ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 25

STATE ACCIDENT FUND

On November 6, 1951, we were offered the records listed below by the
Superintendent of the State Accident Fund. We refused them on November
8 and at a meeting held on November 16, the Board of Public Works
authorized their destruction. The certificate of destruction states the fol-
lowing records were destroyed on March 18, 1952:

"Workmen's Compensation Claims, 1938-1940, 120 file drawers.

Claimants Compensation Checks, 1938-1940, 19 file boxes.

Cancelled Workmen's Compensation Insurance Policies, 1938-1940,

3 file drawers.

MICROFILMING OF COUNTY RECORDS

At the beginning of fiscal year 1951, the Board of Public Works con-
tracted with Records Engineering, Incorporated of Washington to micro-
film all deeds, mortgages and releases of mortgages which had been recorded
in the counties in the previous year. These films were to be deposited in the
office of the Commissioner of the Land Office in lieu of the abstracts which
had been required prior to the passage of Chapter 504, Acts of 1949. The
Hall of Records maintained a nominal supervision over this filming opera-
tion. Since an appreciable part of the cost of the film was the time involved
in travelling, setting up equipment, running tests, et cetera, we thought
this would be a good opportunity to begin some of the historical and insur-
ance filming which we had long contemplated and which could be done by
the camera operator after he had completed the land records in each county.
With the permission of the Hall of Records Commission, and without use
of Hall of Records funds, we were able to film the recorded Wills series in
every county from the terminal date of the work done by the Utah
Genealogical Society — about 1850—through 1950. A list of these records
was given in the Sixteenth Annual Report.

County microfilming was again in the hands of Records Engineering,
Incorporated for fiscal year 1952. We were undecided about what additional
filming we should do. Some probate materials, such as Inventories or
Accounts would be of great value to genealogists, especially since records
of this kind are usually indexed. The Land Records would, of course, nave
many uses, but we had film through 1850 and the Land Office had abstracts
which were fairly complete after that date. We narrowed the choice between
Proceedings of the County Courts and Proceedings of the Orphans* Courts,