Maryland Land Records

MDLANDREC.NET (https://mdlandrec.net/main/index.cfm) is a Website maintained by the Maryland State Archives that contains most of the earliest land records up to the present day. These are mostly deeds, but also include leases, agreements, and assignments and some even include plats or maps. Records cover both individuals and corporations and are categorized by county.

To gain access to this valuable resource a simple account needs to be established online from which you will log into the site whenever you wish to search for records. Howard County records go back to 1840 the year after it was established as a district within Anne Arundel County. Prior to that, early records for our area go back to 1653 under Anne Arundel but the indexes are at times lengthy and difficult to read.

When we look through these earlier records which are all done in cursive writing, we certainly lament on school systems no longer teaching children these skills.

Getting Started

• Go to https://mdlandrec.net/main/index.cfm and establish an account.  Once you do that, proceed.

• Select Howard County on the drop down (or whichever county you want).

• Select the "active records" on left sidebar.

• You can choose the years you want to look at by grantor (seller) or grantee (buyer). If between 1840 and 1920 they are pretty easy to read and to find.

• You can research them by someone's name, year, and sometimes property name.

• If you have one deed you can find the land record within it and enter the information in the app. Enter the Clerk's initials (e.g., www, wsg, nh), Book (aka liber), Page (folio) and it will take you to that specific page for the land record. The Clerk's initial are optional.

Tips for Searching

• Howard County was part of Anne Arundel County prior to 1851 when Howard County was officially formed. Between 1839 and 1851 it was the Howard District of Anne Arundel County. The Land Records under Howard County goes back to 1840. Prior to 1840 you need to use the Anne Arundel County files.

• If you go way back into the records, Howard County was actually part of Baltimore County between 1698-1727. Even if found in the Anne Arundel deeds during that time period you will see many identify as in Baltimore County.

• Check out the annotated list of Howard County Land Patents by Jody Frey at https://jsfecmd.info/FREAK/HowardCountyLandPatents.html. The links used to go directly to the land patents by MSA uncoupled those direct links for some reason, believing that they were covered already within the plats.net link in mdlandrec (few are there and difficult to find).  See our tips for finding land patents outside of mdlandrec below.

• Howard County land patent information (not the patents themselves) can be found through an index listing at http://guide.msa.maryland.gov/pages/series.aspx?ID=S1593.  This is a list of the patents in Howard County and provides the Clerk, Book (Liber) and Page (Folio) that you can look up in MDLANDREC.NET.

• Most of the records have an identifier on the left side of the page in red. As an example, one deed had the following information on this “red ribbon”.  BALTIMORE COUNTY COURT (Land Records) TK 297, p. 0428, MSA_CE66_347. Date available 05/03/2007. Printed 09/02/2020.  This is very useful for documenting the information.

• The Anne Arundel County land records has a drop-down option to look at the 1653-1839 records which covers Howard County before it was officially a County. But is also covers all of Anne Arundel County. A very nice feature of this particular set of records is that the land patent name is in the list just as a person's surname is listed. So you could actually search the W's for Wincopin Neck and the J's for Jones Fancy, etc.

• Please see this video put out by the Maryland State Archives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmSeIbgwSEU 

Patent Records NOT in MDLANDREC.NET.

• Index Cards that were used before digitizing the record. This is a very interesting card catalogue scanned into a series of pdf files (see example below). It is not perfect but it has a lot of information and is a good backup or even starting place. The cards have the Clerk, Book, and Page number for an easy look up. You can find the patent card index here: https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/stagser/s1400/s1426/html/index54.html

• There is another great source of information that can be a little intimidating to use but it gets at some of the oldest patents and land records. Using the information from the index cards described above, you can find the books containing the records.  This first link will take you to large pdf files that contain the records listed by Clerk and year. This is useful when looking at the patent card index above: http://guide.msa.maryland.gov/pages/series.aspx?id=SE23

• This is a list of the patents in Howard County and provides the Clerk, Book and Page that you can look up in MDLANDREC.NET. You can do some searching (filter criteria) by date, plat, and description. This is another useful alterative to peruse but it does not link directly to any other records. http://guide.msa.maryland.gov/pages/series.aspx?id=S1593  

Mapping Land Patents

Frey’s Emporium of Amazing Knowledge, by the amazing Jody Frey, has annotated descriptions of land patents for Howard County, as well as *.kml files with the patent boundaries mapped that can be imported into Google Earth.   The time and dedication it took to create these files is truly, well, amazing!  Jody did the mapping of both Howard and Anne Arundel County land patents.  Check out her “museum”, you won’t be disappointed - https://jsfecmd.info/FREAK/Museum.html

Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties

This inventory for the Maryland Historical Trust can be searched with Maryland’s Cultural Resource Information System (MEDUSA), https://mht.maryland.gov/secure/medusa/, to find documentation on properties recorded in the Maryland Inventory including architectural information on historic properties and information on archaeological investigations. There are 1,283 Howard County listings under “architecture” and you need to have an account to view information on archaeology. Please note that the Maryland Historical Trust is not a history-based organization but one focused on architecture and archaeology.  History documented in these forms always needs to be verified.