Davidson, Thomas E. "Free Blacks in Old Somerset County, 1745-1755."
Maryland Historical Magazine 80 (Summer 1985): 151-156.
Annotations / Notes: County court records of Somerset County, Maryland during the eighteenth century are particularly complete, allowing for detailed studies of the county's population during that period. The author contributes to the scholarship which, up until 1985, focused primarily on the origins of black culture on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the seventeenth century. The author also adds to the growing scholarship on free blacks in this region, which tended to also focus on the seventeenth century. In addition to examining court records to determine the numbers of free Negroes and mulattoes, the author also attempts to determine how members of these populations obtained their free status, that is, through manumission or the as the result of being children of free mothers (free-born).