Maryland Government records cover a broad range of genealogy subject areas that can help you as part of your research, such as land ownership, courts, taxes, and naturalization’s. Given that Maryland court records cover such a wide selection of topics, they could aid you in many different ways. As an example, they could aid you in finding ancestors’ residences, identify occupations, locate financial information, determine citizenship status, or shed light on relationships between individuals. The whole thing relies upon on the type of court records that the ancestors” names show up in. For Definitions of all court terms see the Genealogy Encyclopedia.
Maryland Courthouse records change extensively from county to county in both level of quality and volume. You will find different kinds of court records that are most likely to possess information related for your genealogical research below.
Maryland Court Records
Early proprietary records in Maryland were kept by the Calvert family. Many of them have been recovered over the years, but some are still missing. The earliest royal papers and proprietary records are from 1637 to 1785. They can be found in Calendar of Maryland State Papers No. 1 The Black Books. Many provincial and general court records and indexes spanning the years of 1658 to 1805 are housed at the Maryland State Archives. Records of the chancery court, also known as the equity court, from 1668 to 1851 can also be found there. Maryland Historical Magazine 23 (1928): 101- 54, 197-242, 293-343 contains depositions from the years of 1668 to 1789.
Many other early court records have been indexed and published over the years. One example is 2 volumes of 1637 to 1780s county and provincial records held by the Archives of Maryland. Those records are now available online as were. Certain court records from Caroline, Charles, Somerset, Carroll, and Montgomery counties have also been published.
The counties still hold many of the court records from the 1900s, but the state archives holds most of the earlier court records. Estate records, wills, and related documents are held by the Orphans’ Court clerk’s office. The commissioner’s office holds the road surveys and tax records. However, copies of many of the records just listed can also be found at the Maryland State Archives. See Also Research In Court Records.
