While a freshman attending Loyola High School, my mother, who was then a Professor at Towson University grounded me for a "minor" transgression, to be paroled only after I had finished reading the Novel "Chesapeake" by James A. Mitchner (Random House, 1978). I was immediately and magically transported to Maryland's Eastern Shore (yes always was a capital "E" and a capital "S"), circa 1650. The novel richly illustrates the lives and relationships between the family of the Susquehannock Indian, Pentaquod, who fled his war-like northern tribe for more peaceful times down the Susquehanna River and into the Chesapeake Bay and the Roman Catholic Steed family, the Quaker Paxton family, and the waterman Turlock family. This novel instilled in me a love of history that has been reflected in my legal career and in my several collecting interests. Moreover, Mitchner's novel allowed me to understand from where I came and how my family got to where they are today. In the summer of 1979, I was certainly not aware that I was descended from the Piscataway Indian Princess Kittamaquund and those earliest of Maryland families who arrived at St. Clement's on the Arc and Dove in 1634. I firmly believe that my personality and character are much in line with the native people of Maryland's Eastern Shore, as much as the Steeds, Paxtons and Turlock families. And although unfortunately Maryland Society is not quite as refined as it was before the War Between the States, I am still proud to be a Marylander. In this book about Charles Town in Cecil County, I present my attempt to add to the history of the Chesapeake Bay, certainly not to the extent that Mr. Mitchner accomplished, but rather in my own way of helping to preserve its history through the wonderful art of decoy carving. I hope you enjoy viewing this book as much as I loved producing it. My next project, entitled The Maryland Line, a Pictural History of Images and Artifacts, will be available soon.

This is an exhaustive study of the county from its infancy to the middle of the 19th century, with chapters on the early settlements and towns, churches, schools, businesses and industries, and sketches of the county's participation in the Indian Wars, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812. Genealogists will be delighted with the coverage given to such early families as: Alexander, Carroll, Van Bibber, Leslie, Hall, Churchman, Evans, Mitchell, Mauldin, Gilpin, Rudulph, Rumsey, Hyland, Defoe, Ramsay, and Hartshorne.

This unique historical and genealogical resource draws on the extraordinarily intact legislative, judicial, religious, and personal records of members of the first Maryland legislature. The two-volume set contains profiles of nearly fifteen hundred men who served in the state's legislature in the first 150 years after Maryland's founding.The major public and private aspects of each legislator's career are quickly discernible: family background, marriage, children, social status, religious affiliation, occupation, other offices held, and military service. Many entries include a brief summary of a legislator's stance on public and private issues. A final category, wealth at death, inventories the legislator's estate and notes any significant changes in wealth between first election and death.

The boundaries of old Frederick County today encompasses 12 counties: Frederick, Clarke, Warren, Shenandoah, and Page counties in Virginia; and Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, Hampshire, Mineral, Hardy, and Grant counties in West Virginia. During the 1700s a land dispute between a Colonist and an Englishman developed into a lawsuit. The suit was between Jost Hite, the plantiff and Lord Thomas Fairfax, defendant. Fairfax claimed to inherit all of the country know as the Northern Neck from his father and maternal grandfather, Lord Thomas Culpeper. During the eighteen years of the court battle no land was legally disposed of, resulting in no legal land documents. This book is a comprehensive study of the settlers of old Frederick County, who they were, where they came from, and where they lived in the county, and where they went.