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From: John Lyon <>
Subject: [LDR] Bowen Land Record
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 05:24:25 -0500


Message text written by :
>
John - Thanks for clarifying (?) this mess for me...I really appreciate it!

I had written to Do, So, and Worcester Counties for help - Do was too far
NW,
but Somerset had no land records to search, and Worcester recommended
either
a self search or pd genealogist. At one point I wrote DE Archives in
Dover,
but I guess since I said this tract was originally in Worcester, they
didn't
have anything to do with it, try MD. I'll try DE Archives in Dover again
(Georgetown wouldn't have it, would they?), and see if they will have
records
after the sale to Michael (Mitchell) Tatman in 1770.
Thanks again. Jan in MO
>

Your first check should be for this tract in Dover, in the 1776 Sussex
warrants. If it appears here, your search will probably be simplified.

Typically, searching for colonial and early Federal tracts will best be
carried out at the State archives in both MD and DE, where all the relevant
records series - confusing though they might be - have been centralized.
County courthouses are generally helpless in knowing about the locations or
histories of specific properties. Tracts that shifted jurisdiction of
record (So>Wo, So>Wo>Wi, So>Wo>Su, So>Wi, not to mention the odd Do
possibilities) are opaque to modern officialdom.

Those that moved from MD to DE are most problematic, in that no one
concerned with now-MD lands cares about those that went north of
Mason-Dixon, and the DE folk don't have/use the old MD records. Modern
title searches are not concerned with anything before the 20th century, as
the legal requirement doesn't call for proving claim to the beginning of
time.

Ruth Dryden was very inconsistent in identifying now-Su tracts in her land
records volumes, but she was often guided by the MD Archives indices,
themselves very incomplete on the subject. Indeed, as her stated purpose
was to lay out lands in So, Wo and Wi, the fact that *any* Su tracts appear
in her Wo and Wi books tends to muddy the waters (sins of commission). I
now find about 1300 early MD Wo, So and Do surveys to be actually in Su,
whereas the MD Archives "Index 55" identifies only about 800 - and some of
them wrongly, which is where Dryden could be misled. And, of course, where
the Archives index fails to identify them as in Su, Dryden generally does,
too (sins of omission). The lack of rigorous attention to this placement
issue can be extremely bewildering to both the neophyte and experienced
researcher.

This will be fixed sometime this year, as I'm coming very close now to the
final parsing, yielding the new category of "Greater Maryland" tracts. All
those in now-Sussex will be in the single union list of all MD tracts "E
[and S] of the Nanticoke", which will include County (and State) of record
for each tract throughout its history. The primary break points at which a
piece of land could change jurisdiction were:

(a) 1742 (creation of Wo)
(b) about the Revolution (resolving the MD-DE border)
(c) 1867 (creation of Wi)

[Unfortunately, the period between the 1750s and 1780s involves the messy
disagreements and grousings about the border change, and many tracts in
now-Sussex were bought and sold without complete recording of deeds at
county or Provincial level, depending on the sensibilities of the owners.
Many evidently tried to get through without paying taxes on either side of
the border.]

At this point, in the new listing, under 1% of tracts have not yet been
sorted into proper County of record, and many of these just because I
haven't gotten around to them - most finally yield to a detailed
examination. The few that don't I call "phantoms"; nothing in their
descriptions is helpful in placing them and no other survey mentions them.
While the final cleanup of this listing is still months away, the end is
very well in sight.

My rough estimate is that as many as 15% of all properties have been
mislabeled (or just overlooked) in previous listings. (This estimate may be
low; I've not revisited the statistics in some time.)

But another interesting and more definitive statistic: only about 22% of
all "MD" tracts in the area embraced by "Old Somerset" at the beginning
(1662) remain in So to this day. Which is about right, given the land area
of modern Somerset compared to its overall original extent. 13% are in
DE, 31% in Wi and 34% in Wo (more or less).

John Lyon

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