xlviii         Early Maryland County Courts.

            two of them justices, for lands which apparently he had recently sold to them
            (p. 414-415). As there were severe penalties imposed upon any white purchas
            ing lands from the Indians, the significance of this receipt for “full satisfac
            tion” is obscure.
              References to negroes and slaves in these county court records are rather
            infrequent. In fact, at the beginning of our period there were not many negroes
            in the Province, and some of these were indentured servants, and at its close,
            1676, there were probably only a few hundred negro slaves. In the last quarter
            of the century, however, there was a progressive increase in numbers. There
            was recorded in the Charles County Court, December 8, 1661, a bill of sale of
            two negroes, Sampson and Maria, from Robert Slye to Francis Pope (p. 174).
            There was recorded in the Talbot County Court an agreement, dated May 20,
            1671, which shows that Richard Wharton, of Boston, New England, a slave
            trader, had contracted to deliver ten negroes to Jonathan Sibery of Talbot
            County (Arch. Md. liv, 5 19-522). The appearance of free negroes in Somerset
            County, not only as landowners, but as the owners of negro servants, or pos
            sibly slaves, is of considerable interest. Randall Revell, July 2, 1667, sued
            “Jno Johnson, negro “, for debt (Arch. Md. liv, 675-676). On March 11, 1667,
            this John Johnson and two white men, charged with stealing corn from the
            Indians, were bound over for the action of the next county court, when they
            confessed, and were ordered by the court to repay the Indians in kind (Arch.
            Md. liv, 707, 712). Among the registered cattlemarks recorded in Somerset,
            was one entered, September 3, 1672, by “John Cazara, negro servant to Mary
            Johnson, negro, relict of Anthony Johnson, deceased “. Mary Johnson, who
            also had her own cattlemarks (Arch. Md. liv, 760, 761), was the mother of
            John Johnson. Clayton Torrance, in his Old Somerset on the Eastern Shore of
            Maryland (pp. 75-76), gives a most interesting sketch of this Johnson family,
            who were free negroes in Accomac County, Virginia, as early as 1622, and had
            come into Maryland about 1661, where they and their descendants were land
            owners for many years.
              There is frequent mention in these county records of doctors, chirurgeons,
            and lay practitioners of medicine not formally designated by a title, as well as
            of diseases, injuries, abortions, infanticides, post-mortem examinations, and of
            treatments by physick, clysters, incisions and other means. Some of these prac
            titioners, both male and female, seem to have had great difficulty in collecting
            their fees, and were very prone to enter suit, and the fact that in court they
            emphasized the success of their cures, indicates that a poor result was less apt
            to be followed by a favorable judgement of the court, or verdict by a jury, than
            was a cure. While there is no way of determining the facts, it is highly unlikely
            that many of these practitioners had received much medical training in the
            Province or elsewhere.
             Probably the outstanding phyoician mentioned in these records was for
            Richard Tilghman (1625-1676) of “The Hermitage “, Talbot, now Queen
            Anne's County, described variously in the early records as both “doctor of
            physic “, and “chirurgeon” of London. He was a man with a good English
            background, a large landholder, and was sheriff of Talbot County from 1669 to