Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1837, by James Lucas & E. K. Deaver, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Maryland.

Lucas & Deaver, printers.

LENOX LIBRAR

NEW YORK

THE DONATION

OF THE

ORIGINAL MS. OF THE HISTORY OF MARYLAND

Was made to the State by

JOHN LEEDS KERR, Esq.

Of Talbot County, Md.

And accepted by the General Assembly, in the following Communication and Resolutions::

TO THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq.,

Speaker of the House of Delegates of Maryland.

SIR, I beg leave, through you, as the presiding officer of one branch of the General Assembly, to offer for its acceptance the autograph MS. of a History of Maryland, from its first settlement, in 1633, to the Restoration, in 1660, by John Leeds Bozman, deceased.

An introduction to a history of Maryland, written by my departed friend and relative, was published in the year eighteen. hundred and eleven. The reasons which induced that publication, without the entire history itself, were assigned by the writer in his preface, and his design to complete the history at some future time was then intimated. He continued, for several years, with the utmost zeal to pursue this literary task,―to him a delightful occupation,-but, the rapid decline of his health defeated, in part, the object of his ardent ambition. Although his determination had been to bring his history down to the Revolution, in 1776, he felt himself admonished to close his task and stopped at the period of the Restoration, in 1660.

So far, this history, with numerous corrections and additions to the Introduction and an appendix of notes and illustrations, was accurately written out by the author himself, and prepared for the press and would, altogether, comprise in print, about twelve hundred pages in octavo.

Such is a general description of this work. It is derived from the written memorials which then existed in the public archives of the State, from general history, annals and ancient journals, and all other pure sources, to which the anxious inqui