NABB Cemter in Salisbury has some land records of DE and MD on microfilm. And the DE Archives has them as well. I have not been to either MD or PA Archives yet - it may take that to find something- anything on some of the lines I am working on. Jane McComrick> Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 07:43:18 -0500> From: Johnlyon0@cs.com> To: lower-delmarva-roots@rootsweb.com> Subject: Re: [LDR] Fw: Mdlandrec.net Issue 22841> > "marjorie adams" <marjea@wildblue.net> wrote:> > >John Polk,> >I can't help YOU but THANK you for your analysis of the situation. If I> >understand it correctly the short answer would be: you have to go to the DE >or PA Archives and dig deeper than their indexes.> > ____________________> > Well, of course the underlying theme here is that all the pre-Revolutionary records of Delaware were orphaned by their original Provinces. Neither PA nor MD have any vested interest in organizing those records, and DE's primary archival concern is their own post-Statehood documentation. This has always just been a fact: priorities are what they are for the States, and funding for resolving these old matters takes a back seat to maintenance, preservation and growth of the archival history within the "proper jurisdiction" of the involved agencies. > > Sorting the original records from PA and MD into their proper venues is labor-intensive and (therefore) expensive, if carried out by State employees. So a great gap persists in what is easily known about the Lower Counties, one not likely to be addressed officially, especially facing hard budgets. "Solving" the Somerset and Worcester confusion matrix with Sussex, and capturing some of Dorchester in the process, was maybe a year's worth of work for me, largely perched in the MD Archives, with easy access to all original records - not just what's now on-line, or even on film anywhere. > > As a statistical matter, the So/Wo land records in now-Sussex were about 1/6 of all those in the two MD counties before the Revolution, which makes perfect sense given the relative areas involved (and some other peculiar details). There's some hope, too, recently, that a group of interested parties will begin soon to "finish" the MD-Sussex confusion matrix with a complete runthrough of the Dorchester grants in what became Northwest Fork. This would be an excellent resource to see completed.> > The PA-DE issues, overall, are similar in kind but different in the details. If the sorting is to be done, it will have to be by willing volunteers able to access whatever's needed among the PA resources. One should expect perhaps 1500 to 2000 (very rough guesstimate) Penn warrants and grants across the northern and eastern parts of Sussex. > > A big job, but one which - unified with the MD work on the south and the west - would completely open up the "real" microhistory of southern Delaware, enabling a full study of the entire development of the area, and who was in it. This would be a truly valuable asset for genealogists and historians. Who's going to volunteer?> > John> > ***************************************> QUESTIONS about POSTING GUIDELINES, SUBSCRIBING or UNSUBSCRIBING?> Visit The Lower DelMarVa Roots Mailing List FAQ:> http://www.tyaskin.com/handley/ldrfaq.htm> -------------------------------> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to LOWER-DELMARVA-ROOTS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message