8 FIRST TO FOURTH ANNUAL REPORTS

for the appointment of a Public Records Commission to survey all
the records of the state and to make recommendations for their bet-
ter care. This commission began its work under the chairmanship
of Mrs. Hester Dorsey Richardson in June 1905. It conducted a
survey by competent persons in twenty-two of the Maryland Coun-
ties and in some of the state and municipal offices of Annapolis and
Baltimore. Unfortunately, its full report of 2,000 pages, prepared
after almost two years of work, has never been found although the
chairman stated that it had been deposited in the Land Office. A
very condensed report was made to the American Historical Society
at its 1905 meeting in Baltimore and a fuller but still much con-
densed report was printed and submitted to the Governor. The As-
sembly did not renew its appropriations and the work of the Com-
mission was left unfinished.

A quarter of a century was to pass before anything further was
done toward the establishment of a central archives. To be sure, the
records were not neglected. The Maryland Historical Society con-
tinued its publication program, issuing on the average, one large
volume a year. It also initiated a repair and binding program. A
useful survey of the records of the counties in the Colonial period
was begun during the nineteen-twenties and carried to completion
some years later by Louis Dow Scisco. Later, at the time that the
Hall of Records was being completed, the WPA began its work of
surveying and copying Maryland records.

But the idea of a centralized archival agency had long been in
the minds of many Maryland citizens. An opportunity for its real-
ization presented itself in the celebration of the three hundredth an-
niversary of the landing of the Ark and the Dove and the founding
of the Province.

TERCENTENARY AND THE HALL OF RECORDS

Preparations for the celebration to be held in 1934 were begun
in 1928 when Governor Albert C. Ritchie appointed a Tercentenary
Commission. This Commission organized itself immediately, al-
though its legal status was not secured until the Assembly met the
following year. At that time this Commission was told to make