Maryland State Archives

Maryland State Archives

Maryland States Archives are the central depository archive for official records in the US state of Maryland. The archives are located in the state capital, Annapolis. The State Archives were officially established in their present form in 1984, but they date back ultimately to the formation of the Maryland Hall of Records back in 1935. The State Archives comprise documents which extend all the way back to the mid-1630s and the first establishment of the Maryland colony by the Calvert family at that time. There are a very wide range of records available in the archives at Annapolis, including, though not limited to, colonial records, government records particularly from the period of the inception of the United States in the mid-1770s, demographic records and censuses, municipal records, as well as a comprehensive set of land records pertaining to the state. The Maryland State Archives also has administrative oversight of other archives within the state of Maryland, notably the Baltimore City Archives. Consequently there are extensive records under its management for the study of family history and genealogy in Maryland going back to the middle of the seventeenth century.

History of Maryland

George Calvert, Baron Baltimore.

The records found at Maryland State Archives are closely tied to the state’s history. European settlement in the region dates back to the early 1630s when George Calvert, first Baron Baltimore, established a colony here as a refuge for English and Irish Catholics. He named it Maryland after Henrietta Maria, the French-born, Catholic queen consort of King Charles I at the time. The colony developed as a haven of religious tolerance thereafter, with the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 being a template of sorts for the First Amendment to the United States constitution enshrining freedom of religion as a tenet of American life. Despite this, the colony was taken over from the Calverts by a Protestant movement at the end of the seventeenth century and the capital of the colony was moved to the renamed town of Annapolis (i.e. ‘the city of Anne’, named after the future Queen Anne) from the city of St Mary’s. The colony continued to grow into the eighteenth century, largely on the back of the tobacco trade.

Maryland was one of the most reticent states when it came to rebelling against British rule in the mid-1770s. It did eventually send members to the First and Second Continental Congresses in Philadelphia and its representatives signed the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1776. After independence a new national capital,Washington D.C., was built on the Potomac River straddling Maryland and Virginia, a decision which was taken to appease the slave-owning states of the south who did not want power centralized in New York, Boston or Philadelphia. Hence, Maryland emerged immediately as a center of the divide between the slave-states of the south and the more liberal states of the north. Unlike the northern states it did not become a free state in the first half of the nineteenth century, but it also did not secede from the Union when the American Civil War began in 1861. Slavery was abolished there in 1864. In more recent times Maryland has become a highly urbanized state with near continuous urban spread from Washington D.C. north-east through Baltimore towards Wilmington and Philadelphia and which has attracted thousands of migrants who chose the city as their new home.

Extent of records at Maryland State Archives

The records at Maryland State Archives relate primarily to the history of the state from the foundation of the colony back in the 1630s down to the present day. Like all state archives in the United States it holds a mix of original records such as local municipal records and copies of federal records relating to the state. For instance, there are extracts from the council books of the colonial government dating back to 1638 and these provide extensive information on individuals who lived in Maryland from the earliest days of the English colony. Assembly records from as early as 1634 which gives names and details of individuals who served on juries or in government assemblies are also available in the reading rooms in Annapolis. In terms of political and constitutional records, the State Archives have records going back to 1774 and the elections of the state’s representatives to the First and Second Continentals Congresses at the start of the American Revolutionary War. Extensive newspaper records are available dating back to the early nineteenth century, some of which are also available at MyHeritage. Many of the aforementioned records can be used to trace one’s ancestors in Maryland back much further than the first federal census undertaken in the United States in 1790.

Finding records at Maryland State Archives

The first port of call for researchers wishing to undertake research into family history or genealogy in Maryland is the official website of the Maryland State Archives. A guide to government records is available there. An introduction to the guide for government records lays out the various ways in which the catalogue can be searched. There is also a guide for beginners undertaking family research and how to utilize indexes and digitized card indexes for the same. A wide range of material at Annapolis will be available in microfilm (machine-readable film-reels of digitized material) where the original documentation is not available for general consultation, while originals can be consulted in other instances. Further guides with specific information on everything from birth records, censuses, adoption records, court records, maps, church records and slavery records are also available online on the Maryland State Archives website.

See also

• English Colonization of North America
• United States Census: State and Territorial Census Records
• Newspaper Records

Explore more about Maryland State Archives

• Baltimore, Maryland Passenger Lists, 1891-1943 record collection on MyHeritage
• Maryland Newspapers, 1790-2009 record collection on MyHeritage
• Research in the Old Line State: An Overview of Maryland Genealogy at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• Maryland State Archives Decoded at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• Indirect Evidence, A Case Study: The Parents of Elizabeth Wingate in Maryland (1795–1860) at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• Reunion of a Lifetime: Discovering Family Through MyHeritage DNA at the MyHeritage blog

References

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