Thank you Randy! and Maryland Land Records on Line

First I want to say Thanks to Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings for including me in his best of the Genea-Blogs post this week. I wrote the previous post last evening and was feeling like I was all alone out here, drowning in the pile of certificates, research documents, reports, books and reference materials. But, Randy let me know that I'm not the only one who has to sometimes get their thoughts together before continuing in my search - even if there are seemingly 50 searches going on at once. Randy mentioned that I didn't include a link to the Maryland Land Records site in my post and honestly, while that would usually seem like a very important thing to include, last night the thought didn't even cross my mind.

I came across this link a couple weeks ago on the Genealogy on a Budget Blog. The state of Maryland is giving free access to this data to anyone who wishes to try out their new system. Currently, you cannot view the actual plats but it appears that it's because it's in a different area of their system and cannot be accessed with the username and password they gave me for the home page. I sent an email to them yesterday requesting access to this area if they are permitting it and I will update when they reply. They want feedback on the system should we run into problems looking up documents etc.

So, if you've got ancestors in Maryland it's worth taking a look at the site. I didn't read the user guide till yesterday - I'm more of a "figure it out while I'm trying it" kind of person, but the user guide is worth taking a look at.

Here's the link MDLandRec.Net. First you have to fill out a form to request access to the site and they will email you with a password. This only took one day for me and let me tell you, with all the deeds I've found it's been well worth it.