xxxii              Somerset County.

        of the presiding justice, Stephen Horsey. Thorne continued to serve as a justice
        of Somerset until his death, c. 1669. His home was at “Thornton “, a planta-
        tion on the north side of the Manokin River. He appears to have been a member
        of the Church of England.
         Capt. John Odber ( -1667), one of the early commissioners on the lower
        Eastern Shore of Maryland, was in the Province as early as July 1658, when
        he appears as commander of militia on the north side of the Patuxent River.
        In April 1661 he was sent in command of fifty men to aid the Susquehannock
        Indians to ward off the inroads of the northern tribes. On February 20, 1662/3,
        he was appointed on the commission of the peace for the lower Eastern Shore,
        but his name does not again appear when the other justices were reappointed
        in May 1664. After this he disappears fiuiii the records until an entry in the
        Council proceedings, dated August 6, 1667, makes note of “Captain John
        Odber and his Servant being lately murdered by some of the Wiccomeses
        Indians” (Arch. Md. V, 11, 29).
         George Johnson (c. 1627-1681), who was appointed one of the commission-
        ers of the peace for the lower Eastern Shore the year before the erection of
        Somerset County in 1666, probably came into Maryland from Northampton
        County, Virginia, early in 1663. His English background is known. He was
        the son of Edward Johnson of Canterbury, and came to Virginia some time
        prior to January 1660/1. Johnson was a non-conformist, probably at first an
        Independent or Congregationalist, but after coming to Virginia was converted
        to Quakerism and became an active member of that sect. He settled on the
        Annemessex and was one of the leading planters of Somerset County. He was
        appointed one of the justices of the lower Eastern Shore on August 28, 1665,
        and when Somerset County was erected in August 1666, he was reappointed
        as a justice of the newly created county. When this part of the Eastern Shore
        was invaded by Scarburgh in October 1663, Johnson was energetic in his
        opposition to the former's scheme to add the disputed territory to Virginia,
        and drew upon his head Scarburgh's description of him as “ye proteus of
        heresy “. Johnson's Quaker conscience became uneasy, and lie “desired time
        to consider the oath “, when he was appointed in August 1666 on the new
        Somerset County Court, although he finally took the oath at St. Mary's City
        on September 1 1th Johns on remained a member of the Somerset County
        Court until 1680, although his name disappears from the list of justices when
        he was sheriff of the county in 1668-1669. Johnson was the first clerk of the
        lower Eastern Shore court, a temporary appointment pending the arrival of
        Edmund Beauchamp as clerk of the new county. He lived on his plantation,
        “Straights “, on the Great Annemessex River. He died in 1681.
         William Stevens (1630-1687) was commissioned a justice of the peace of
        the lower Eastern Shore of Maryland in August, 1665. He was of the quorum,
        and was recommissioned on August 22, 1666, when Somerset County was
        erected, continuing to serve until his death in 1687. He was the son of John
        Stevens of Ledburn in the parish of Mentmore, Buckinghamshire, England.
        There is some evidence that he had been in Northampton County, Virginia,
        before appearing on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1665. He was a member