Description

The great value of debt bookis that they enable the researcher to track land ownership over various years in cases of intestate estates, land inherited by women, and land that is not specified in a will. This is the second volume by Vernon Skinner pertaining to Kent County debt books. It presents the contents of the debt books in tabular form: liber and folio citation, with any pertinent date; name of the person paying the taxes; and name of the tract of land and amount of acreage. A number of interesting facts emerge from the Kent County debt books, including that the county had erected a free school by 1735 and that the towns of Chestertown and Georgetown were established communities in the county by 1738. A number of Kent County landowners actually lived in other Maryland counties, as well as places in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, England, and Barbados.