1876,] OF THE SENATE. It3

Hr. McCulloh presented the following memorial of a Special
Committee appointed by the people of the coal region of
Maryland.

To the General Assembly of Maryland :

Your memorialists, charged with the duty of presenting
to the consideration of your Honorable Bodies the grounds
upon which they ask you to pass a bill providing for taking
a vote of the people on the question of forming a new county
of the adjacent parts of Allegany and Garrett counties, beg
leave to present the following facts and reasons:

In regard to territory, the Land Records of the State credit
the two counties with less than 1200 square miles. When
the survey was made, however, which ascertained such to be
the area, is not known to our people here. It was, doubtless,
in colonial times, when these mountains were the habitation
of wild beasts, rather than men, and when there was no ad-
equate motive to make an accurate survey, as our valuable
mineral deposits lay there, hidden and unknown, and this
section deemed a wilderness never, in all probability, to be-
come valuable. Surveyors, moreover, who have practiced
their profession in these counties for years, and surveyed by
piecemeal the greater part of them, affirm that the area is
quite 1400 square miles.

As regards population, we have but to refer you to the
Census Report of 1870, which makes it 38,256, with the re-
mark that it is now quite 45,000.

The material wealth of the section that would be included
in the new county cannot, be estimated, but as seems already
known to the Legislature, is considerable enough for a State
tax, above and beneath the surface. It affords a revenue to
the State Treasury greater than that of any county in the
State; is the resource, almost entirely, of the revenue of the
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and, in a great measure, of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Its coal fields called both
into being, have made the former what it is to-day, and has
enabled the latter to now grasp States in its embrace.

Certainly, then, we have the material of every kind that
the Constitution of the State requires, and to the full amount.
The capital here invested, and the industry of our people
have done much for the prosperity of the State, is still doing,
and will continue to do for ages to come.

We would further beg leave to say, that the mountainous
character of this section of the State, with its long and
severe winters and rough roads, makes the formation of
another county a necessity to the people thereof. Many of the
people of Garrett are distant thirty and forty miles from