xxvi                Talbot County.

        acres “on Lankford's Neck, Talbot County” to his son, John Wells. There
        is reason to believe that John Wells became a resident of Kent County.
          The first clerk of the Talbot County Court was Moses Stagwell of Kent,
        who was appointed by the Council, February 18, 1661/2, to be both Clerk and
        Sheriff (Arch. Md. iii, 448). He was a temporary appointee, doubtless to
        organize the office, for a few weeks later the Governor, on April 2, 1662, ap-
        pointed as Clerk and Sheriff, John Morgan, who had been presented to the
        Council by the court for appointment to these positions (Arch. Md. iii, 449).
        Thomas Vaughan, son of Robert Vaughan, the old Commander of Kent, be-
        came Clerk of Talbot, November 17, 1663 (p. 360). He was succeeded on
        June 16, 1668, by Dr. William Hemsley (p. 421). Hemsley remained Clerk
        for many years. He was reappointed, April i8, 1674 (Arch. Md. xv, 35),
        and was acting as Clerk when this county record ends. At one time he had an
        assistant recording clerk (p. 523). Hemsley appears as sitting on the court
        only once, at the session of March, 1671/2, during the period covered by this
        record; but was again a member of the court in 1681 (p. 519; Arch. Md. xv,
        346). The provincial records show that he was a Roman Catholic (Arch. Md.
        V, 317), but his descendants were members of the Church of England.
          The Talbot court records as reproduced here seem to be complete for the
        1662-1674 period. Louis Dow Scisco describes the colonial records of this
        county in detail in a paper which he published in the Maryland Historical
        Magazine for June, 1927. Of the four county records reproduced in these two
        volumes of the Archives, Talbot is the only one that shows from the beginning
        a complete separation of the court minutes and the county land records. In
        the other three counties for this period the court minutes and land records are
        mingled. The land entries are omitted here, and only the court minutes or
        proceedings and the county vital records, which are also segregated in a differ-
        ent part of the old court liber, are reproduced.
          The county levies in the case of Talbot indicate that the population in the
        ten year period between 1662, the year when the county was established, and
        1673, the population more than doubled. There were probably about 1200
        inhabitants in 1662, and these had grown to about 3,000 in 1673, indicating
        that Talbot County was then one of the most rapidly developing counties of
        the Province.