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by Vernon L. Jr. Skinner (Author)
The great value of the Provincial Land Office Debt Books is that they enable the genealogist 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. They are now the basis of a series of record abstracts from Vernon L. Skinner, compiler of the 42-volume series covering the Testamentary Proceedings of the Prerogative Court of Maryland. This volume is the first of three covering St. Mary's County, an original county formed in 1637. Since St. Mary's is also a "burned county" (i.e., the courthouse burned and no probate or land records exist prior to 1777), its Debt Books take on added importance. The information in this series is presented in a tabular form as follows: liber and folio citation, with any pertinent date; name of the person paying the taxes; name of the tract of land and amount of acreage. Each volume in the series is indexed by the name of the land owner and his/her track, and, on average, each volume identifies about 9,000 parcels of land.
