Cecil County, Maryland Deaths, Obituaries and Burials, 1746-1846

Cecil County was created in 1674 out of Baltimore and Kent Counties in the northeastern corner of Maryland. There were no newspapers in the county until the early 1800s, but there was the Maryland Gazette in Annapolis that began reporting in 1727. For the purposes of this book, Cecil County death notices were gleaned from the earliest found in 1746. Extant newspapers in Cecil County were consulted from the early 1800s through 1846, thereby covering the 100-year period from 1746 through 1846. The newspapers were Elkton Press, Elkton Courier, Elkton Gazette, Elkton Republican, and Cecil Whig. The old newspapers primarily reported when and where a person had died, sometimes gave their age and sometimes the names of parents and spouse. Occasionally, notices were called obituaries, but not at all like the obituaries of modern times. A so-called obituary back then was not much more than a death notice that contained an epitaph, poem and/or memorial, but rarely indicated the place of burial. Also included were deaths of some Cecil countians in the surrounding area and in other states. The author consulted a variety of additional sources to locate deaths, places of burial, and other information, supplemented in some cases with brief biographical information. Many errors were detected in the course of this research and have been corrected herein. The deceased persons have been arranged in alphabetical order and names mentioned within the text have been cross-referenced, thus precluding the necessity for a separate index. Henry C. Peden, Jr. 2026, 5.5" x 8.5", paper, index, 214 pp. ISBN: 9780788455513 101-P5551