ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A work of this kind, filled as it must be with precise detail drawn from every county of
the State of Maryland and from every period of its history, can rarely be the work of one
hand. Many records of the period through the Revolution are now in the Hall of Records, but
the majority are as yet unindexed and few have been thoroughly studied. Various members of
the staff of the Hall of Records are responsible for a considerable part of the research in
these rich but baffling manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Most of all
I am indebted for this work to the Assistant Archivist, Gust Skordas, whose intimate knowl-
edge of our records made his help invaluable. Other members of the staff who contributed a
part, large or small, and to whom I am also indebted are Guy Weatherly, Lois G. Clark and
Frank F. White. I am grateful to Dorothy B. Cullinane who typed every draft of this book—
and there were many—who checked all the quotations, verified the references, sorted out
the illustrations, wrote the letters asking for information and in many other ways helped to
shepherd this work to completion. Margaret P. White was responsible for many of the fine
illustrations marked "Hall of Records Staff Photograph." For making the index I thank
Frank F. White.

Help from outside the Hall of Records came primarily from individuals who knew, or
knew someone who knew, the material of one county, and their help is recognized below, under
the proper county. There were others, though, whose help was more general and, therefore,
should be acknowledged here: Frederick Tilp, Architect of Washington, D. C.; Nelson Molter,
Director of the Maryland State Library; Wilbur H. Hunter, Jr., Director, and Charles Elam,
Archivist, of the Peale Museum of Baltimore; James W. Foster, Director, and Francis C.
Haber and John D. Kilbourne, successive Librarians of the Maryland Historical Society;
Edward M. Riley, Director of Research, Marcus Whiffen, Architectural Historian, and John M.
Hemphill, II, Research Associate of Colonial Williamsburg.

The sources of photographs are acknowledged in the List of Illustrations. My county
collaborators sometimes found the photographer who made the picture; often they copied old
plaques of old courthouses buried and forgotten in new courthouses; sometimes they knew all
or part of the history of one or another of the courthouses of their county. But however little
or much of it was used, all of it was appreciated! They will, I am sure, graciously accept this
listing of their names in lieu of details—the limits of this book do not permit more than that.

	Baltimore County:	John B. Punk, Director, Department of Public Works; Paul J. Grubb, County Architect; the Reverend George B. Scriven, Rector, The Church of the Nativity,
		Baltimore.
	Calvert County:	Mrs. Everard Briscoe; Edward T. Hall, State Senator, the Calvert Independent.
	Caroline County:	D. Ralph Horsey, Clerk of the Circuit Court.
	Carroll County:	Erman A. Shoemaker, former Clerk of the Circuit Court.
	Cecil County:	W. Andrew Seth, Clerk of the Circuit Court; Mrs. Ethyl Howard Rowe.
	Charles County:	Robert T. Barbour; Mrs. Edward J. Edelen, II; Patrick C. Mudd, Clerk of the
		Circuit Court; Thomas B. R. Mudd, former Stats Senator.
	Dorchester County:	Roy S. Melvin, former Clerk of the Circuit Court.
		vii