Lower Shore Outline Plan NEW
The 1877 overview of Wicomico, Somerset, and Worcester Counties in an Interactive Rectified Map over the modern Lower Eastern Shore.
Put your ancestors on the map
Maps of Somerset County and Old Somerset
Historic maps are among the most useful tools for Somerset County research. County boundaries, hundreds, election districts, waterways, roads, landowners, and place names changed over time, so a map can often explain why a record appears in a neighboring county or under an unfamiliar name.
Interactive Rectified Maps
These 1877 atlas maps are aligned with modern geography. Slide the historic layer in and out, switch between street and satellite imagery, and zoom in to compare old roads, waterways, communities, and property locations with the present landscape.
Fairmount District No. 6 NEW
The 1877 Fairmount election-district map aligned with today’s western Somerset County landscape.
Crisfield District No. 7 NEW
The 1877 Crisfield election-district map aligned with today’s southwestern Somerset County landscape.
1877 Atlas of the Eastern Shore
Detailed Lake, Griffing and Stevenson maps showing towns, election districts, roads, waterways, railways, and many individual landowners.
John C. Lyon’s Old Somerset Maps
Hundreds, settlement, land-grant, and boundary maps developed from extensive research into patents and surveys.
Historic and Research Maps
- Maryland Historical Trust MEDUSA — search historic properties, sites, and Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties records.
- Simon J. Martenet’s Somerset County Map, 1865 — interactive Maryland State Archives version.
- Old Somerset, 1877 — the three-county outline plan from the 1877 atlas.
- Lower Shore Boundaries, 1662 to the Present — changing county jurisdiction over time.
- Lower Eastern Shore Counties, 1794 — roads, towns, waterways, buildings, and county geography.
- Eastern Shore Rail Road Experimental Survey, 1853 — landowners and geographic features along the proposed railroad corridor.
- Lower Eastern Shore, 1794 — towns, roads, waterways, churches, mills, and other places.
- Eastern Shore Parishes — parish names, church locations, and historic county boundaries.
- Lower Shore Area, 1840 — Old Somerset before Wicomico County was created.
- Old Somerset — 17th-century Somerset and the daughter counties created from it.
- Somerset’s Hundreds — historic administrative subdivisions, based on Wilmer O. Lankford’s They Lived in Somerset.
Early U.S. Geological Survey Topographic Maps
Use USGS topoView to browse historical quadrangles covering Princess Anne, western Somerset, Crisfield, and the county’s surrounding waterways.
A Somerset Research Tip
Old Somerset extended into areas that are now Wicomico and Worcester counties in Maryland and part of Sussex County, Delaware. When a family seems to disappear, check changing county lines before assuming they moved.