD 21770; (301) 831-5781
Tu-W & first & second . Sat 9:00-1:00, W 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, Th 10:00-3:00
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

Frederick 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 Frederick County. Some transcriptions are online. A great site is the Frederick 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 Frederick County Cemetery & Church Records. Email us with websites containing Frederick 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 Frederick County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information. Email us with websites containing Frederick County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information by clicking the link below:

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Genealogical Document Search and Retrieval Service
Frederick County, Maryland Family Books at Amazon.com

County History

In March of 1732 the proprietor of the Provence of Maryland desired to attract settlers to the Northern and the Western areas of his territory., so he made a proclamation declaring special land prices and taxes for settlers.

1st Any person having a family to come to the land within three years of the proclamation and actually settle on the land could have two hundred acres without payment for 3 years. After 3 years the settler had to pay to the proprietor four shillings sterling for every hundred acres.
2nd Any single person, male or female between the ages of 14 and 31 could have 100 acres under the same conditions.
3rd They were to be charged taxes and the security of their land would be insured as if they were British subjects, which was quite a boon.

Large tracts of land were speedily secured by a relatively few of the wealthier citizens of Maryland, including the finest parts of the valleys of the Monocacy and the Antietam.

While the early land grants were to English-speaking people from Maryland, and the earliest settlers came from nearby St. Mary's, Charles, and Prince George's Counties, a large part of the actual settlers of the land were Palatines from Germany. Most of the German speaking Immigrants were spreading south from Pennsylvania. Commerce between the German settlements in southern Pennsylvania and parts of Virginia was common, and the main road between these areas was through this part of Maryland.

Long before there were any settlements in Frederick County, parties of Germans passed through it from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to seek homes in Virginia. The principal route was over a pack horse or Indian road that crossed the present Pennsylvania counties of York and Adams to the Monocacy where it passed into Maryland. Once in Maryland, the road passed through Crampton's Gap and crossed the Potomac at several fords. The first German settlement in Frederick County was as early as 1729 in the village of Monocacy, which was the first village beyond the lower part of Montgomery County in Western Maryland .

Monocacy was situated at or near the present village of Creagerstown. Here around 1732 the first German church, which was known as the Log Church, was built in Maryland. The Log Church later became the church of Creagerstown and then was replaced by a brick church a few rods north of the old site in 1834. There were several taverns there to accommodate travelers on the Monocacy Road, which was constructed by the governments of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Monocacy Road was an improvement upon the old Indian trail which was formerly used. The road went from Wright's Ferry in Pennsylvania to the Maryland line, then to the Potomac, and then on to the uplands of Virginia.

This group was called the Irish by the locals and the history books. However they were actually Scots/Irish who were also known as the Ulster Scots. The Scots/Irish tended to migrate towards the highlands of Frederick County Maryland in the more western parts of the county. In small groups, they also lived in the German communities of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.

The French and Indian War also known as the Seven Years War, began in 1755 with general disaster to the British cause and the American colonies. The plan was for France to take possession of the British area of North America and for her and her allies to divide the colonies up among them. In the early part of 1754 every Indian suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from Frederick County. The emissaries of France had been among them and had enlisted their aid in their scheme to take possession of the full Mississippi Valley. England was laying claim to virtually all of North America. However, the French had a well established colony at New Orleans, and they were steadily extending their influence northward through the Mississippi Valley. When the English government made a grant of certain priveleges beyond the Allegheny Mountains to the Virginia Ohio Company, the French increased their efforts to establish a chain of forts from Canada to their Mississippi settlements. The object was to confine the English colonies to the Atlantic slope. The French had a long standing treaty with the Iriquois Indians, and the Iriquois were greatly feared by every other Indian tribe in the whole area, including Western Maryland. Thus the French and the Iriquois were able to intimidate the greater part of the Indian tribes of the area to make war upon the English colonies. All of the settlements of the western parts of Frederick County eventually came under attack. Since the Scots/Irish were largely in the area between the Indians and the Germans, they were the first to feel the brunt of the attacks. Then the colonists, including the Germans were killed, tortured and burned out. Monocacy was burned until just the old log Church and a few nearby buildings were left standing. The depredations suffered by the colonists were legendary and T.J.C. Williams goes into great detail in his "History of Western Maryland", so I won't go into it here. The war was won through the efforts of the colonial army with little actual help from the British regulars.

After the war was over, Creagerstown was laid out by John Cramer between 1760 and 1770 about a mile from the original settlement of Monacacy and a short distance north of the old Log Church.

As the tide of German immigrants increased, a more direct route to Western Maryland was established. The immigrants landed at Annapolis and later some at Baltimore. From there they traveled over the bad roads of that time to their destinations in the valley of the Monocacy. The Maryland officials early appreciated the value of the German settlers to the province and did all they could to encourage the movement, as the Germans were looked upon as a thrifty, industrious and God-fearing poeple who were a benefit to the community. From 1752 to 1755, 1060 German immigrants arrived by this route besides those that came in through Philadelphia and used the Monocacy Road.

Courthouse History
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