ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 13

	1947-48	1946-47	1945-46
Accounts, Frederick County .............	30	34	20
Judicials, Somerset County ..............	30	—	—
Inventories, Charles County ..............	27	20	4
Wills, Original ..........................	25	33	78
Executive Papers ........................	23	—	—
Oaths of Allegiance ......................	22	22	1
Revolutionary Papers ....................	20	—	—

As the figures given below will indicate, the number of letters writ-
ten to persons seeking information from our records continued to in-
crease in spite of the fact that beginning April 1, 1948, the Bureau of
Information began to function, and a large number of the routine in-
quiries coming to the Hall of Records were channeled to this new
agency. The Hall of Records, by continually increasing its indexes, is
able to give satisfactory answers by mail to an ever larger number of
such mail inquiries without increasing the time of the staff required for
this service.

Our letters went to forty-two states of the Union, the District of
Columbia, six foreign countries, and one Army and one Navy foreign
postoffice.

Number of letters written Fiscal Year 1946..... 814

Number of letters written Fiscal Year 1947..... 1,007

Number of letters written Fiscal Year 1948..... 1,137

The increasing number of telephone inquiries led us to keep some
account of this service for the first time in the course of the last fiscal
year. Unfortunately, no system was evolved until after the year had
well begun. For ten months there were about 100 such inquiries.

AIDS TO RESEARCH

During the course of the fiscal year two published works of major
importance were completed by the staff of the Hall of Records: the
sixth publication in the Hall of Records series, Calendar of Maryland
State Papers, No. 3 The Brown Books, and the Maryland Manual. It
will be recalled that we have already published calendars of the "Black
Books" and the "Blue Books/' so that only the "Red Books" of the
so-called "Rainbow Series" are now lacking an adequate guide. We
expect to begin this last series during the present year, but, since it