Pioneers of Old Monocacy : The Early Settlement of Frederick County, Maryland, 1721-1743

It's impossible to overstate the amount of work that went into this book - from the problems in going over 200 year-old land patents to fitting them all together into a meaningful set of maps, file cards and folders - all before pulling all that together into a book. Two generations of work by the Traceys (Drs. Arthur and Grace Tracey), laboriously converting old measures of perches and rods to current dimensions in the days before Xerox(R) machines, transferring old references to bygone trees and roads onto tissue paper and then organizing all the information, led to Grace Tracey's rough manuscript in the early 1970s. John Dern, Grace's co-author, then rebuilt the nearly two-decade patchwork into a well-written well-organized history of an early crossroad north and south as well as east to west..What makes the book so valuable is the interweaving of local history and migrations with many individual pioneers and all those land documents. Footnotes are extensive and detailed. Though no fault of this book, the primary drawback to all this is that leases and rents on all the lands patented in Maryland were not documented anywhere in this time; many of the early settlers who passed through were never recorded.Great book for those interested in early history and early land transactions in an important but obscure part of the frontier.Unfortunately, the focus is narrow so the book will appeal mostly to a few historians and genealogists who have interest in this small area of Maryland in the years between 1721 and 1743.

I love this book. It is very indepth about history of the time. The only warning I give is that the index appears to be off on some listings.

Anyone tracing their family history to Maryland and Pennsylvania should read this book. I was surprised at the number of family names I recognised from researching my Kentucky and Viriginia lines. It is one of the feeder areas for those who came in the early 1700's and spread south and west. In addition, the book provides an insite into the early workings of our country.

Enormously dry but complete, this book should be thought of as a reference work. It's not intended to be a narrative history.Written essentially as a record of colonial land transactions, the book also includes brief biographical sketches of the earliest settlers in Frederick County, Maryland. For serious local historians, this book is indispensible.It's not an architectural survey, so readers with those interest should look elsewhere.

Love this book, has a lot of my family mentioned in it.

This book is a godsend when doing research into family histories in Central Maryland.

My ancestors came from the area. Although there is little specifically about my family it is still of great interest to me.

Exceptional research. Any historian of Frederick Co. will find this an invaluable resource. Cross references are quite accurate. exceptionally good for Fred. co. research.