Montgomery County Land Records

Volunteers and staff at the Montgomery County Historical Society, [MCHS] Rockville, Maryland absracted the first five volumes of county land records, covering the period from 1777 to 1794 (Montgomery County was created in 1776 from Frederick County, along with Washington County, and they were named for America's first Revolutionary War Generals).  However, at the time these abstracts were done, in the 1970's, there was not the concern there is today to trace African Americans, especially enslaved families.  Now that MCHS is recognized as an "Underground Railroad" research facility in Montgomery County, a later set of abstracts to complement the first has been completed, which focuses first on the records of those omitted in the first five volumes.

These "Supplemental Abstracts, Libers A-E on Slaves are complemented by the addition of full abstracts of the records recorded in deed books F, F7 and G.    There are two Liber F's -- it appears that both Upton Beall (son of Brooke Beall, and presumed heir to the job of Clerk of the Court) and Thomas Monro, who served for a brief period in 1795 -- both men began a Liber F, which the archives has designated as F-6 and F-7 - the 6th and 7th land record books of Montgomery County.

Records for African Americans in the deed books include manusmissions and bills of sale.  Freed blacks, or "colored" also appear occasionally as grantors and grantees to deeds. They were also frequently collateral in mortgage deeds.  These records provide names, ages and occasionally descriptions.  They also identify the plantation owners where they most often lived.  

Other non-deed records include the occasional plat.  The cover shows a plat of a road the crosses the county from the Mouth of Monocacy to Tenallytown in D.C. It shows several major plantation owners, taverns and other landmarks.  It was recorded in Liber F.  Constable's bonds were recorded in the books, as were naturalization records, bastardy acknowlegements, as well as commissions to perpetuate the boundaries of tracts of land, and depositions of surveyors and neighbors.

MCHS has abstracts for African Americans, slave and free, covering the period from the county's formation until 1865.  Some of these later abstracts are also being prepared for publication, and included in full abstracts of these land records of Montgomery County. The blog author soon hopes to have libers H-J-K ready for publication.   For more information or reference lookups, contact the library at the Montgomery County Historical Society, e-mail: Libarian@montgomeryhistory.org .  For details about land record abstract publications, check out http://www.colonialroots.com/

Land Record Abstracts

Suggestions for Land Records Talk Topics

I recently received an e-mail suggested that I cover the following topics in my Land Records Basic Talk scheduled for June:

1.  Yearly quit rents: Colonial land and Lord Baltimore

2.  Warrants of survey, certificates of survey and patents--Sometimes, a person may die after receiving a certificate of survey, for example, but before receiving the land patent.

3. Escheat land--return of land to the proprietor or the state if a landowner committed suicide or of he or she had no heirs.

4. Confiscated property: from the British or the Loyalists in Maryland during the Revolution

5. Condemned property: for railroads, canals, etc. 

I looked up "quit rents" in EOGEN.com, Dick Eastman's Encyclopedia of Online Genealogy, and found no listing, so I quickly added one, but I don't think I'll cover that in my talk, which was included in a basics course, but was meant to supplement information about Probate Records.  For the same reason, I'm not going to go over warrants, surveys or patents in this talk.  After all, I'm only going to be given an hour to maybe a few minutes more, and I'm not going to condense a full course into this talk.  But I think this blog might be a good place to answer all five of these questions, just not all at once.  So to begin:

Quit Rents  from http://www.eogen.com/Quit-Rents

Payment to land proprietors for the privilege of living on patented tracts of land.  These records are also called tax records, and or "debt books" in Maryland. Occasionally when a land was surveyed in Maryland, the patent was delayed until the owner gathered together enough money to pay the quit rents, because until the patent was recorded, quit rents were not collected.  The downside is that when the land was finally patented, quit rents could be assessed from the date of survey.

Bill of Sale -- "Electrifying Machine"

Stephen Lewis recorded a bill of sale on 27 September 1831 from Elizabeth Pritchett for $1000. She sold 15 feather beds and furniture, linens, dishes, including one pair of fruit baskets, one lot glasses, the bar contents, nine waiters, two wash bowls, a Portrait of Washington, “one electrifying machine,” file of National Intelligencer, one dressing box, one lot of books and maps, one coffee boiler & stove, 11 coffee pots, one lot of tin wares, 3 coffee mills, kitchen furniture of every description, one lot of carpenters tools, set of blacksmith’s tools.  Elizabeth Pritchett signed the bill of sale before witnesses Mercer Brown, John M. Williams.[i]

The contents of this bill of sale intrigued the author, which led to the study on who was Elizabeth Pritchard, what was an “electrifying machine” and why would she have one?   The majority of bills of sale, deeds and other indentures of records recorded in the county land records are contracts between men.  There is a reason for this: 

“My enquiry into the property rights of American women revealed above all a picture of their enforced dependence, both before and after the Revolution.  Single women functioned on a legal par with men in property rights, but wives exercised only a truncated proprietary capacity.  No colony or state allowed married women, or femes coverts, as lawmakers termed them, the legal ability to act independently with regard to property. … Under property law, the male head of household held the power to manage his own property as well as his wife’s.”[ii]

Based on her signature on the bill of sale Elizabeth Pritchard was single, probably either a widow, or an unmarried woman whose parents are deceased, leaving her without living responsible male relatives. Most deeds in which a woman was involved  involved family members, raising the natural question as to what  was her relationship  to Stephen Lewis?  This Bill of Sale, unlike many others involving women, did not state a relationship between the parties.  However it does imply that either she or Stephen Lewis ran an Ordinary – who else would keep all that kitchen ware, 11 coffee pots, and 15 beds, not to mention files of the National Intelligencer, the Washington, D.C. paper, books, maps, a portrait of Washington, and listed between the latter two items – one electrifying machine.

What is an “Electrifying machine”  Like so many questions today, I used google to find an answer. The Fort William Historical Park web site (http://www.fwhp.ca/) in Ontario, Canada gave me some answers.  Fort William's electrifying machine used Leyden jars and franklinic electricity to cure a variety of aches and pains including rheumatism. It was also employed for insomnia, hysteria, and the improvement of vision, hearing, taste, and smell. The electrifying machine was housed in the Fort's Hospital. (Circa 1815).

Checking the Montgomery County Maryland license books for marriages and for ordinary/tavern license was the next step:

Marriage Licenses

            Benjamin Pritchard to Elizabeth Lewis, 10 Oct 1815

            Elizabeth Pritchard to Lucien S. Cummings, 17 Oct 1831

            John Waggoner to Sabrina Pritchard, 26 Nov 1832

Ordinary Licenses/Victualling House License

            Benjamin Pritchard, May 1830

            Elizabeth Pritchard, May 1831 – none later

            Benjamin Pritchard had license as early as 1823

            Lucien Cumming, May1832, Victualling House license

            John Wagner had Ordinary license, May 1834-1837

            In 1833 John Waggoner, Clarksburg, Trader’s license

Using wills, admin records (Benjamin Pritchard, Stephen Lewis) it turns out that Stephen Lewis was her father, and he had advertised for his tavern before Elizabeth was married. The electrifying machine is still more of a mystery -- where did it come from?  It is interesting that one of the early proponents of this machine, was none other than one of the founders of the Methodist religion.  John Wesley. If anyone has additional information on electrifying machines, I'd love to hear form you, but for this blog -- it just goes to show you never know what may turn up in a deed book.

---

[i] Montgomery County Land Records, Liber BS4:

[ii] Marylynn Salmon, Woman and the Law of Property in Early America,  University of North Carolina Press, 1986, p. xv.

Secondary Sources -- Tract Names

Recently someone commented at the Montgomery County Historical Society Library, that Maryland was the only state they knew of that gave names to land tracts. Not so, I countered, but I didn't have a ready contrary example.  However, going through my family files this morning, I came across a secondary source, not deemed reliable by some, but which provided great clues to my Crawford ancestry when I began my research on them in Western Pennsylvania.  This source is "The Horn Papers" published in 1945 by the Green County Historical Society, compiled by William Franklin Horn.  Although his methodology and some of the material has been questioned on accuracy, I still found the maps of East Bethlehem Township, which showed the Crawford's odd shaped land patents, with tract names such as "Plumb Bottom" and "Skipton" interesting and helpful at the time, and good illustrations of a point today.  Yes, other states did allow grants to be named.

The other thing that's nice about plats like this, whether done by hobbyists and volunteers or professional surveyors is that they help to identify community members.  It doesn't hurt to know That Edward Dorsey and Thomas Cooper were neighbors -- especially if you know Dorsey was from Maryland -- so were the Crawfords, as it turns out.

The Genealogy Club of the Montgomery County Historical Society had a project that began in the 1970s, to identify all of the early land patents in Montgomery County.  This project took over 20 years, and up until 5 years ago was still being tweaked by the three lady volunteers who undertook the project, Shiela Cochran, Florence Howard and Mary Charlotte Crook.

Frederick and Carroll County land patents were identified by a surveyor (or two - or three) those papers now reside at the Carroll County Historical Society --  part of the Tracey Collection. 

Later cadastral maps identify owners of farms, most natably Griffith and Klinge Atlases -- all the way to the current tax assessors maps and plats.  However, finding that your ancestor was an original grantee/grantor is always exciting.  AND if they named the patent, consider WHY they gave a name to a tract --  in Montgomery County, many places were named for places in Scotland, Ireland or England.  Consider names such as "Sligo Hills", "Clewerwell," "Chevy Chase," (from Cheviot Hills) to be clues to ancestral origins.

Why Land Records?

Genealogists often think that the Register of Wills is where their ancestor’s records will be found.  But many of our ancestors, had by the time they died,  no estate to leave.  Even for propertied estates, land may not have been distributed in the decedent's will.   Many early wills do not mention all of the heirs, assuming that the eldest son would inherit the land.  Many decedents provided for at least some of their children when the child married, and so omitted them from wills.  Whether research begins in the Register of Wills' Office or the land office, one will need to find out what real property a decedent owned, as estate inventories only cover personal property, so other records need to be reviewed for a full picture of an ancestor’s estate.

Finally, land records also help to identify neighborhoods – and it’s often the neighbors that were brothers and sisters and the parents of spouses. Many examples will follow in the days to come. Here is one from my most recent book of Land Abstracts, covering Libers P, S,T and U in Frederick County, Maryland: 

Frederick County Deeds, Liber P:492.  John Wells recorded deed 27 Nov 1772 from Elijah Hall of Linganore on Bush Creek, for £1..2 all my right to a certain school house on Ths Plummer’s land, legally purchased by work there, in shingles, nails and cash, paid to make up equal proportion to the rest of the subscribers.  Witness: Chris Cons Robotiau, teacher of school house.

This is an unusual deed, of interest because it shows the interest of a resident in providing education to (his?} children in a specific community.  It also identifies the teacher of the school house, who was a witness to the deed.



Frederick County Land Record Abstracts

Land Records have always been one of my favorite Genealogy Resources, and the spur for abstracting (and reading) all of these records has been to find some record of an elusive ancestor named Leonard Barnes who married Nancy Price in Frederick County, on 11 November 1790. Liber B was originally published in January 1995.  The second edition is dated 2003 - still self-published under GenLaw Resources.

I am pleased to announce that  a new volume is at the publisher, Colonial Roots, and will soon be out.  It covers Frederick county from 1771-1773, as recorded in Libers P, S, T and U, which together contained 1974 folio pages -- compared to Liber J (no I)  1401 folio pages in one very large volume, and was completed in November 1996.  The records in Liber J covered deeds from 1763to 1765, and supersedeas records from 1764-1767.  It has recently been reprinted by Colonial Roots.



Working on Land Record Abstracts has also led to the occasional speaking engagements -- on - what else - Land Records.  I will be one of the presenters at the next Maryland Genealogical Society Back to the Basics Work Shop on Court Records, Saturday 25 June 2011.  My topic "WHY LAND RECORDS" -- I hope I can illustrate some good reasons on this blog before then, that may become part of the presentation.  To find out more information about the workshop, the registration form and information is available at http://www.mdgensoc.org/