THE COUNTIES OF MARYLAND

WORCESTER COUNTY.

Worcester County, as it was known forty years ago, was erected in
1742 by an Act of Assembly, but more than half a century before that
there was a Worcester County erected by order of the Lord Proprietary
and even this Act was but the amplification of previous instructions to
erect an unnamed county where Worcester now is.

On the 22d of October, 1669, the Council of Maryland, following
out instructions received from his Lordship bearing the date of July
28, 1669, ordered

" that from the Hore kill to Mount Scarborough be .... erected into
a County & called as the Lord Proprietary shall hereafter direct" (Md.
Arch., 5: 57).

The limits of the county as here named are the Hore kill or Lewes
Creek near Lewes, Delaware and Mount Scarborough which, according
to Herrmanns map of 1670, lay south of Snow Hill, probably near the
present town of Scarboro. The total elevation above sea-level in this
region is usually below forty feet so that it is hard to find any place
which might be designated as a " Mount."

His Lordship's instructions at the same time called for the erection
of a county, named Durham, which was to extend north of Worcester
County along the Delaware from the Whorekill to the 40th degree of
North Latitude.

On the 19th of June, in the year 1672, the Proprietary Lord Balti-
more through his Governor erected a Worcester County which included
practically all of the territory under dispute between himself and the
Duke of York (the same having not yet been granted to William Penn).
The proclamation runs as follows:

" Beginning at the Southermost Branch of a Bay now called Rehoboth
Bay and from thence running Northerly up the Sea Board side to the South
Cape of Deleware Bay and thence to the "Whore keil Creeke and up the Bay
to the fortieth degree Northerly Latitude into a County and do hereby erect
the same into a County and it is our will and Pleasure that it shall be a
County and called by the name of Worcester County in our said Province of
Maryland."

According to these limits the Worcester County of 1672 included not
only the unnamed county of 1669 but Durham County as well, the lim-