568                           THE COUNTIES OF MARYLAND

Chapter 19) upon the petition of certain inhabitants of Somerset County
which resulted in the erection of a new county out of the eastern part of
Somerset County and called the same Worcester. The line of division
through Somerset County forming the western boundary of Worcester
County ran, according to the law, as follows:

" up the Westernmost Side of the said [Dividing Creek] and to the Bridges
called Denstone's Bridges [on the road from Snow Hill to Princess Anne],
and from thence West to the main road called Parahawkin-Road; thence up
and with the said road to John Caldwell, senior's, saw-mill [Salisbury?]
thence up and with the said road over Cox's Branch, to Broad Creek Bridge
[at Laurel, Delaware]."

The enforcement of the order of 1685 taking from him the Delaware
portion of his grant had been strenuously resisted by Charles, Third Lord
Baltimore, and his successors, although his grandson made an agree-
ment in 1732 conformable to the original order of the Privy Council.
This agreement on the advice of his uncle was not fulfilled by the young
Lord Baltimore and the Penns had instituted a suit in Chancery for the
performance of the agreement, prior to the erection of Worcester
County, which was not settled until the decree of the Chancellor
in 1750. By this decree the northwestern portion of the Worcester
County, then but recently erected, was transferred to Delaware, under
whose jurisdiction it has since remained.

No further change was made in the confines or territory of Worcester
County until the State Convention of 1867, when Wicomico County was
constituted out of the western portion of Worcester and the northern
portion of Somerset counties. According to the second section of the
13th article in the Constitution adopted at that time, the territory
granted to Wicomico lay west of a line beginning at

"Meadow Bridge, on the road, dividing the counties of Somerset and Wor-
cester, near the southwest corner of farm of William P. Morris, thence [run-
ning] due east to the Pocomoke river, thence with the channel of said river
to the "beginning .... [at the point where Mason and Dixon's lines crosses
the channel of Pocomoke River]."

WORCESTER COUNTY ELECTION" DISTRICTS.

1798  Ch. 115. County divided into 5 election districts.

1799  Ch. 48. Confirms Acts of 1798 Ch. 115.