Talbot County, Maryland Genealogical Records Information

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Talbot County History and Information

Talbot County Facts

Talbot County was created in 1661/2 and was formed as an Original County. The County was named for Grace, Lady Talbot was the sister of Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. The County Seat is Easton. Many court records have been lost.

Talbot County, located on Maryland's Eastern Shore, is one of the province's original counties. The form of the creation of the county, though not known, was probably by virtue of an order of the Governor in Council. The county was in existence by February 18, 1661/62, when a writ was issued to the county sheriff. Like other Eastern Shore counties, agriculture and the seafood industry are the main sources of income in Talbot County. The low flatland, thickly wooded along stream banks, is well adapted to farming, which, along with fishing furnishes a livelihood for many of the area's residents.

Easton serves as the county seat and as a commercial center. Although not an industrial town, a variety of smaller enterprises have located here. In addition to its growing industrial capacity, the town is a banking and medical center as well as a trading and distribution point for a four county area. For a century Easton was the largest and most important and progressive town on the Eastern Shore. The first newspaper on the Eastern Shore was established here (1790), the first bank (1805), and the first steamboat line to Baltimore (1817). See also County History for more historical details.

Counties adjacent to Talbot County are Queen Anne's County (north), Caroline County (east), Dorchester County (south), Chesapeake Bay (west).

Talbot County Towns Include Easton, Oxford, Queen Anne, Saint Michaels, Trappe.Communities Include Bozman, Claiborne, Cordova, McDaniels, Neavitt, Newcomb, Royal Oak, Sherwood, Tilghman, Wittman. (Unincorporated areas are also considered as towns by many people and listed in many collections of towns, but they lack local government.)

The Talbot County Official Government Website
Talbot County, Maryland History Books at Amazon.com
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There are free downloadable and printable forms to help with your research. These include U.S. Census Extraction Forms, U.K. Census Extraction Forms, Research Calendar, Ancestral Chart, Research Extract, Correspondence Record , Family Group Sheet , Source Summary Form.

Records at the Talbot County Courthouse

See Also Maryland Land Records, Marriage Records, Court & Probate Records

PLEASE READ!! Please call the clerk's department to confirm hours, mailing address, fees and other specifics before visiting or requesting information because of sometimes changing contact information. Many court records have been lost.

Government records of Talbot County are available in Original , Microfilm and Digital formats from the Maryland State Archives The Official County website is located at http://www.talbgov.org/. See also Courthouse History. NOTE: The record dates below are from the earliest date to present time.

Talbot County Register of Wills/ Clerk of Orphan's Court has Probate Records from 1668 and is located at the courthouse, 11 N. Washington St., Easton, MD 21601 - 0816; (888) 822-0039
The Register of Wills is responsible for appointing personal representatives to administer decedents estates and for overseeing the proper and timely administration of these proceedings. We also perform the following duties: assist and advise the public in the preparation of all required forms; maintain and preserve the permanent record of all proceedings; serve as the Clerk to the Orphans Court; track estates and refer delinquent matters to the Court; determine and collect inheritance taxes and probate fees/court costs; audit accounts of personal representatives and guardians; and, verify compliance with court orders.

Talbot County Circuit Court Clerk has Land Records from 1662 and Marriage Records from earliest to 1919 and is located at the courthouse, 11 North Washington Street, Suite 16, Easton, MD 21601; 410-822-2611
The Clerk's responsibilities include supervising Clerk's office personnel in the civil, criminal, courtroom clerks, business license, marriage license, land records, and juvenile units.

There are a few online databases for Court, Land and Probate Records which include: Maryland Calendar of Wills, Maryland Marriages, 1655-1850 and Maryland Marriages, 1667-1899.

Click Here to Search Maryland Court, Land, Wills & Financial Records! - Researchers often overlook the importance of court records, probate records, and land records as a source of family history information.

Below is a list of online resources for Talbot County Court Records. Email us with websites containing Talbot County Court Records by clicking the link below:

Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Talbot County, Maryland Court Books at Amazon.com
Maryland Immigration & Emigration Records - Immigration records help the family historian to understand the movements of their ancestry as they relocated to different parts of the world.

Talbot County Vital Records

See Also Research In Tax Records

Available at the Maryland State Archives with index is a Maryland tax assessment of 1783, which is “more complete” than the 1776 or 1778 “censuses”. Robert W. Barnes and Bettie Stirling Carothers abstracted the 1783 tax list of Baltimore County, Maryland but while it has some omissions, it serves as an index to photocopies of the originals published as Maryland Tax List 1783 Baltimore County from the collection of the Maryland Historical Society (Philadelphia: Historic Publications, 1970). The counties of Calvert, Cecil, Harford, and Talbot are covered by Bettie Carothers, comp., 1783 Tax List of Maryland (Part I: Cecil, Talbot, Harford, and Calvert Counties) (Lutherville, Md.: Pub. by compiler, 1977). Furthermore, there is a two part index to the 1783 list at the state archives, one by names of property owners, the other by names of the tracts.

The earliest tax records are to be found among the proprietary papers, dating from the 1630s. Some early tax records have been published, such as Raymond B. Clark, Jr., and Sara Seth Clark, comps., Baltimore County, Maryland, tax list, 1699-1706. At the Maryland State Archives is a tax list for St. Anne's Parish, Anne Arundel County, 1764-66. Also here are the surviving 1798 U.S. direct tax records, for Anne Arundel County (indexed), Baltimore County and City, and the counties of Caroline, Charles, Harford, Prince George's, Queen Anne's, Saint Mary's, Somerset, and Talbot. Richard J. Cox edited Name Index to the Baltimore City Tax Records: 1798-1808 Of the Baltimore City Archives, (Baltimore: Baltimore City Archives and Records Management Office, 1981).

Below is a list of online resources for Talbot County Tax Records. Email us with websites containing Talbot County Tax Records by clicking the link below:

Talbot County Genealogical Addresses

See Also Other Maryland Genealogical Addresses

The Repositories in this section are Archives, Libraries, Museums, Genealogical and Historical Societies. Many County Historical and Genealogical Societies publish magazines and/or news letters on a monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual basis. Contacting the local societies should not be over looked. State Archives and Societies are usually much larger and better organized with much larger archived materials than their smaller county cousins but they can be more generalized and over look the smaller details that local societies tend to have. Libraries can also be a good place to look for local information. Some libraries have a genealogy section and may have some resources that are not located at archives or societies. Also, take a special look at any museums in the area. They sometimes have photos and items from years gone by as well as information of a genealogical interest. All these places are vitally important to the family genealogist and must not be passed over.

Below is a list of online resources for Talbot County Genealogical Addresses. Email us with websites containing Talbot County Genealogical Addresses by clicking the link below:

Historical Society of Talbot County, 25 South Washington St., Easton, MD 21601 - 3014, (410) 822-0773; fax: (410) 822-0773, e-mail: hstc@hstc.org
Local Maryland Researchers, Find a local researcher or become a local researcher.
Maryland State Archives, 350 Rowe Boulevard, Annapolis, MD 21401
Maryland Genealogical Society, 201 W. Monument Street, Baltimore, MD 21201-4674.
Publishes the Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin Quarterly.
The Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument Street, Baltimore MD 21201-4674
Has published a quarterly magazine Maryland Historical Magazinefor over 90 years
Maryland Newspapers & Periodicals Records - Newspapers and periodicals are the diaries of local communities. They are excellent sources of family history details - often recorded nowhere else. Look for obituaries, marriages, legal notices, and more found in our Historical Newspaper Archives.
Maryland Genealogical Society Books at Amazon.com

Talbot County Church & Cemeteries

Click Here to Search Maryland Obituary Records! - This database is a compilation of obituaries published in U.S. newspapers, collected from various online sources. Obituaries can vary in the amount of information they contain, but many of them are genealogical goldmines, including information such as names, dates, places of birth and death, marriage information, and family relationships.

There are many churches and cemeteries in Talbot County. Some transcriptions are online. A great site is the Talbot County Tombstone Transcription Project.

A search for church records should begin with Directory of Maryland church records (Westminster, Md.: Family Line Publications, 1987), arranged by county and giving a range of dates of available records for over 2,600 churches with mailing addresses. Also helpful are The First Parishes of the Province of Maryland (Baltimore: The Norman, Remington Co., 1923).

The largest collection of church records is at the Maryland State Archives, with a consolidated index, and many are at the Maryland State Archives, which has various original and microfilmed records, many with indexes. Some church records have been published in the Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin or in individual books, such as those for St. Paul's in Baltimore and for many German churches in the western counties.

Although Catholicism is very important to the history of Maryland, the disenfranchisement of Catholics after the establishment of the Anglican church in 1692 largely contributed to the lack of record keeping prior to the Revolutionary War. One source for St. Marys County in the 1700s, however, is Catholic Families of Southern Maryland: Records of Catholic Residents of St. Mary's County in the Eighteenth Century (1980; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1985). Records of the German churches and the Society of Friends are very good. The latter were early settlers of Maryland, along with Anglicans and Catholics. Quaker records in Maryland, (Annapolis: Hall of Records Commission, 1966) is an excellent guide to the original and microfilmed Friends' records at the Maryland State Archives. Some Quaker records were published in Kenneth Carroll, Quakerism on the Eastern Shore (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1970) and other records are at the Maryland Historical Society, the state archives, and the Friends Historical Library in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

The Maryland State Archives has indexes to cemetery records for various time periods. Some have been published in the Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin and other journals and in individual works covering large parts of Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Dorchester, Frederick, Garrett, St. Marys, Somerset, Wicomico, and Worcester counties. A great number of grave marker inscriptions have been transcribed by members of the Maryland DAR and will be found at the Maryland Historical Society and the DAR Library in Washington, D.C. See also Historic graves of Maryland and the District of Columbia (1908; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1967).

Below is a list of online resources for Talbot County Cemetery & Church Records. Email us with websites containing Talbot County Cemetery & Church Records by clicking the link below:

Family Trees & Genealogy Tidbits

Click Here to Search Maryland Family Tree Records! - The use of published genealogies, electronic files containing genealogical lineage, and other compiled sources can be of tremendous value to a researcher.

When view family trees online or not, be sure to only take the info at face value and always follow up with your own sources or verify the ones they provide. Below is a list of online resources for Talbot County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information. Email us with websites containing Talbot County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information by clicking the link below:

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Talbot County, Maryland Family Books at Amazon.com

County History

Talbot County, Maryland is one of the oldest centers of European settlement in the New World. Talbot County's long history has always been linked to the water that surrounds it. With over 600 miles of tidal shoreline, the most of any county in the United States, it retains a maritime flavor to an unusual degree. Like the Native Americans who moved through this area many centuries ago, European settlers were drawn to Talbot County's wealth of natural resources and profusion of waterways for ease in travel. Its first English settlers, arriving by boat in the 1630s, established tobacco plantations along the shores of the Choptank, Wye, Tred Avon, and St. Michaels, (now Miles) rivers, on the long stretch of Chesapeake Bay coast known as Bayside, and on its countless creeks and coves. By 1662, these settlers had formally created Talbot County. Boundary adjustments were made in 1706 with the establishment of Queen Anne's County to the north and again in 1773 with the creation of Caroline County to the east, resulting in the Talbot County of today.

For a century Talbot life centered around tidewater and tobacco, which served as money and was traded for English manufactured goods with ships which anchored directly off the plantation wharves. Its first town, Oxford, laid out in 1683, served as a port of call for vessels from all over the world. Its early shipbuilding center, St. Michaels, created the swift, sharp-hulled sailing craft later known as the "Baltimore Clipper" famous in the War of 1812.

Established in 1661 and named for Lady Grace Talbot, sister of the second Lord Baltimore, the county soon became the geographical and spiritual heartland of the Eastern Shore. Here the great families, which dominated the EasternShore social, political, and economic history-the Tilghmans, Lloyds, Goldsboroughs, Hollydays and their kinfolk-had their principal seats of residence, many of which are still standing today. The county town, first known as Talbot Courthouse and later as Easton, was known as the "East Capital" of Maryland because the Eastern Shore's courts and governmental offices were located there. Easton had the Shore's finest bank, its first newspaper, its first Federal offices, its first brick hotel.

Many of Talbot's early settlers were Quakers, seeking a haven from persecution; their Third Haven Meeting House, completed in 1684, is still in active service as a house of worship. Others were Puritans driven from Cavalier Virginia in the Cromwell era, or Irish and Scottish rebels transported to the colony as indentured servants.The county's African-Americans, both slave and free (Talbot County had one of the highest percentages of free blacks in the country), produced in Frederick Douglass the nation's greatest 19th century advocate of black freedom and justice.

In the Revolution, Talbot Countians played key roles. Mathew Tilghman was Maryland's acknowledged leader in the events leading to independence, and his son-in-law, Tench Tilghman, was General Washington's aide,famous for his ride to carry the news of Corwallis' surrender to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Young Perry Benson was a Revolutionary War hero and later as Brigadier General, he headed a citizen army which repulsed a British attack on St. Michaels in 1813.

The Civil War found the county deeply divided, with scores of fighting men on both sides. Unionville, a Talbot County town, was settled by Union soldiers who were freed slaves returning to their homes. In post Civil War times, the county gained national note as a site of summer homes for wealthy Northerners and a vacation resort for summer boarders from nearby cities.

From its very beginning as an English colony, agriculture and products of the Bay have always provided Talbot County's chief sources of income. Talbot County originally had an economy based on tobacco agriculture, but "King Tobacco" died with the Revolution, replaced by wheat to feed Washington's Continental Army.In more recent years tomatoes, fruit, and dairy products, and today corn, soybeans and poultry, have sustained the county's basic population of sturdy family farmers.

Picture of Historic Talbot County Courthouse Equally as important have been the maritime industries of shipbuilding, seafood harvesting and processing, and today, water-related tourism such as sailing and sport fishing. Several vibrant small towns have supported both the farming and maritime industries by providing centers for trade, craftsmen, and moderate manufacturing concerns.

Completion of the Bay Bridge in 1951 brought increasing population pressure and ended the county's isolation. Also with the bridge, U.S.Route 50 and other major signs of "progress" have come the benefits of travel and tourism but also concerns over preservation of the past. The history of Talbot County is still being written and the landscape is ever-changing.

Courthouse History

Picture of Historic Talbot County Courthouse The earliest court records show that court originally was held in private homes of Talbot County justices as early as 1662. The first specially built courthouse began construction in 1679 in York. The three-story structure was completed in 1685. An act of 1706 divided Talbot County, creating Queen Anne's County and leaving York on the edge of the county line. In order to have the court more centrally located in the county, it was moved to Oxford, but held in private homes. In 1712, a new courthouse was erected in Easton and continued in use until 1792, by which time it had become dilapidated and too small for the county's growing needs. The courthouse was razed and replaced with a new structure by 1794. This new and present courthouse was remodeled in 1958 which included removal of the front porch and the addition of two wings.

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