Talbot County, Maryland

Talbot County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 census, the population was 37,526. Its county seat is Easton. The county was named for Lady Grace Talbot, the wife of Sir Robert Talbot, an Anglo-Irish statesman, and the sister of Lord Baltimore. The county is part of the Mid-Eastern Shore region of the state.

Talbot County comprises the Easton, MD Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the Washington–Baltimore–Arlington, DC–MD–VA–WV–PA Combined Statistical Area.

Talbot County is bordered by Queen Anne's County to the north, Caroline County to the east, Dorchester County to the south, and the Chesapeake Bay to the west.

The founding date of Talbot County is not known. It existed by February 12, 1661, when a writ was issued to its sheriff. It was initially divided into nine hundreds and three parishes: St. Paul's, St. Peter's and St. Michael's.

In 1667, the first Meeting of Commissions was held in a home on the Skipton Creek near the town of York. The town of York was vacated once the courthouse was planned to be built on Armstrongs Old Field in 1709 near Pitts' Bridge. The new courthouse designated because York was too far north in the county once Queen Anne's County received their charter and was lopped off of Talbot County. Pitts' Bridge was just north of the Quaker Meeting House, but most importantly, it faced the Indian trail (Washington Street – Easton).

After the American Revolutionary War in 1786, Act to Assemble in Annapolis appointed John Needles to survey and "to erect a town in Talbot County to be called Talbottown"—laying out a town around then existing court house with 118 number parcels of land and designated streets, alleys and lanes. Talbottown was to be known as the county seat of Easton. Another act was passed in 1789 to build a larger courthouse on the site of the old one. This court house was completed in 1794 and today parts of it still stand today inside of the present court house.

Lt. Col. Tench Tilghman, Gen. George Washington's aide-de-camp, was born on Fausley in Talbot County on December 25, 1744. He died on April 18, 1786, and is buried in Oxford, Maryland.

Founding Father John Dickinson was born in Trappe in 1732. The abolitionist Frederick Douglass was born into slavery near Tuckahoe Creek around 1817 or 1818.