In this comprehensive collection of genealogies, noted Maryland genealogist Robert Barnes has put together the most authoritative account of the British origins of Maryland families ever published. Families included in this groundbreaking work were chosen by Mr. Barnes based on the following criteria: (a) there was some reason to believe that the families' home parish in Britain had been identified; (b) the families had taken root and left descendants in the New World; and (c) most had arrived before the year 1800. Source materials on which these genealogies are based derive from a combination of Mr. Barnes's own extensive research over the past thirty years and the pioneering work on the origins of Maryland families made by earlier researchers such as Henry F. Waters, Lothrop Withington, Harry Wright Newman, Jack and Marion Kaminkow, and, more recently, Peter Wilson Coldham.