Mike: When you say "I have checked extant land and court records already", I assume you mean just "the deeds [and maybe whatever shows up in plats.net] and the Judicials", and not the series of Land Records Papers and Court Papers of this thread. When you say "worth your time to delve into...", well, my boy, that all depends on how much time you have and your own value system. You will have to search your own heart... Seriously, these things are as close to a bottomless pit as befits the description of "bottomless pit". I'd put it this way: when these materials were recovered from the courthouse and sent to Annapolis, they were obviously simply in whatever order or disorder they had found themselves stored in, in their basement in Princess Anne. That is, contents of each ribbon-bound little bundle seem to have been each from about the same year, but two bundles side-by-side in the basement may have been years or (sometimes) decades apart. That is, there was just no guarantee as to chronological coherence. When Archives staff arranged them for accessioning, they did not open the bundles, each of which contained N pieces of paper, to ascertain what epoch of the geologic strata they came from. Rather, they (rationally, with only finite time) placed what seemed to them to be roughly chronologically connected in a clamshell, sometimes in individual jackets within the clamshell, and labeled the box something like "Court Papers 1785-86", but with no real guarantee as to that i.d.'s validity for each item, most of which have not been looked at to this day. Opening one of the clamshells is an adventure in pure serendipity. Just the mechanics and "thrill" of untying an ancient ribbon to unravel twenty or so coiled documents takes time - a lot of it. Going through a single clamshell can take a day. There are many hundreds of clamshells. With what I could call a pretty deep understanding of the Judicials and Deeds in hand, on a very few occasions I was able to narrow a search down to a single clamshell, and actually find a specific item. I'd call this proof-of-concept, but don't recommend it as part of an operational strategy. For this sort of trolling, you need to take up residence at the Archives. You have to want something pretty badly to take up this sort of quixotic quest. John -----Original Message----- From: Mike Hitch <[email protected]> Dear John (and the List): Here are two references to my 5x great grand dad, Benjamin Hitch (1738-1814), that one would think would be relatively easy to track down. John - you'll like this cuz they relates to land records, too! I have looked high and low at all the usual hiding places but to no avail. With the discussion of the "lost records" that are not really lost - of this thread - I am wondering if it might be worth my time to dive into them? Any words of wisdom as to where I might look would be most helpful (Note: I have checked extant land and court records already). <snip>