Kilty left an estate valued at $6,407.33, that included eight slaves and 224 ounces of plate (silver). He owned an extensive library of more than ninety volumes in English, French, Latin, and Italian, a variety of musical instruments a piano forte, small piano, bass violin, and violin, and a large collection of music books. His property included one writing desk in the Land Office and two in the Court of Appeals office. Twenty-nine copies of The Land-holder's Assistant were valued at $.58 each and a thirtieth copy at $2.00. His amusements included backgammon and chess. From the original inventory, William Kilty's account of his brother's estate subtracted $146.30 of the plate as the property of Catherine Kilty as well as her interest in four slaves and other property specified in a mortgage of 8 February 1810. Kilty owed over $4,000 to Farmer's Bank in Annapolis and more than $6,000 to his brother. Kilty had inherited about 300 acres of land from his father and received 400 acres in Allegany County for his service in the Revolutionary War, but held only 200 hundred acres of the Allegany land at the time of his death. Nonetheless, he must have been renting land in Anne Arundel as his inventory included poultry, hogs, six oxen, seven head of cattle, five horses, wheat, oats, corn, and a fodder house.

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John Kilty wrote his treatise on the Land Office to provide his fellow citizens with a history of land affairs in Maryland and a guide to the operations of the office. He sought to clarify and systematize an amorphous collection of precedents and procedures that had been handed down from generation to generation, augmented by occasional legislative statutes. Publication of The Land-holder's Assistant as volume 73 of the Archives of Maryland makes Kilty's work accessible to a far broader audience to a much greater degree (utilizing the on-line search engine) than it has ever enjoyed but which it manifestly deserves.