ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 27

lection of State Papers which were brought from the Maryland
Historical Society. This collection amounted to over 45, 000 papers
which were unfolded, boxed, and arranged. In addition 10, 000
State Papers of a later period which had been transferred from the
Executive offices were also arranged and placed with the earlier
papers.

Study and arrangement of many of the larger and more im-
portant collections were begun this year. All of the court materials
including the Court of Appeals, the Provincial Court, and the Gen-
eral Court were carefully examined and put in proper order. Shelf
lists were made and gaps in the records indicated. These collec-
tions were given permanent places in the stacks, and shelf labels
for each volume or box were made. In the course of this work
many "discoveries" were made, among them 25 pages of a Provincial
Court Judgment record which had been ''lost" before the volume
of the Maryland Archives for that term of court was printed, a
volume of records labelled Bonds proved to be a record of Convey-
ances of the General Court of the Eastern Shore, the only record
of this kind now known to have survived, a volume which had been
catalogued as a record of a "Court of Assizes" proved to be, with
the exception of a few pages, a Provincial Court Judgment Record
which had been separated from the other records of that court when
it was moved to the Maryland Historical Society in 1882; after
sixty years it has been restored to its proper place. Less spectacular,
but perhaps more useful, is the effort to arrange the fee books, the
cost books, the rough dockets, the rough minutes, all the records
supposedly of minor importance which we have inherited under such
classifications as "miscellaneous" or "odds and ends", classifica-
tions which are useless to the researcher except to help him form a
judgment of record custodians.

At present we are studying the financial history of the State,
and before the year is over we expect to have arranged all the
financial records now in our possession and some others shortly to
be transferred from the basement of the Court of Appeals Building.
Perhaps this kind of work justifies an archival establishment more
than any other. It is too much to expect custodians of records who
change from year to year and who are absorbed in the daily tasks of
their offices to study their older records, the history of their offices
and the legislation governing them, and without this study correct
arrangement is impossible.