Worcester County MDGenWeb AREA MAPS

John C. Lyon's Old Somerset Hundreds and Land Grant Maps

This series of maps has been created by John C. Lyon and is a product of his exhaustive research. One series shows the evolution of the hundreds in Old Somerset, and the other shows the explosion of land grants over time. A must see!

1877 Eastern Shore Atlas

This series of maps has been scanned by Mike Hitch for his wonderful "Hitch Genealogy" site. Included are maps of the various voting districts of the day for Somerset, Wicomico, and Worcester Counties. They are extremely useful to genealogical researchers because they show names and locations of landowners, churches, and more. Another must see!

Experimental survey for the Eastern Shore Rail Road, 1853

This scan includes only the Lower Shore portion of the map, but it shows landowners and geographic features of the land surrounding the railroad corridor. A neat map.

Lower Eastern Shore, 1794

A portion of a "Map of the State of Maryland laid down from an actual survey of all the principal waters, public roads, and divisions of the counties therein; describing the situation of the cities, towns, villages, houses of worship and other public buildings, furnaces, forges, mills, and other remarkable places; and of the Federal Territory; as also a sketch of the State of Delaware shewing the probable connexion of the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays." A really cool map.

Eastern Shore Parishes

Scanned from "The First Parishes of the Province of Maryland", published by Norman, Remington Co, Baltimore, 1923, this map shows churches still in use, original churches, an indication of counties as of 1923, counties as of 1695, and also parish names. Many thanks to Craig O'Donnell for providing this map image.

Lower Shore Area, 1840

This is a map of the Old Somerset area, showing the pre-Wicomico borders, archaic place names, and waterways. The main image, more finely detailed with high resolution, is a massive file, so the main link is to a smaller, lower-resolution image (provided by Craig O'Donnell - thanks, Craig!). See the better, crisper image here.

Old Somerset, 1877

This is a scan of the map from the 1877 Atlas of the Eastern Shore, showing Somerset, Wicomico, and Worcester Counties. It shows the election district boundaries, towns, waterways, geographical feature names, railways and more. Since this ended up as a mammoth file in GIF format, the main link is to a (relatively) smaller JPEG image file, which is not quite as clear. If you've got the time, and wish to view the very large, but crisper, GIF file, you can view it here.

Old Somerset

This map shows the boundaries of 17th-century Somerset County, along with the names and boundaries of its daughter counties and their creation dates.

Somerset's Hundreds

This is a very handy map, from Wilmer O. Lankford's book "They Lived In Somerset: 17th Century Marylanders", showing the "Hundreds" of old Somerset County. Historically the term Hundred began in medieval times when Britain divided land into what was known as Hundreds, each of which would produce 100 fighting men in time of war. In the 17th century, Somerset County land was divided into "Hundreds" for administrative purposes and geographical subdivisions.

The 1895 Atlas Project, Worcester County, Maryland

You'll find a wonderfully detailed, circa-1895 map of Wicomico at this site.

Modern Worcester County

This is a current map showing the boundaries of Worcester County.

Changing Boundaries of Worcester County

The history of Worcester County's boundaries is very important to a family researcher. Originally, it was a part of Somerset County, founded in 1666. Worcester County itself was born on December 10, 1742, when the eastern section of Somerset was incorporated into a new county. Up until 1760, the colonies of Maryland and Delaware also both claimed the area of southern Sussex County. Even after the boundary was surveyed and marked, many residents disputed which colony they lived in. Finally in 1867, Wicomico County was created from parts of Somerset and Worcester. What does all of this mean to the genealogist? Well, in the course of researching a single family, records may be located in Princess Anne (seat of Somerset), Snow Hill (seat of Worcester), Salisbury (seat of Wicomico), Georgetown (seat of Sussex), or in the state capitals of Annapolis or Dover.

Maryland Archives Maps

The Archives' collection of Maryland county, city, town, and other maps.

Maptech Historical Maps

These maps are listed by quadrangle or by town. They were mostly geological survey maps done around the turn of the 20th century. Really interesting maps!

Other sites which have maps of areas surrounding Worcester County are:

• The USGenWeb Project's Somerset County Map Page
• Handley's Eastern Shore Genealogy Project's Eastern Shore Maps Page

Monday, 10-Sep-2018 18:17:06 MDT