40 LAND OFFICE RECORDS

After 1734 the Rent Rolls series seems to proceed in continuous,
complete fashion, especially in the Eastern Shore rolls. Western
Shore rent rolls after 1734 were not kept in a uniform, orderly
fashion each year until many years later. There, every few years or
so each county seemed to make up a rent roll which would then be
known as the "Rent Roll of 1758" or the "Rent Roll of 1762", in
which all entries were brought up to date since the last rent roll.
But the years varied in different counties and it is impossible to say
that the series is complete even though all dates seem to be included,
with the exception of Calvert and St. Mary's Counties for which no
entries between 1769 and 1775 are to be found. In 1768 the Board of
Revenue apparently established a more rigid system and a regular
annual additional rent roll was made for each county, as had been
done in Eastern Shore counties ever since 1734.

The Debt Book series, as has been pointed out, goes back to 1733
for the Eastern Shore counties. Western Shore debt books in the
Land Office series begin in 1753, but debt books for the year 1750
are to be found in the Calvert Papers for five Western Shore coun-
ties. Each debt book, in its present make-up, consists of from two
to eight small volumes bound together into one. This series appears
to have been very imperfectly preserved. Over a third of the small
annual volumes are missing, mostly in Eastern Shore counties. Only
for Charles and St. Mary's counties has the whole series been pre-
served completely, and since these are both Western Shore counties
that means they only date from 1753. Like the rent rolls the debt
books were made out in duplicate.

Apropos of the missing debt books and rent rolls mentioned in
the foregoing paragraphs, it would seem that the Land Office in the
colonial period had a great many more books and papers relating to
quit rents which are no longer to be found. This is primarily due,
no doubt, to the fact that they were private revenue papers of
the Proprietor rather than public records, and secondarily, to the
fact that they were for the most part papers rather than volumes.
"A List of Books and Papers Relating to the Right Honourable the
Lord Proprietary s Rent Rolls of the Eastern Shore, received from Col.
Edward Tilghman Nov. 13. 1756"⁶² enumerates in addition to rent
rolls and debt books, a great number of alienation lists, lists of de-

⁶² A miscellaneous volume at the Hall of Records.