She was sister to Anne Arundell (Anne Arundel County), wife of Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (Cecil County), the first Proprietor and Proprietary Governor of the Province of Maryland.

[2][3] Worcester County is included in the Salisbury, MD-DE Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The county seat, which was previously located near the confluence of Dividing Creek with the Pocomoke River, was later transferred to the river port of Snow Hill, at the head of navigation of the Pocomoke, now near the center of the new county.

Competing territorial claims between the Proprietor family of the Calverts and the Lords Baltimore in the old Province of Maryland and the Penns of the neighboring Province of Pennsylvania to the north and of what later became the state of Delaware to the east led to the surveying of Worcester County's northern border, the "Transpeninsular Line" in 1751, though boundary disputes continued through the rest of the colonial period, not totally settled until the work of the famous Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon with their "Mason–Dixon line".

Originally settled by European immigrants of British and Irish stock, along with slaves of mainly West African descent, Worcester County was divided during the colonial period into several Church of England parishes, though Quakers, Presbyterians, and later Methodists also set up meeting houses.

Like the border states in general, Worcester County had a high proportion of free people of color for many decades before the Civil War, due in part to the influence of initially Quakerism, and later Methodism.

Most abolitionists in the county were Methodists, Quakers and Presbyterians, however the slave-owning community was overwhelmingly Baptist and Catholic.

First-generation immigrants from England and Germany were also overwhelmingly abolitionists in Worcester County.

During the civil war in Worcester County first generation immigrants from England and Germany were known for siding with the Union whereas first generation Irish Catholic immigrants from Ireland overwhelmingly sided with the Confederacy and were known for being some of the leaders of the Copperheads or "Peace Democrats" in Worcester County.

[4] Worcester County was primarily an agricultural area from its inception, first planting tobacco, but when the quality produced in the area's sandy soil could not compete with that produced elsewhere, they began growing wheat, corn, and livestock.

The arrival of steam-powered water transport and then the railroad opened urban markets to another of Worcester County's principal products: seafood, particularly shellfish.

However, both the seafood industry and truck farming declined after mid-century, due to overfishing on the one hand, and the opening of California's Central Valley to irrigated agriculture on the other, but the advent of the large-scale poultry industry filled this gap.

The expansion of Ocean City since the 1960s has turned the northern part of the county from a summer resort to an expanding year-round community.

Two major storms influenced the course of Worcester County history in the 20th Century: the hurricane of August 1933, which badly damaged Ocean City and Public Landing, but also cut the Ocean City Inlet and passageway between the inner bays west of the sandy barrier islands of Assawoman Bay, Sinepuxent Bay and Assateague Channel and Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, and the later Ash Wednesday "Nor'easter" of 1962, which destroyed much of the residential development on Assateague Island and led to the creation of the National Seashore and State Park.

[5] Worcester County was granted home rule in 1976 under a state code under the amendments to the fourth Maryland Constitution of 1867.

Shore Transit provides public transportation in Worcester County, operating bus routes connecting Pocomoke City, Snow Hill, Berlin, and Ocean City with Princess Anne and Salisbury.

As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 51,454 people, 22,229 households, and 14,598 families residing in the county.