24 THIRTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT

courts merely act as agents in carrying out the necessary procedures)
the Clerk was somewhat dubious about his authority to transfer the
records. He finally agreed to release them if we would obtain a court
order authorizing him to do so. The order was issued and the records
were transferred.

Prior to 1851, the Baltimore County Circuit Court handled nat-
uralization business for both City and County. Under the Constitution
of 1851, Baltimore City was established as a separate political entity
and for fifty-five years thereafter, each of the several City courts was
authorized to care for naturalizations. In 1906, the federal law re-
lating to naturalization was revised and the procedures reorganized.
The Court of Common Pleas was assigned exclusive jurisdiction over
naturalization in Baltimore City and the naturalization records of the
other City courts transferred to its custody. All of the naturalization
records listed below were received from the Court of Common Pleas
and are listed accordingly. However, they have been grouped under
the names of the several courts in which they originated.

Rigid controls have been imposed by the federal government on
the use of naturalization records. They may be examined by searchers
and notes may be made of the information they contain. But they
may not be duplicated by photostat, Xerox, microfilm or any other
photographic process, except by special order of the court in which
they were filed. The obvious purpose of such restrictions is to reduce
the possibility of forgery. Persons who require proof of naturalization
may obtain certified abstracts, valid for most legal purposes, by writing
to the District Director, Immigration and Naturalization Service, 124
Federal Building, 31 Hopkins Place, Baltimore, Maryland 21201.

One of the remarkable events of the past year was the meeting
of the Constitutional Convention that was elected to frame a new con-
stitution, which would replace the existing one-hundred-year-old docu-
ment. After a one-day organizational session which was held on July 11,
1967, the delegates reassembled on September 12, 1967 and met
daily until their work was completed. On January 10, 1968, they
assembled for the last time to affix their signatures to the constitution
they had drafted.

Mr. H. Vernon Eney, President of the Convention, was fully
conscious of its historic importance and, from the beginning, made
every effort to assure the proper and full documentation of its pro-
ceedings and activities. Although he started looking early for a com-