Introduction. xxxix

Private acts. Two private acts were passed at the November-December
session. Mary Covington, the widow and administratrix of Philip Covington
of Somerset County, petitioned the Assembly for authority to sell certain lands
belonging to his estate to pay various persons to whom he had been indebted
(pp. 44, 271-274). The petition was referred by the Upper House to the
Lower House, which appointed a committee to inquire as to the facts set forth
in the petition. This report, which showed the various debts due by Covington,
resulted in the introduction and passage of a bill giving the widow the desired
authority to sell certain specified lands and pay the debts (pp. 163-164). The
act as passed showed that Philip Covington died September 1, 1763, leaving
four minor children, three sons and a daughter, a personal estate amounting
to £184: 0: 5, and sundry tracts of land; that his debts amounted to £406:
3: 9 1/4 current money besides obligations by him as co-surety with Nehemiah
Covington, now insolvent, to the amount of £101: 17: 7. The executrix was
given authority to sell at public vendue the tracts Covington's Conclusion, Cov-
ington's Adventure, and Sweetwood, lying in Somerset County, to enable her
to pay her late husband's debt (pp. 271-274).

A petition was presented in the Upper House from Anne Ogle (the widow
of Governor Samuel Ogle), Benjamin Tasker (President of the Governor's
Council) and John Hammond (member of the Lower House), asking the
authority of the General Assembly for the sale to John Hammond of certain
lands in Anne Arundel County belonging to the estate of Samuel Ogle (pp. 50,
283-284). The petition was referred to the Lower House where a committee
was appointed to examine into the facts alleged in it. This committee reported
that Samuel Ogle by his will dated February 11, 1752, devised to his son,
Benjamin Ogle, his heir at law, his house and lands in Prince George's County
and elsewhere, together with all his slaves and stock "except his English Horses
and their Breed", and that it would be of advantage to the heir, that the Anne
Arundel County land, which was unproductive, be now sold and the proceeds
invested for his benefit (pp. 174, 175-176). The report of the committee and
the act give most interesting information about the Ogle family and their
noted estate Bel Air in Prince George's County. Anne Ogle, one of the peti-
tioners, was the mother of the heir at law Benjamin Ogle, afterwards Gover-
nor of Maryland, and Benjamin Tasker, her father, President of the Council,
was his guardian; John Hammond, to whom the Anne Arundel property was
sold for £150 sterling, was at the time a member of the Lower House (pp.
283, 285).

Adjournment of the Assembly was hurried by a flare-up of the smallpox
epidemic in Annapolis and by the death of one of the delegates from this dis-
ease. The victim of smallpox was Col. Henry Travers of Dorchester County.
On December 18 the house ordered the Speaker to issue a writ for the election
of a delegate to succeed Travers (p. 251). The Lower House notified the
Governor the same day that it would not be possible to keep a sufficient number
of members together to compose a house more than a day longer, and asked
for a prompt adjournment, as there was no more public business to transact.
The delegates were thereupon summoned by the Governor to the Upper House,