This volume contains deeds, patents and notes from wills and tax records (1666-1810) of portions of Somerset and Worcester Counties, Maryland, and Sussex County, Delaware. In the year 1767, there was an adjustment of the Maryland and Delaware boundaries which put some lands, which are now considered to be part of Wicomico County, in the state of Delaware. Wicomico County, Maryland, was formed in 1867, taken from the northern section of Somerset County and the northwestern part of Worcester County. A full name index and a map add to the value of this work.

These are abstracts of the land entries.

The immigrant ancestor, Alexander Massey (1627-1696), was born in London, England, the son of John Massey and Ruth Smith. He immigrated to the Colony of Virginia in 1651. He died in Accomac Co., Virginia. He married Sarah Wise (d. 1670) in 1659. This book covers 13 generations of Masseys in the United States spanning from 1565 to the present, predominantly in Accomac Co., Va., Sussex Co., Delaware, and the Maryland counties of Worcester, Somerset and Wicomico.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

The major part of this work is an alphabetically arranged and cross-indexed list of some 20,000 Maryland families with references to the sources and locations of the records in which they appear. In addition, there is a research record guide arranged by county and type of record, and it identifies all genealogical manuscripts, books, and articles known to exist up to 1940, when this book was first published. Included are church and county courthouse records, deeds, marriages, rent rolls, wills, land records, tombstone inscriptions, censuses, directories, and other data sources.