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/
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