Designed to inspire and encourage, this comprehensive guide offers a basic introduction to the primary methods and sources used in genealogy work. It shows how to organize and evaluate readily available information, such as documents and photographs, and explores fundamental research techniques such as keeping a research log, interviewing relatives, making charts, citing sources, and using the Internet. Find out how to utilize more advanced methods to obtain information from census reports to cemeteries and more. Suggestions are included for preserving, displaying, and using the findings, along with plenty of photographs, charts, and lists.

The major part of this work is an alphabetically arranged and cross-indexed list of some 20,000 Maryland families with references to the sources and locations of the records in which they appear. In addition, there is a research record guide arranged by county and type of record, and it identifies all genealogical manuscripts, books, and articles known to exist up to 1940, when this book was first published. Included are church and county courthouse records, deeds, marriages, rent rolls, wills, land records, tombstone inscriptions, censuses, directories, and other data sources.